I resemble that remark.

On the heels of Arizona passing it’s immigration law, countless cities cancelling events, and the fear that Major League baseball will decide to pull next year’s all-star game (apparently it won't but maybe the players will boycott), any rational individual would try to lie low and see if the controversy blows over. Well, Arizona appears to be taking a page from Sue Lowden and has decided to draw even more attention to its racial attitudes. However, those attitudes just seem to confirm what the country already thinks of it.

The other day, Arizona governor Brewer signed a law to get rid of ethnic studies classes in schools. The reasoning given by Tom Horne, the author of the bill, is that these ethnic studies classes "promote resentment toward a race or class of people" (read: white people) and "promote the overthrow of the United States government".  Seriously, that what he thinks will happen if you have kids read Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

This echoes a fear that a lot of white people have that children are going to be taught history that diminishes what white people have done and, at worst, paint white people as the bad guys. The problem is, if you’ll pardon the pun, most of the history we’re taught in school white-washes our past.  Heck Pat Buchannan on Rachel Maddow claimed that "this has been a country basically built by white folks".  Forgetting to mention that it was done with a lot of free black labor.

I learned about the civil rights movement only because I read about it on my own. I even had a teacher who tried to say that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery but about economics. Yeah, I’ve heard those arguments before (here's a list of 5 from about.com.
-- The Civil War was about economics. Yes, the south didn’t want to pay workers a salary, when it could just buy them at a one time fee.
-- The War was about state’s rights. Yes the right of some states to keep and own slaves
-- The War was brought on by the differences between industrial and agricultural ways of life. Yes, and agriculture at that time involved…what was that again… oh, yeah…SLAVES!

Look, the truth is that there are hippie teachers who take glee in pointing out that Jefferson owned slaves at the same time as writing that “all men are created equal.” The problem isn’t with those teachers, as people on the right would have it, it's with trying to write only "shiny-happy" history.

What Jefferson and the founding fathers did is amazing. They were a group of intellectuals who “thought” about what the best type of government would be and then debated, made compromises and implemented it. That government stands as the sole remaining super-power in the world today. The fact that they denied women a vote and denied blacks even the most basic rights of humanity, is a big bad spot on our record. But just because they made mistakes (and a big ones at that) doesn’t mean we should just ignore those mistakes.

The United States of America has done a lot of bad things: Slavery, the treatment of the Chinese railroad workers, Jim Crow laws, Japanese Internment Camps, Vietnam massacres, the list goes on. The difference between the Right and Left on talking about these things is that the Right feels that even mentioning these things is to disparage or “hate” America. The Left knows that by acknowledging these events, apologizing and trying to make things right after the fact, is what makes us a great country. Saying we made a mistake, trying to make it right and ensuring that it never happens again is what movie heroes are all about.

Al Franken explained it like this: "But you have to love your country like an adult loves somebody, not like a child loves its Mommy. And right-wing Republicans tend to love America like a child loves its Mommy, where everything Mommy does is okay. But adult love means you're not in denial, and you want the loved one to be the best they can be."  Your parents could do no wrong and if someone criticized or spoke bad about your parents, you’d fight with them.

The Left is like a married couple. We know that our spouse isn’t perfect, and we’re going to have disagreements and sometimes they’re going to annoy the hell out of us. But, you work at it. You love them so you try to make things better. You try to find a solution that doesn’t end in dissolution. At least that what you should do if you’re an adult.

So when Horne heard about these African-American and Mexican-American studies programs, he reacted like a child upon hearing his parent being denigrated. “You take that back! You shut up!” In all honesty these courses just teach that someone other than old white men had a hand in crafting our nation. It teaches these students that people like them made a difference; it makes them feel a part of history. If you have kids that are interested enough to take these classes and learn about American History or read world literature, why would anyone try to stop them? Teachers have a hard enough time getting students interested in lessons, why take away something that might actually hold their interest?

On a political level, why would you sign a bill that targets “ethnic” groups on the heels of signing a bill that many believe targets “ethnic” groups? I predict a ban on Mexican radio stations next with some flimsy argument as to why it needs to be eliminated. “It’s not that we don’t like Mexican music, it’s that the beats of that music cycle at a frequency that is harmful to salamanders.”

Good luck Arizona, I hope you find your way.