Well, when Arizona Law SB 1070 passed, a whole lotta Black folks were like, ' good', because they have resentments towards the Latino community.
Let me make this clear. I believe I'm to right of the rest of the FP bloggers when it comes to immigration. I don't only dislike illegal immigration, I'm not too fond of legal immigration. The whole ' nation of immigrants' thing - try it on someone whose ancestors weren't brought here stacked up in the hull of slave ships.
But, for me, this wasn't about immigration. Even Rev. Al admitted that on The Ed Show: he was like, ' yeah, I guess we gotta do immigration reform, but that's not why I'm against this bill'.
Rev. Al saw it as I did:
the attempt to CODIFY RACIAL PROFILING INTO LAW.
There's a Black person, more likely, a Black Man, racially profiled EVERY DAY in this country.
The only way that we've remotely been able to fight this, is because it was ILLEGAL.
Now, if this happens when it's ILLEGAL, what do you think is going to happen if they make it LEGAL?
Well, I'm not willing to find out.
IS there a Black person out there that thinks that doesn't recognize THAT WE ARE NEXT ON THE LIST?
Please point to me something in the history of Black folk and Law Enforcement in America that could make me conclude anything OTHER than this.
So, it's opposition to SB1070 for the selfish reason of SELF-PRESERVATION for me.
But, you couldn't possibly have thought that they were going to stop with SB 1070, did you?
Ethnic studies target of new Ariz. law
Measure prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity
By JONATHAN J. COOPER
PHOENIX - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure.
State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the bill for years, said he believes the Tucson school district's Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people.
Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said.
"It's just like the old South, and it's long past time that we prohibited it," Horne said.
Brewer's signature on the bill Tuesday comes less than a month after she signed the nation's toughest crackdown on illegal immigration — a move that ignited international backlash amid charges the measure would encourage racial profiling of Hispanics. The governor has said profiling will not be tolerated.
The measure signed Tuesday prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.
The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group.
You see how the courses for African-Americans were lumped right in there, don't you?
So, courses that tell THE TRUTH about a group's experience in America, must be banned.
How the hell are you going to tell THE TRUTH about Black folks', Latinos and Native-American history in THIS country without it pointing to the rotten and evil done to them?
The truth is the truth, and THAT is the truth of the history of the ' IF YOU AIN'T WHITE' crowd in America.
This is about Black folks being able to tell the truth about Black history in this country for our children to be given the ammunition to live their lives with self-respect and hold their heads up high.
Chris Chambers of Nat Turners Revenge discusses the new policy and the distortion of Martin Luther King, Jr. in defense of what they did.
But, it doesn't stop there.
Arizona now targeting teachers with accents
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, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
The crackdown applies to classes deemed to have students who are learning English, mostly as a second language. Federal No Child Left Behind regulations call for students to be taught by persons fluent in English. The determination of fluency is left up to individual states.
Arizona seems to think that includes accents. Of course, they are wrong - accents do not by themselves measure fluency. And almost every person who is a native speaker of another language is going to have an accent when speaking English, unless they learned English at a young age.
"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.
Indeed. Arizona's action against immigrants didn't begin with the recent passage of the "show me your papers" bill, but it emboldened anti-immigrant sentiment in other states around the country, and apparently in the Arizona educational system too.
Arizona's education department has sent people into schools to audit teachers on comprehensible pronunciation, correct grammar and good writing. Teachers who fail are given the chance to improve, but if not, they must be fired or reassigned.
I bet someone reading this is like, ' well, it's just for students learning English'.
You can't believe it's really going to STAY with the teachers just teaching English. I believe most folks have had a teacher that was hard to understand. But the thick accent doesn't mean they're not good teachers who don't demand excellence from their students and push them to be their best. Think about your own experiences.....did the thick accent translate into you not learning the material? Did the thick accent mean that they were bad teachers? And, if you considered them bad teachers, wouldn't they have been so, if they could speak perfect King's English?
Now, let's be REAL CLEAR about what's going on here:
From First Read:
Nearly two-thirds of Americans back Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law, which makes it a state crime for a person to be in the country illegally. The law also requires local and state law enforcement officials to question people about their immigration status if they suspect they’re in the country illegally.
Sixty-four percent favor this law, while 34 percent oppose it. But those numbers are essentially reversed among Latinos -- with 70 percent of them opposing the law, and only 27 percent supporting it.
Even though almost two-thirds of the public supports Arizona’s law, nearly an identical number (66 percent) believe it will lead to the discrimination of Latino immigrants who reside in the U.S. legally.
Do you understand that?
Unlike the reaction to when Black folks have been talking about racial profiling for forever and a day that it was ' ALL IN OUR IMAGINATIONS'...
They actually ADMIT, that the law WILL discriminate against Latinos, BUT SINCE IT'S NOT THEM, THEY DON'T GIVE A SHYT.
Now, for the readers of MOA, this won't come as a surprise.....
But, I'd be hard pressed not to believe that this is a shock to some in the Latino community. We'll see if this is a ' wake up call' for them.
I don't need any 'Black/Brown' coalition to act in my best self-interests. That it overlaps with the interests of the Latino community - it is what it is.
And don't believe for one moment that what has been attempted in Arizona is going to stay in Arizona.
