Saturday, March 10, 2012

Banned Books, Drug Cartel and Private Prisons in Arizona


Last month Arizona Public Schools removed appx. 150 books from the once classrooms of Mexican American Studies in Tucson Arizona. These books were also taken from the students during the school day and boxed up in front of the students.  The Tucson community and several supporters of the Mexican American Studies program are outraged and have decided to assist the students in moving the program underground. Advocates of the program are smuggling the books back into the community and starting a banned book library in South Tucson.  When the Mexican American Studies program started i was teaching Chicana/o studies at Caesar Chavez charter school in South Tucson. I was also in the first graduate studies classes at University of Arizona Mexican American Studies program. I saw first hand what the students endured on a daily basis from living in ethnic enclaves where poverty and all the problems associated with poverty claim space in youths lives long before they have a chance to develop into their own.  Despite the challenges they endured the children worked hard on their studies and even came in before class, lunch time, and after class to study and work on their assignments. Many of these students were the first in their families to further their education and have opportunities to be tracked into college courses.  The current high school students in the Mexican American Studies program were reading books such as critical race theory and Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Many of these books i did not read until i reached graduate studies.  Since i started the first of these two blogs on this subject i started reading the book we will be reading later this semester by Victor M. Rios. After reflecting on Rios' theory i have applied it to the banned books issues in Arizona. In Rios book he states, "Sociologist William Robinson argues that capitalist globalization has resulted in a vast restructuring of the world economy, integrating all national economies into a transnational global economy.  Essentially, the proliferation of neoliberalism in the past three decades has erected a transnational global economy that frees capital to prey on vulnerable populations and resources and facilitates a transition from social welfare to social-control, security societies." He further states, "In order to understand the "trouble with young men" which takes place in the new millennium, we must understand how local troubles are often derived from global processes." Thus i would add to this by stating that when Arizona bans education to minority communities it is criminalizing a culture of youth with the intent to limit opportunities and "prepare them for prison." Why is Arizona doing this you ask? Because Arizonas' private prisons benefit from criminalizing the poor and undocumented.  As long as our youth have limited opportunities then they are left to the vulnerabilities of drugs, violence, and prisons that infiltrate life in the barrios. All one has to do is read the law banning ethnic studies to find the punitive measure in words used to exercise social control and criminilize youth. Stay tuned, for further critical race theory and transnational globalism in Tucson Arizona. Find out how the National Rifle Association and the Tea Party benefit from taking books away from little Esperanza. (banned book House on Mango Street protagonist is Esperanza). Pending approval i will write my final project on this abstract/blog.

reference- further reading

Rios, Victor M. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York University Press, 2011.




4 comments:

  1. Good reference to Rios' book. I appreciate your passion about this topic. Why do you think people are so afraid of the ethnic studies program? What do they fear?

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  2. It’s so great hearing your insight, Martha. You’ve had so much experience with this particular issue and we can all appreciate your sharing such intimate knowledge with us. I’ve had to learn so many new things about Arizona both before and since I moved here, and I remember how shocked I was when I found out AZ’s prisons were privatized. The tie-in to banning books makes perfect sense—it is obviously contributing to the same sort of “pipelining” of male youth of color that Rios refers to. Dr. Lopez’s question is a difficult one, but I think the answer has to do with the way education has come to be a sort of indoctrination process of American citizenship—producing good American consumers, a privilege reserved for those who “deserve” it—and that process is threatened by institutions valuing the Other by way of teaching ethnic studies classes. Opponents of ethnic studies see that sort of pristine, government-funded educational system to produce “proper,” law-abiding (consuming) citizens coming apart, threatening their “American” nation. Martha, I really think you’ve made some amazing connections here, and I can’t wait to see your final project.

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  3. I also would agree with you, Martha, that this law banning ethnic studies is another way for the state to exercise control and potential criminalize youth. First, I just have to say how absolutely disgusted and appalled I am at this whole issue. I can't even believe that socially transformative knowledge is being withheld from the future generations of thinkers and dreamers. It is absolutely a right for these students to have access to this information. I also appreciate your comment about how this ties into Arizona's prison privatized prison system. I remember reading an article awhile back about how the Netherlands was closing many of its prisons because of lack of criminals. Glad to know that Arizona will never have to contemplate closing prisons because the state will always have "customers." How do you think we could prevent this "pipelining" of youth of color into the prison system? In my opinion, smuggling the books back is a step in the right direction. Here is a link to the op-ed that I brought up in class (about the banned books). Karen Leong is a professor in my department (Women and Gender Studies): http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/02/27/20120227banning-ethnic-studies.html

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  4. To me America has always been a place where no ideas or books are banned but instead they are scrutinized in the public discourse (you and I can disagree about something but if we disagree politely, we can both benefit from the discussion we have had when we disagreed). After-all the Bill of rights, which, among others, guarantees the freedom of speech, has been around for more than 200 years! Coming from a country, in which the former communist regime, punished any sort of criticism of politics and where even books like the 'Lord of the Rings' were banned because of geographical connotations, I am now a bit puzzled by the Tucson united School District's decision to ban certain books from education. This created a barrier to critical thinking on which democracy depends. In my eyes, a good citizen is someone who is able to take value even in opinions with which they disagree or which point to some unfavorable aspects of history. Public schools should allow for a discussion like that to happen, because it is a training for citizenship.
    In the end, the question for me is: How are the curricula being designed in the U.S.? Who is invited to influence what is being taught? And lastly: Is there a shared understanding of what the value of education really is?

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