Your Tax Dollars at Work

In Tucson, Arizona, high school students may take a class called Latino Literature. When a reporter visited the class, it began with a Mayan chant. The classroom walls featured protest signs including "United Together in La Lucha!" That translates to "united in the struggle."

Hooray for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne who has declared the class illegal. "It's propagandizing and brainwashing that's going on there," he said. A new Arizona law went into effect January 1. It says that any school program that promotes the overthrow of the U.S. government, including suggestions that portions of the Southwest should be returned to Mexico, is prohibited. Programs that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of individuality are also outlawed.

Augustine Romero is director of student equity (my teachers are spinning in their graves over that title) in Tucson schools. He says the program is designed to make students proud of who they are and not hostile toward others. Yeah, right -- "United Together in La Lucha!"

"Ethnic studies class clashes with law." The Dallas Morning News; January 8, 2011; p. 2A.