There is a community of Arizonans who live in constant anxiety. They
worry that their neighbors want to persecute them. They feel surrounded
by hostile strangers. They believe that public opinion and public
institutions have been mobilized to undermine their place in society.
These anxious, beleaguered Arizonans aren’t undocumented Mexican
immigrants. They are the white politicians who enacted the
anti-immigrant “attrition” law now under review by the Supreme Court.
And with less fanfare — but no less audacity — they’ve now banned
from Arizona public schools all courses “designed primarily for pupils
of one ethnic group” that “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the
treatment of pupils as individuals” or that promote “resentment toward a
race or class of people.”
The target of this remarkable ban was a Mexican-American studies
program in the Tucson school district. Last month that program was shuttered,
and with it, another window between the state and this century. As a
result, there is now a list of books banned from the classroom, like The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years and even Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Officials have already come to Tucson schools to confiscate such texts.
