Arizona education law adds insult to injury for Latinos

WASHINGTON — At least we don't have to pretend anymore. Arizona's passing of that mean-spirited new immigration law wasn't about high-minded principle or the need to maintain public order. Apparently, it was all about putting Latinos in their place.

It's hard to reach any other conclusion following the state's latest swipe at Latinos. On Tuesday, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a measure making it illegal for any course in the public schools to "advocate ethnic solidarity." Arizona's top education official, Tom Horne, fought for the new law as a weapon against a program in Tucson that teaches Mexican-American students about their history and culture.

Horne claims the Tucson classes teach "ethnic chauvinism." He has complained that young Mexican-Americans are falsely being led to believe that they belong to an oppressed minority. The way to dispel that notion, it seems, is to pass oppressive new legislation aimed squarely at Mexican-Americans. That'll teach the kids a lesson, all right: We have power. You don't.

Arizona is already facing criticism and boycotts over its "breathing while Latino" law, which in essence requires police to identify and jail undocumented immigrants. Now, the state adds insult to that injury.

The education bill begins with a bizarre piece of nonsense, making it illegal for public or charter schools to offer courses that "promote the overthrow of the United States government." Then it shifts from weird to offensive, prohibiting classes that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people," that "are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group," and that "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." When you try to parse those words, the effect is chilling.

Is it permissible, under the new law, to teach basic history? More than half the students in the Tucson Unified School District are Latino, the great majority of them Mexican-American. The land that is now Arizona once belonged to Mexico. Might teaching that fact "promote resentment" among students of Mexican descent? What about a class that taught students how activists fought to end discrimination against Latinos in Arizona and other Western states? Would that illegally encourage students to resent the way their parents and grandparents were treated?

The legislation has an answer: Mexican-American students, it seems, should not be taught to be proud of their heritage.

This angry anti-Latino spasm in Arizona is only partly about illegal immigration, which has fallen substantially in the past few years. It's really about fear and denial.