Tom Horne and John Huppenthal's Ethnic Studies War: Fate of MAS in Federal Judge's Hands, Yet Again
DA Morales of Three Sonorans fame channels Isaiah (beard and all), and gives the TUSD board an Old Testament-style tongue-lashing
Will the anti-Mexican machinations of Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and state schools Superintendent John Huppenthal be thwarted, at long last, by a federal judge?
They certainly could be, given the details of a desegregation plan for the Tucson Unified School District pending in federal court, part of which calls for the development of "socially and culturally relevant curriculum, including courses of instruction centered on the experiences and perspectives of African American and Latino communities."
The so-called "proposed Unitary Status Plan" is the offspring of a federal civil rights case stretching back nearly four decades, Fisher, et al v. Tucson Unified, et al. In January, Judge David C. Bury ordered the appointment of a "special master" in the case, who developed the USP with significant input from the community.
If implemented, the USP is a disaster for Horne and Huppenthal, the primary pimps of House Bill 2281, the anti-ethnic studies law, specifically crafted to crush TUSD's MAS program, a bugbear of far-right Mexican-haters in this state.
(Note: That language was the subject of a confusing Tuesday vote of the Tucson Unified School District's governing board, now a point of contention between the various factions involved. More on that further down.)
Indeed, to peruse Horne's hysterical amicus objection to the USP, filed with the court at the end of November, you'd think the mere reading of the proposal had set Horne's hair on fire, and Carmen Chenal's coal-black-dyed locks along with it.
Horne tells the court that its requirements concerning this new curriculum "will violate Arizona law, promote segregation, and prompt the return of the discredited Mexican-American Studies (MAS) Program."
The AG further admonishes Judge Bury that, "no authority allows a federal court to disregard this Arizona law."
Maybe they didn't cover the U.S. Constitution, Brown v. the Board of Education, the Supremacy Clause, and the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause back when Horne was at Harvard Law.
Or maybe he was too busy chasin' skirts and getting banned for life by the Securities and Exchange Commission to notice.
In fact, Horne's "objection" is actually a very un-lawyer-like political screed, regurgitating all the tired, hateful shibboleths he's been peddling for years now, shibboleths he used to help get him elected back in 2010.
As is common practice among those who traffic in racial stereotypes and scapegoating, Horne refers to the MAS program as "racist and oppressive," deriding its "barrio pedagogy" and labeling its administrators and teachers "radical socialist activists" hell-bent on promoting an "an anti-capitalist and anti-Western Civilization ideology."
That's like David Duke calling Jesse Jackson a racist, a tactic only effective in the mind of David Duke, and those who think like him.