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A spectre is haunting Tuscon
Has anyone else been following this awful story about the book-bannings in Tuscon? I posted a snip about it in GD the other day: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002196596 "Arizona Schools Ban Mex-Am Studies, Angry Kids Put On Janitorial Duty"
I just caught this other tidbit from Democracy Now, in an interview with SOE Huppenthal, the core reason for this draconian ban (which resulted in school officials going right into classes in session and taking books off the shelves and rearing down posters):
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/18/debating_tucson_school_districts_book_ban
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Superintendent Huppenthal, why do you say that no one, neither a liberal nor a conservative, would tolerate it? What’s the problem with the program? And you’ve also said that classes such as these foster ethnic resentment. Could you explain what you mean by that and how that manifests itself?
JOHN HUPPENTHAL: Well, the designers of the class—the classes themselves, they laid this all out in a journal article. And they explicitly said in the journal article that they were going to racemize—racemize the classes. And in racemizing* the classes, there is a philosopher in South America, controversial philosopher, because—it’s strictly right in his books—he uses a Marxist structure to his thinking and his philosophy, that—and Marx, of course, said that the entire history of mankind was a struggle between the classes. So the designers of the Mexican American Studies classes explicitly say in their journal articles that they’re going to construct Mexican American Studies around this Marxian framework with a predominantly ethnic underclass, the oppressed, being—filling out that Marxian model and a predominantly Caucasian class filling out the role of the oppressor. It really is so simplistic, but it was replete through the entire article. And a lot of things, very unhealthy.
<snip>
JOHN HUPPENTHAL: I mean, he says, explicitly—he says, explicitly, in his book that his—literally, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that word "oppressed" is taken right out of—he says it right in the book—that word "oppressed" is taken right out of The Communist Manifesto, where he talks about—Karl Marx talks about the struggle of the history of man—the entire history of mankind being the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors.
<snip>
JOHN HUPPENTHAL: There’s—those books were not—there’s no—nothing about my order that requires that those books be banned at all. You know, I’ve read those books myself to familiarize myself with the issues at hand. But what we have concerns about are how those books are being used. You could use Mein Kampf (!!-Starry) in the classroom, but you’d have to be really careful, because you—if you found a teacher who wasn’t using it to explore the issues in Mein Kampf critically, but you were—they were using it as a Bible, boy, that would be intolerable. And that’s where the teachers have crossed over the line. They’ve gone from using these books critically, to get the students thinking about them from many vantage points, to using these books essentially as a Bible.
Wow, you can't even use the word "oppressed" in Tuscon without reigniting the Red Scare? And comparing critical works on race to Mein Kampf? Where do these people come from? I've read that racism is considered the one huge reason why the US has never shifted closer to socialism like in other industrialized countries. Reading things like this kind of underscores that for me. Where do you start when you can't even acknowledge that institutional oppression exists and has existed in this country?
(*and wtf is "racemizing"
)
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
he thinks the word has something to do with race. 
Nice to meet you. 
This country needs to stop lying to itself.
P.S. Your subscribers just went up 1 member. 
