Arizona Loses Illusions and Blows Own Cover
by nezua. written Friday, April 30th, 2010 11:51 am
ARIZONA, the State of Denial, has spun into a legislative carnival of lunacy with the latest ethnic cleansing maneuver. Teachers with accents will be barred from teaching English, and Chicano Studies linked to terrorism/revolution and banned from schools.
THE USA WHITE SOUTH has always been a bit…collectively delusional. But you can’t blame that on the South. It’s long been the American way (as well as the way of a number of other countries and peoples throughout time) to blaze into an area, steal land through legitimized war, law, or other displays of naked aggression and then imagine it can be remade and the history and rights of those who lived there, forgotten.
I can’t quite agree with the characterization of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote—I don’t see Mexican/Mexican culture as a negative, nor bemoan the fact that nature and reality tend to assert themselves despite humankinds’ persistent fantasies to the contrary—but I do appreciate, even as he was a member of the growing Empire, his grasp of the future:
“The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, 72;prior to the American Invasion of México
He’s kind of saying…you can’t fool Mother Nature. Or…truth will out.
Either way, in this day and age and cultural mood, this sounds terribly dramatic and fearsome, but of course, coming from a member of an imperialist , colonizing nation the view makes sense. It is, albeit with some insight, and I’d like to imagine a dollop of moral foreboding—the very same lens that most the lawmakers in Arizona are seeing through. All while they and the GOP croak-soothy and tell us these sorts of bills are attempting to Protect America or some weird racist shit like that.
But the mask slips in this Age of Obama and the Terrifying® notion of a shrinking white population. And the mask finally, I think, is falling.
The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English. [...] “This is just one more indication of the incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in the state,” said Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who conducts public-opinion research. [...]
Adding insult to injury, the Arizona legislature passed a bill yesterday outlawing ethnic studies programs:
HB 2281 would make it illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity “instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
It also would ban classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”
The measure is directed at the Tuscon Unified School District’s popular Mexican-American studies department …
It’s cute how they tie “overthrowing the government” with “ethnic studies.” But we know, of course, it is not Chican@s who are talking about overthrowing this corrupt government. It’s white people, today. Patriots. Joe Stack types. Oathkeepers and Oklahoma Bomber types.
I will make clear that I am not interested in a culture war that pits “white culture” vs remembering my roots and family and the history of the US and Mexico. Firstly, I don’t know what “white culture” is. It seems to me a phrase trying to pose an object by naming a non-entity, as “whiteness” is really a implied negation posing as an entity in the first place. White Culture, as it were, doesn’t exist. It can only reasonably be identified when no other cultural signifier exists. It’s an ideological vacuum. That’s why when Glenn Doofus Beck was asked what white culture actually was, he thought IT WAS A TRICK QUESTION. Let that soak in for a second: Glenn Beck admits that his own beliefs are tricks played on him by others. And yet, he lacks any self reflection of the fact that he has been brainwashed into a type of young senility. All while thinking, somehow, that he has anything of worth to say to anyone about anything—especially culture and identity!!
Secondly, I don’t see a problem with me remembering my history, familia, and the history of the US invasion into Mexico and related realities. I just don’t see this as competition with what old, white people in Arizona want to do with their day.
So Arizona is really losing it’s cool. And I am very glad the mask is dropping.
ICE, Arpaio, FAIR, AZ’s always harsh and hostile posture toward immigrants (ahem, Mexicans) Culture-Murder/Intellectual Ethnic Cleansing agendas, as shown in this latest move….
The most frustrating and crazymaking part of focusing on, eradicating, or exposing racist movements is that since they are movements based on fear and ignorance, they slither; they do not stand in truth. They are afraid to admit their real intent. (Because even those harmful humans do have a heart and conscience and working mind, tho slathered under the sediment of self-deception, and so do have shame for their actions on a deep, dark, quiet and subverbal level.) They live in confusion, in other words. So they sow confusion in others in order to carry out their work.
Without that public ignorance cloak to shield them, the gig falls apart with enough people walking away from that energy and agenda. Which is what is happening today in the USA. That’s why Dan Stein of FAIR on Maddow the other day was so furious. (Ew, he has such an ugly energy!) That’s why all he cared about was how what Rachel was doing was sowing “division” between FAIR and “Hispanics.” If FAIR loses its fake-ass image of being One With the People and ONLY against ILLEGULZ, they’ve got nada.
AZ, in losing its cool, is blowing the lid off all that cover. It’s a scary, ugly, beautiful thing.
Poster Comment:
Dude's right; and WHITES can do business with him.
"Americans", "Constitutionalists", "patriots", "tea partiers", yada yada cannot.
And they will lose, just like Dixie did.