As Arizona moves past the “tipping point” of non-white population, its government scrambles to safeguard historical white lies from exposure by public school ethnic studies programs. The governor “intends to wipe the white historical slate clean of actual genocides, enslavements, land piracies, and all manner of crimes against darker peoples.” The truth shall not be spoken in Arizona.”
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“The truth shall not
be spoken in Arizona, if it is detrimental to the reputation and
sensibilities of white people.”
The State of Arizona has very ambitious
goals. It will not be satisfied simply to impose a kind of apartheid
system in which Latino-looking persons have no rights that a policeman
is bound to respect. Oh no, Arizona’s legislature and governor have a
grander plan, a much larger vision to rewrite history so as to place
white people back where they think they belong: at the unchallenged
center of all things worth knowing and learning. In order to do that, it
is necessary to erase and outlaw the past and present of those who are
not white. Governor Jan Brewer thinks she can whitewash history and put
barbed wired around the present and the future with the stroke of a pen.In signing what is effectively a
ban on teaching any version of history other than the approved, white
version, in elementary and secondary public schools, the governor seeks
to impose an ethnic cleansing of the mind – a kind of official genocide
of past generations. She intends to wipe the white historical slate
clean of actual genocides, enslavements, land piracies, and all manner
of crimes against darker peoples. The truth shall not be spoken in
Arizona, if it is detrimental to the reputation and sensibilities of
white people. Apparently, the true facts of history cause white Arizona
great pain, like sunlight shining on Dracula. Gov. Brewer wants to shut
out the light, by shutting down ethnic studies in the classroom, making
the schools safe for white lies.
Whites make up less than 60 percent of
Arizona, which is apparently past the tipping point at which many of
them become terrified at the prospect of losing their monopoly on power,
including the power to hijack history to the service of one group:
whites. One of the ways whites dominate other ethnic groups, is by
denying that whites are an ethnicity, at all, but the normative form of
human being. When Arizona’s legislature prohibits teaching classes that
are, in the language of the new law, “designed primarily for pupils of a
particular ethnic group,” they mean classes designed for non-whites. Of
course, schools in the United States have always tailored classes to
one ethnic group: whites. History has always been a white narrative, and
therefore by definition, a lie and a slander against the other
ethnicities. Arizona wants its white lies back.
“Governor Jan Brewer
thinks she can whitewash history and put barbed wired around the present
and the future with the stroke of a pen.”
It is now forbidden to teach that which
causes “resentment toward a race or class of people.” Since it is
impossible to teach the truth of genocide, slavery, aggressive war and
conquest, racial discrimination and all the other central facts of
America's past and present, without arousing some degree of resentment
among the victims, only falsified versions of history will pass legal
muster in Arizona.
The state reveals itself as the
unreconstructed heartland of Latter Day McCarthyism, where subversives
lurk under every classroom desk. The new law puts schools off-limits to
materials that advocate “overthrow of the United States government.”
What they really mean is: overthrow of white dominance over the rest of
us. That includes preserving the sanctity of White American Manifest
Destiny. What is actually manifest is that the destiny of Arizona, and
America, is to lose its white majority. In the process, the United
States will also shed all those books full of white lies – which is what
Gov. Brewer is afraid of.
BAR
executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
