...mostly I felt anger: that our book had been caught in the conservative dragnet that led to the termination of the Mexican American Studies program; that students were being victimized by the anti-immigrant, anti-Latina/o racism that characterized Arizona’s infamous racial profiling law, Senate Bill 1070; that yet one more attack on multicultural, social justice education in the country seemed to be winning.
....
The only other time I’d had a book outlawed was my curriculum on teaching about South Africa, Strangers in Their Own Country (Africa World Press, 1985), which had been banned in South Africa in 1986, no doubt because it featured a speech by then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela, quotes from other officially banned individuals, and lessons on the movement to demand corporate divestment from apartheid South Africa.
More than 25 years separates the banning of each of these books, but as events in Tucson have unfolded, I’ve found myself making comparisons between South Africa and Arizona.
