Racing Arizona

Recent legislation is bringing to light an underlying racial animosity that many People of Color see clearly every day and many Whites fail to perceive for their entire lives.

I’d like to invite people to think about the recent legislation in Arizona regarding programs and curricula that are considered “Ethnic Studies.” The legislation prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

• Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
• Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
• Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
• Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

There are many rhetorical and philosophical contradictions embedded within this legislation that I will not touch on here. What I would like to discuss is the ways in which this legislation promotes and supports Whiteness. In other words, it makes all studies in Arizona White Ethnic Studies.

As mentioned above, classes are prohibited that:

• Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
• Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

Within these two statements lies the inherent contradiction that underlies so much of White Privilege and contributes to the current system of racial inequity in the US. It uses the fallacy of a race-neutral system to perpetuate White values and diminish or eradicate the values of others.

Individualism is a dimension of White US culture. The US, in fact, rates highest of all national cultures on the dimension of Individualism. And Individualism is particularly white. Other racial/ethnic groups within the US are more Collectivist in general than Whites. When we say that our classes must be designed to treat people as individuals, we are designing classes using the White worldview and as such these classes are designed primarily for one group: Whites. This may seem less explicit than the ethnic studies that the legislation is intended to address but, because these classes are designed using a White frame of reference, they build racial solidarity among Whites while at the same time diminishing solidarity among other groups. This is a means of making White students supreme among other groups and it is an example of how modern, unconscious racial inequity is perpetuated.

At the same time, these classes act to assimilate Non-Whites into the Individualism of Whiteness and ultimately Whiteness in general. Some Whites don’t see any problem with this. They believe that this is “America” (while forgetting that countries like Mexico are in “America” as well, or that Arizona was once part of Mexico) and that people who live within the US’s borders need to assimilate into US culture. I’ve heard the argument made that every culture imposes itself on others, that stronger cultures (in terms of holding power in a society) always dominate weaker ones, that people always want to have their worldviews advanced even at the expense of others’. According to this argument, these laws should be seen in that context, and the fact that the government was concerning itself at all with non-dominant groups is proof that the US is actually more respectful of other cultures than most. I have a few objections to that argument.

The first is the simplest: just because everybody does it doesn’t make it right. It is not acceptable, and it doesn’t make it ok to do nothing while inequity happens in my nation. I never hear people saying we should stop enforcing laws against stealing because “there will always be people who steal.” Why would we want to throw up our hands and do nothing about racial inequity simply because it’s very possible that it will always exist in one form or another?

Second: if some members of the White population of the US want to act in a way that imposes a certain set of cultural values on others, then we should not pretend that we aren’t. We should at least stop kidding ourselves that we are a society based on real freedom (we’re NOT kidding the Non-Whites, folks, they already know). This kind of blindness to our own lack of cultural sympathy not only allows us to do harm to others, it makes us hypocritical and is ultimately damaging to own collective psyche. We hurt ourselves when we base our view of ourselves on a lie. Let’s cut the bull and call our insistence that others share our worldview what it is.

Individualism, while it allows for some of the best aspects of US culture, such as the legacy of the visionary to buck convention and create new things, also acts as a means of separating people so that they cannot create common cause to promote their best interests.

The Individualism discussion is full of contradictions, especially when one powerful group works to impose Individualism on others. What if those being imposed upon don’t want to be treated as Individuals? What if they do feel solidarity with their own or other groups? As Individuals, do they not have the right to act and feel so? Do people who feel Collectivist have an equal say?

This legislation also seems to forget that there are millions of tax-paying, Non-White citizens who, while they may have a love of the United States, also have a love of their heritages. They have the right to have those heritages reflected in the curricula of their schools. Throughout our history, becoming “American” has meant leaving behind one’s cultural heritage to be able to participate as fully as one’s outward appearances would allow in the economic prosperity of the US.

Much of what’s happening in Arizona right now, such as this legislation or the recent new immigration laws, are attempts to deal with huge amounts of strain that are being put on a system called upon to deliver services to a sizable group of untaxed people during the worst economic downturn in a generation. Of course, paying taxes isn’t the only way that people contribute to an economy, but even given this context, this is yet another example of how when the going gets tough in the USA, People of Color are told to get going.