Cristy Li

In 1978 Congress passed a Joint Resolution declaring May as Asian Pacific Heritage Month which I wrote about here last year.

While it may just be coincidental, whats going on in Arizona with their new anti-immigrant laws?

Last month I wrote here that Arizona’s tough new anti-immigrant law S.B. 1070 gives Police broad new authority to demand papers or other documentation of anyone they may suspect being in the state illegally.

Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law is eerily familiar to California’s former Chinese Exclusion Act which I more fully discussed here on the 16 December, 2008

American citizens are not obligated to carry papers or government issued ID, I for one don’t have any papers or a government issued ID card in my name that identifies me as a U.S. Citizen and I was born here. How would I satisfy Arizona’s requirement to produce ID to establish my legal presence in the United States upon demand by Arizona authorities?

Subsequent to all the controversy surrounding Arizona’s new ID law, on Tuesday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law H.B. 2281 which prohibits ethnic studies in Arizona’s public schools according to the bills author State Supt  of Education Tom Horne.

Derek Chang, Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at Cornell University writes here “Forget for a moment about academic freedom. Forget for a moment even the problem of what might constitute “resentment towards a race or class of people” or how one may define “ethnic solidarity.” My point here is merely that an ethnic studies education, one that examines especially the relationships among race, nation and power…various uses of racism, nationalism and state power–Chinese Exclusion, the Jim Crow South Japanese Internment and draconian immigration laws in Arizona—led us to stark conclusions about the nation’s past and present…”

While Gov. Brewer and other elected officials may want to wrap themselves up in the American flag attempting to spin their controversial new anti-immigrant laws which critics call separatism and racial preferences, one does not have to look very far into Arizona’s recent behavior to realize that their racial fears are leading themselves down a dark path.

Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that Arizona Dept of Education have begun telling Principal’s to remove teachers that don’t speak English well enough, heavily accented to insure that students with limited English skills have teachers that speak the language flawlessly.

Prejudice and Bigotry isn’t born it is taught, definitely a flawed character trait.

“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance of morbid minds.” –Thomas Jefferson