“Raza Studies” at Tucson Schools Preaches Hatred of Whites
By • 6/18/08According to Tom Horne, Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Tucson Unified School District’s (TUSD) “Raza Studies” department is teaching students that the United States is a racist state, that Hispanic students should rebel against white rule, and that Mexican activists who threaten to kill whites are heroes. As Superintendent Horne says in a letter requesting that the citizens of Tucson abolish the program:
As I will describe, the evidence is overwhelming that ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District teaches a kind of destructive ethnic chauvinism that the citizens of Tucson should no longer tolerate.
The very name “Raza” is translated as “the race.” On the TUSD website, it says the basic text for this program is “the pedagogy of oppression.” Most of these students’ parents and grandparents came to this country, legally, because this is the land of opportunity. They trust the public schools with their children. Those students should be taught that this is the land of opportunity, and that if they work hard they can achieve their goals. They should not be taught that they are oppressed.
One of the textbooks is Occupied America (5th ed.). One of the leaders it talks about is described as follows: “José Angel Gutiérrez was one of the leaders, and he expressed the frustrations of the MAYO generation. His contribution was indispensable; it influenced Chicanos throughout the country.”
One of Gutiérrez’s speeches is described as follows:
“We are fed up. We are going to move to do away with the injustices to the Chicano and if the ‘gringo’ doesn’t get out of our way, we will stampede over him.” Gutiérrez attacked the gringo establishment angrily at a press conference and called upon Chicanos to ‘kill the gringo,’ which meant to end white control over Mexicans.”
The textbook’s translation of what Gutiérrez meant contradicts his clear language. In describing the atmosphere in Texas where Gutiérrez spoke, the textbook states: “Texans had never come to grips with the fact that Mexicans had won at the Alamo.” (P. 323.) It is certainly strange to find a textbook in an American public school taking the Mexican side of the battle at the Alamo.
Another textbook is The Mexican American Heritage (2nd ed.). One of the chapters is “The Loss of Aztlan.” Aztlan refers to the states taken from Mexico in 1848: Arizona, California, New Mexico and Colorado. This chapter states: “Apparently the U.S. is having as little success in keeping the Mexicans out of Aztlan as Mexico had when they tried to keep the North Americans out of Texas in 1830.” (P. 107.) In other words, books paid for by American taxpayers used in American public schools are gloating over the difficulty we are having in controlling the border. This page goes on to state: “…the Latinos are now realizing that the power to control Aztlan may once again be in their hands.”
As Horne notes, the term of Aztlan invokes the Hispanic nationalist ideology of the group M.E.Ch.A:
When I was at Tucson high school, the librarian was wearing a M.E.Ch.A. tee shirt. If you Google M.E.Ch.A., you will find its goals and constitution. In the introductory paragraph, M.E.Ch.A. states:
“We are Chicanos and Chicanas of Aztlán reclaiming the land of out [sic] birth (Chicano and Chicana Nation); 2) Aztlán belongs to indigenous people, who are sovereign and not subject to a foreign culture…”
In section 2 of the M.E.Ch.A. Constitution it states:
“Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent.”
One former TUSD teacher, John Ward, who taught in the Raza Studies program has described the general tone of instruction:
But the whole inference and tone was anger. (They taught students) that the United States was and still is a fundamentally racist country to those of Mexican-American kids.
Individuals in this (Ethnic Studies) department are vehemently anti-Western culture. They are vehemently opposed to the United States and its power. They are telling students they are victims and that they should be angry and rise up…
By the time I left that class, I saw a change (in the students), he said. An angry tone. They taught them not to trust their teachers, not to trust the system. They taught them the system wasn’t worth trusting.
According to Horne, the director of the Raza Studies program hates the white man:
Hector Ayala was born in Mexico, and is an excellent English teacher at Cholla High School in TUSD. He reports that the Director of Raza Studies accused him of being the “white man’s agent,” and that when this director was a teacher, he taught a separatist political agenda, and his students told Hector that they were taught in Raza Studies to “not fall for the white man’s traps.”
Tucson teachers who oppose the Hispanic nationalism of the school system are afraid to speak out. Journalist Doug MacEachern writes in the Arizona Republic:
I have interviewed several other employees of TUSD in recent weeks, all of whom have witnessed the program firsthand or who have discussed the Ethnic Studies program with students taking it. None of them would speak on the record. All asked that their names not be used and that any chronicle of their experiences not include details that could be traced back to them.
They are fearful. And for good reason.
“There’s a lot of people who know this problem is occurring,” one TUSD employee said. “They won’t do anything for two reasons. One, they know (the program) is so much bigger than they are. And, two, you’re going to be called a racist.”
I will post an action alert on this matter tomorrow.
