Saucedo Mercer tells how her daughter was recruited into the “Si Se Puede Club” back around 1997 at her school in Sierra Vista on the basis of her skin color (even though her father is white). She came home mumbling that the stupid club wanted her to hate her daddy and to become a Chicana. Saucedo Mercer regards the Chicano label as an insult. Torres sees the need to belong to a group as so strong in kids that they will succumb to the induction into clubs like this and MEChA.
If you aren’t familiar with the Raza Studies program taught in the Tucson Unified School District in Tucson, Arizona, be prepared for a shocker. To say it is controversial is putting it mildly.
La Raza means “The Race” in Spanish. Now the name of the program is called “Mexican-American Ethnic Studies” (to sound less racist), but the content is just as odious. In order to learn more about it, I attended a three-hour panel discussion last Saturday hosted by the Arizona Mainstream Project (www.ArizonaMainstreamProject.org).
Panelists included Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who was serving as Superintendent of Public Instruction when the state legislature passed HB 2281 in 2010 to prohibit public schools from using curriculums that included objectives such as overthrowing our government, ethnic resentment, redefining the family and other such nonsense. Rather than complying with state law, TUSD is fighting tooth and nail to continue teaching, as Horne calls it, their racial chauvinism.
For his efforts in trying to end the Raza studies, Horne found himself the central character in a street play in Tucson titled, “The Killing of Tom Horne” in all its gory glory. The current Superintendent, John Huppenthal, may not describe the program’s supporters as a “cult,” but his public relations director, Andy LaFevre isn’t as circumspect when it comes to describing the cult tactics used to indoctrinate the kids.
[…]
