David*Macinnis*Gill.com

The State of Ari­zona has passed a law mak­ing it ille­gal for schools to offer courses based on eth­nic groups. In reac­tion Tucson’s school dis­trict has not only closed the courses, but has con­fis­cated the mate­ri­als used to teach those courses.  Appar­ently, if you are a mem­ber of an eth­nic group on Ari­zona, the First Amend­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion does not apply to you.  Your voice doesn’t mat­ter.  You can­not be heard.

I often take solace in the fact that I don’t reside in Ari­zona.  I take much less solace in the fact that the same wave of para­noia and mean­ness that has seized that state is spread­ing to other states, includ­ing sev­eral in the South­east, where gov­ern­ments are strip­ping teach­ers and and their stu­dents of rights (TN) or prac­tic­ing racial pro­fil­ing under the guise of national secu­rity (AL).  

Matt de la Pena, a YA author, is one of the authors whose work was removed from the class­rooms. As Matt says on his blog:  “Iron­i­cally, I’m sched­uled to speak at Tuc­son High School on March 13. A young female stu­dent there spear­headed the whole thing. She went to the admin­is­tra­tion on her own accord and helped raise funds. She’s a self-admitted reluc­tant reader, but she was intro­duced to my books in a class much like the one above, and some­thing clicked. Because of her effort and pas­sion, this has been the visit I’m most look­ing for­ward to this year. I can’t wait to meet her.”

Among the books removed from the curriculum:

Lit­tle Indi­ans (2004), by S. Alexie
The Fire Next Time (1990), by J. Bald­win
Lover­boys (2008), by A. Castillo
Women Hol­ler­ing Creek (1992), by S. Cis­neros
Mex­i­can White­Boy (2008), by M. de la Pena
Drown (1997), by J. Diaz
Wood­cuts of Women (2000), by D. Gilb
At the Afro-Asian Con­fer­ence in Alge­ria (1965), by E. Gue­vara
Color Lines: “Does Anti-War Have to Be Anti-Racist Too?” (2003), by E. Mar­tinez
Cul­ture Clash: Life, Death and Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­edy (1998), by R. Mon­toya et al.
Let Their Spir­its Dance (2003) by S. Pope Duarte
Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz (1997), by M. Ruiz
The Tem­pest (1994), by W. Shake­speare
A Dif­fer­ent Mir­ror: A His­tory of Mul­ti­cul­tural Amer­ica (1993), by R. Takaki
The Devil’s High­way (2004), by L. A. Urrea
Puro Teatro: A Latino Anthol­ogy (1999), by A. Sandoval-Sanchez & N. Saporta Stern­bach
Twelve Impos­si­ble Things before Break­fast: Sto­ries (1997), by J. Yolen
Voices of a People’s His­tory of the United States (2004), by H. Zinn

The books con­fis­cated and banned are:

Crit­i­cal Race The­ory, by Richard Del­gado and Jean Ste­fan­cic
500 Years of Chi­cano His­tory in Pic­tures, edited by Eliz­a­beth Mar­tinez
Mes­sage to Aztlán, by Rodolfo Corky Gon­za­les
Chi­cano! The His­tory of the Mex­i­can Civil Rights Move­ment, by F Arturo Ros­ales
Occu­pied Amer­ica: A His­tory of Chi­canos, by Rodolfo Acuña
Ped­a­gogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire
Rethink­ing Colum­bus: The Next 500 Years, by Bill Bigelow

My ques­tion is: Who’s next?  Who will be silenced?  Whose story will remain unheard?