Santi Crow

I regret to inform you that if you agree with Arizona's recent education and immigration laws, you are a racist.
I realize how faux pas the accusation is-- nearly as much as casual use of the term faux pas --but someone needed to officially say it. Apparently you were unaware.
A self-aware racist doesn't need to debate whether or not recent Arizona legislation is racist, because if you even have to ask, you're not ready. As clearly stated in "In Defense of Arizona's Education Law", written by Forbes.com contributor Melik Kaylan:

It is certainly true that the Arizona law both by intent and effect will target Mexican kids...

Laws written that benefit minorities are called Affirmative Action, and are almost uniformly opposed by neocons. Yet this law, targeting a specific race of citizen, is praised by the same groups. As written in the bill, the intention is to ban teachings that "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treating pupils like individuals." I hope there are no Jewish schools in Arizona.
Or would this not apply to a Jewish school?
The defense of the law states

...multicultural societies tend to produce monocultural enclaves, united, if at all, in the endless struggle to empower their own kind.

Of course Kaylan was only referring to Chicano studies, but is the sentiment not also true for other races? Probably, but we're only talking about Mexicans. Racist.
Ethnic solidarity is not a crime. Legislation targeting a specific ethnicity, should be.  National solidarity will never be accomplished as long as we treat ethnicities differently. Laws targeting Mexicans in any way are an affront to the 14th Amendment.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

Fourteen amendments later, we agreed that should apply in a legal sense as well. It sounds like some Americans are changing their minds about that. Kaylan writes:

 There's another not so minimal issue we are supposed to never mention in discussions of this kind. As we laud and empower minority cultures for their vibrancy, when do we (or they) get to point out their shortcomings?

Bingo! "When do we [the majority] get to point out their [the minority's] shortcomings?" Textbooks are forced to laud Martin Luther King Jr and a few other blacks, but when do they get to teach about how bad the blacks are? As Kaylan states:

Ethnic minorities resentful of America might be less inclined to act out if they had a clearer notion of how their own cultures had failed them in the first place.

Pro-Chicano courses are a threat, but anti-Chicano courses would keep ethnic minorities from "acting out"?  The desire to teach so-called minorities why their cultures fail is racism. This multicultural nation, not a cultureless nation. The law should be impartial to culture, just a it should be toward religion.Teaching Culture and Citizenship as mutually exclusive is permanently divisive. No matter how many years they have lived here, a Mexican-American will always be a Mexican-American. How much can that citizen learn about their Mexican ancestry before they are no longer American? There is no correct answer. No matter how much or little this citizen learns or doesn't learn, they're still a citizen-- guaranteed every right under the constitution that Rush Limbaugh has, give or take a few amendments. For example: the 4th.
The 4th Amendment protects citizens against illegal search and seizure, and so on. Yet according to Arizonian's purely logical and 100% non-racist reasoning, certain races don't get that right. In order to secure the borders, certain "illegal looking" citizens must be searched and questioned more than others. Christian Lander, author of Stuff White People Like, and and also a white person, wrote: in "How We Became White":

Who is more likely to get pulled over and forced to show his papers today: a first generation Canadian immigrant, or a tenth generation Mexican-American?

 Who is more likely to have their 4th Amendment rights violated? Trick question: the answer is nobody, because the 14th Amendment grants equal protection under the law. Or so it goes.
Here is a chance for the Teaparty to gain legitimacy. Real government is taking away rights of real citizens-- not some secret 80's commie group that birthed Obama in a Kenyan laboratory.
But racism is a dead horse in this country, except for that new breed that is afflicting only white Republican males. Arizonians don't want to whitewash education, they just want to remove certain Chicano courses in order to prevent mono-ethnic studies. If we can agree on anything, it's that mono-ethnic education doesn't fit in multi-ethnic nations.
On a completely separate note, the Texas Board of Education recently added eugenics to the curriculum for the next ten years. So it goes.