links for 2010-09-29

"The I-Word creates an environment of hate by exploiting racial fear and economic anxiety, creating an easy scapegoat for complex issues, and OK-ing violence against those labeled with the word.

"People are not illegal.

"Let’s stop feeding the hate machine.

"Drop the I-Word."

"However, the unpleasant fact is that this is part of a larger picture in rock'n'roll, even though the genre owes its very existence to musicians such as Chuck Berry and his peers.

I"n America, unfortunately, white rock has always been considered as art, and black music as commerce."

"The DREAM act, which would provide a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who graduate from college or serve in the military, is not likely to pass this year. Without it, most undocumented students will be confronted with high and often unaffordable tuition. In Georgia, some may now be legally barred from access to any higher education at all."

"Last spring, the state’s school superintendent Tom Horne proposed the ban, alleging that the classes were, in effect, prejudiced against white people. At best, Horne argued, they promoted 'ethnic chauvinism.' And at their worst, they encouraged students to overthrow the U.S. government. Riding a wave of white populist sentiment after signing SB 1070 into law, Gov. Jan Brewer then legalized the ban. Districts that refuse to comply risk losing 10 percent of their state funding, and already some of the state’s ethnic studies teachers are toying with the idea of a constitutional challenge before the law goes into effect on December 31.

"Students don’t seem too bothered. In fact, Mary Ann Zehr writes in Education Week that in Tucson, which has the only district-wide ethnic studies program in the state, enrollment in Mexican-American studies has doubled."