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For hispanic professors and other activists who teach hatred against “whites” to hispanic kids is beyond ludicrous. First of all, the people from Mexico (unless you are a true Indian) are of the Caucasian (or white race). You are only Mexican because you were born in Mexico but your blood could be of many….Spanish (from Spanish occupation), French (also from French occupation) or other. These professors and activists keep brainwashing their own for their own satisfaction of raising hell over nothing. Instead of leading their own into a world of education and improvement they would much rather keep them down in order so that they get their 15 minutes of fame. People of Spanish or Mexican descent are intelligent and considered white….not brown….but white. But instead the activists will lump them together with “people of color”. Just like Americans….most of them are American because they were born here but they are of German descent, Japanese descent. But, like many Mexicans, if you are born in Mexico and obtain citizenship in America then you are Mexican-American. But if you of Mexican descent born in American then you are just American of Mexican descent. Professors know this….how come they don’t share that with their own????? Because it makes them look more important and knowledgable when they are not. They like to inflame others with their radical rhetorics.
By on 7/6/08 at 1:34 pm
Tina,
I wrote the action alert above, but, odd as it may seem, I’m going to defend the “Raza studies” people on one point. Most Mexicans are indeed not white and are racially different from the white American majority. The CIA World Factbook gives this breakdown of the racial demographics of Mexico:
“mestizo (Amerindian-Spanish) 60%, Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian 30%, white 9%, other 1%”
It is American Indian blood that prevails in Mexico. White Mexicans generally don’t need to immigrate to the US because they’re prosperous in Mexico. The ones that come here are mestizos and Indians. Indeed, there are many Mexican immigrants to America whose primary language is not Spanish, but a pre-Columbian Indian dialect.
By on 7/6/08 at 2:59 pm
The fact of the matter is that Mexicans, Indians and other colored people do the jobs that White Euro-Americans don’t wan’t to do and keeps our economy running
By on 7/16/08 at 5:55 pm
“The fact of the matter is that Mexicans, Indians and other colored people do the jobs that White Euro-Americans don’t wan’t to do and keeps our economy running”
Completely untrue. For one thing, the unemployment rate among mestizos is always much higher than among American whites. Second, massive mestizo immigration has reduced wages so drastically that first-world life cannot be maintained by such work any longer, though of course third-world primitives, living five to a room in violation of virtually every housing ordinance in the country and collecting myriad forms of welfare, can usually scrape by. Who exactly do you think was doing these jobs before the United States was flooded with mestizos? In addition, the phrase “our economy” is a misnomer. “We,” whites and mestizos, do not have an economy. The relation of mestizos to whites is wholly parasitic; you may as well claim that imprisoned felons and law-abiding citizens partake of the same economy. Finally, can you explain why “our” economy has taken a downward spiral which corresponds exactly to third-world immigration? Believe it or not, ours was a far more prosperous and peaceable nation before you mestizos invited yourselves in.
By on 7/16/08 at 7:40 pm
Ian Jobling, I was talking about the Spanish and French descendents. Yes, that does not cover the Indians of Aztlan or other tribes. Just as the whites in America do not include Blacks. But many of the people in Mexico are considered Caucasian and intelligent. But what gets me is that the activists and others would much rather incite hatred within all Mexicans rather than encourage them to fight for their rights in their country so that they and their families can have the opportunity to be able to send their children to school…..all the way through and get out of poverty. But like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright and others in America, these people would much rather teach hatred than advancement. That is the shame. The Treaty of Guadalupe was legally sealed with the leader of Mexico selling parts of Mexico in order to wipe out his debt to this country. Why not teach the people in Mexico this instead of teaching them that it was stolen. this way they could prevent (or could have prevented) other corrupt leaders from being elected into office. If they had had a leader in 1846 who was worth anything he would have done otherwise to prevent that from happening. Hatred and misleading assertions are no good for people. You know and I know that parts of this country would never be taken back by the Mexican people without a fight from this country and other big countries who would fight because they would not want the same thing to happen to them by other countries. So because of their wrong education in this matter people from Mexico are full of resentment and hatred when they could fight for their rights to protect themselves and their families.
By on 7/16/08 at 8:24 pm
Here in the United States we are losing our cultural identity. In fact many liberal institutions will argue that America has never had one unified culture. And they say this in spite of the obvious fact that white American culture has spread throughout the entire world. In no other country that I’m aware of would this type of educational agenda ever be permitted. Yet, since the Civil Rights Movement whites have by and large bought into the mass media myth that they are a conniving and evil lot. This has effectively served to imbue low self esteem and widespread guilt among the white masses, which has prevented many from standing up against the obvious injustices perpetuated by polititical entities such as the Political Council of la raza and other similar organizations when they actively sponsor and fund these “diversity” educational programs, all with our tax dollars. However, let us not think that these non-white racial organizations are as unsophisticated as some of the black self-help programs of the early to mid-19th century. You see, political entities such as la raza have greatly succeeded in perceiving this weakness in white Americans, namely their complex of guilt regarding race relations. They now continually exploit this phenomenon to the undoing of white national solidarity, as well as the coalescing of racist sentiment against whites. With illegal Mexican immigration continuing at an unchecked rate, their goals of establishing a country of their own may be one day actualized.
By Ryan on 6/22/08 at 1:07 am