Arizona is indeed becoming the new Mississippi or Alabama, gaining the horrible reputation both of those states gained in the civil rights era of the 1960s.
The new Attorney General of Arizona, Tom Horne, who used to be the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state, has banned the Mexican American Studies program in the high schools of Tucson, while continuing to allow Asian American, African American, and Native American Studies programs to continue.
This is adding to the image of Arizona, which is now the DEATH PANELS state, cutting $1.2 million from the budget of Medicaid, and therefore preventing 96 transplant patients of all kinds of organs from getting necessary surgery, and two patients already passing away, while it would be easy to find that small amount if Governor Jan Brewer really cared about life! 🙁
This ethnic discrimination is being appealed, and the decision of the attorney general, enforcement of a law he originated as education administrator, should be reversed as also illegal conflict of interest by the man who claims to enforce the law, and then shows totally outrageous prejudice on the level of Bull Connor, Birmingham Police Chief in the 1960s, or Governor George Wallace of Alabama!
A case on this issue may have to be brought to the Supreme Court eventually, as now we have demonstration of a new racism against Mexican Americans, as we had in the past against other groups. This issue, along with the new Arizona law, on checking for illegal status of anyone who looks Hispanic, is in the worst traditions of racism and hatred that we would like to think had already passed into history, but sadly is alive and well! 🙁