Tom Horne’s Fifteen-Year War Against Ethnic Studies and Critical Race Theory
I was Superintendent of Schools from 2003 to 2011. A newspaper article got widespread attention. Dolores Huerta, a former associate of Cesar Chavez, gave a speech to a mandatory assembly at Tucson High School where she stated that Republicans hate Latinos. This was an abuse of a mandatory assembly. I thought the students needed to hear both sides. So I brought my Chief Deputy, Margaret Garcia Dugan, to address the students. She said that she was a proud Latina and a proud Republican, and she didn’t hate herself. Midway, a group of students stood up, turned their backs to her, and put their fists in the air.
I found out that they were part of an Ethnic Studies program, and in particular “Raza studies”. Raza means the race in Spanish. Ethnic Studies in Tucson divided students by race. African American students to classroom 1, Mexican American students to classroom 2, etc., just like in the old south.
What Critical Race Theory Teaches
The students were taught “critical race theory”. I demanded the curriculum. At first, they resisted. The liberal Tucson newspaper said “Tom Horne, back off and shut up.” I wasn’t about to do either, or be intimidated. I was the Superintendent of Schools, and I had a right to see the curriculum. What I saw was profoundly shocking. I can’t be fooled by the media saying critical race theory is harmless. The curriculum is viciously racist. I know more than almost anyone in the country about critical race theory because I READ THE CURRICULUM.
Part of their curriculum was “critical race theory”, yes even then. This is their quote: “Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundation of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”
That’s just what we need: teaching our students to be opposed to Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law. They refer to the states taken from Mexico in 1848 as Aztlan. Their materials state: “we are slowly taking back Aztlan as our numbers multiply.”
They have a table that promulgates racial stereotypes by detailing the differences between “white individualism” (e.g. “white people interrupt a lot”) and “colored collectivism”. The founders of the program describe themselves as “neo Marxists”. Marxism taught that all history is about class struggle, to the exclusion of everything else. Neo Marxists substitute race struggle for class struggle as the only thing worth studying.
One of the textbooks is called “Occupied America”. It sings the praises of a leader named Jose Angel Gutierrez, one of whose speeches are described in the textbook as follows: “Guttierez … called upon Chicanos to ‘kill the gringo’, which meant to end white control over Mexicans”. The textbook’s translation of what Gutierrez meant contradicts his clear language.
Another textbook gloats about the trouble the U.S. is having controlling the border: “Apparently the U.S. is having as little success in keeping the Mexicans out of Aztlan [US states taken from Mexico in 1848] as Mexico had when they tried to keep the North Americans out of Texas in 1830. … the Latinos are now realizing that the power to control Aztlan may once again be in their hands.” (P. 107.)
My main source was other teachers in the schools, a number of them Latinos, who were profoundly shocked at what they saw. Three examples of a number that wrote to me:
Teacher number 1: Hector Ayala was born in Mexico, and was an excellent English teacher at Cholla H.S. in Tucson. He reported that the director of Raza Studies accused him of being the “white man’s agent”, and that when this director was a teacher, he taught a separatist political agenda. His students told Hector that they were taught in Raza Studies to “not fall for the white man’s traps.”
Teacher number 2: “I heard [the ethnic studies teacher] tell students that they need to go to college so they can gain the power to take back the stolen land and give it back to Mexico.”
Teacher number 3 (who is Latino):” Over the years I began noticing an ‘open’ resentfulness by the Hispanic students. …. I have had Hispanic students tell me that this is NOT the United State of America … it is ‘occupied Mexico’ …
This teaching is a betrayal of the students’ parents. They came to this country as the land of opportunity. They expect their children to be taught that this is the land of opportunity, not that they are oppressed so it is all hopeless, or to hate the country their parents chose to come to.
My Fight Against Critical Race Theory
So I wrote a statute to put a stop to this racist program. It took a few years to pass the legislature. It finally took effect in the new year, 2011, as I was ending my term as Superintendent of Schools and about to be sworn in as Attorney General. On my last day in office, in the morning, I held a meeting with myself and declared the Tucson program in violation of the statute. That afternoon I was sworn in as Attorney General, and immediately began enforcing the law. As we were about to cut off funds, the Tucson School Board, by a 4 to 1 vote, ended the program.
After I was no longer AG, a judge declared our statute unconstitutional. That should have been appealed to the US Supreme Court, but I was back in the private practice of law and had no influence. If I am elected I will challenge the ninth circuit decision, and bring it to the US Supreme Court, which, of course, is even more conservative now.
The statute that was passed this year is too weak. We need to bring back the old one or pass a stronger one. Also, the Superintendent, working with the State Board of Education, has disciplinary power over teachers and administrators. They can say whatever they want on the street corner or in pamphlets, under the first amendment, but it does not give them the right to use the captive audience of students to push their propaganda. That is unprofessional, and it is time professional standards start to be enforced.
Simultaneously, I fought the battle against bilingual education. An initiative was passed requiring structured English immersion rather than bilingual education. Before I took office, it was not enforced. I enforced it. We hired talented teachers to train other teachers in structured English immersion. Under bilingual, a pathetic 4% of students because English proficient in one year. At that rate, almost none of them would become fluent and they would fail in our economy. Under structured English immersion, the number went up to 29%, which meant almost all would become fluent in 4 or 5 years. Yet, at the urging of the current Supt of Schools, the legislature almost brought back bilingual this year.
A meta-study published in Educationnext, a magazine published by Harvard and Stanford, found that students in English immersion outperformed students in bilingual, in every subject studied, such as graduation from High School, College admission, average salary, etc. In fact, in admission to high-status occupations, the students in structured English immersion outperformed the students in bilingual by almost two to one.
So who benefits from bilingual education. “Progressive” leaders, who want to keep a population isolated so they can manipulate them. We need to get the focus back on academics and away from distractions like bilingual education, and critical race theory, in all of its manifestations, like “social and emotional learning” or “deep equity”. In the first video on the website of the current Supt, the speaker says for emotional health the students need to know who they are, so we talk with them about their race and gender. The students know what race and gender they are. What he is really saying is he wants to make them think that is the most important thing about them. That is contrary to the American ideal, that we are all individuals, and judged by out own merits, what we know and what we can do, not what race we happen to have been born into.
My favorite American novel is The Killer Angels by Michael Shara, about the battle of Gettysburg. In it, an Irish immigrant, a sergeant, talks about his understanding of what it means to be an American: “But the thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a peawit. You take men one at a time. … There’s many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don’t think race or country matters a damn. What matters Is justice. ‘Tis why I’m here. I’ll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved . .. There’s only one aristocracy, and that’s right here’ –he tapped his white skull with a thick finger.” The word “deep equity” in the political and educational context, is the opposite of merit. Treat people based on race, not merit.
I’m ready to fight for the American ideal in our schools, teach our kids to treat each other as individuals, and destroy the vicious racist programs that are spreading like wildfire. And bring the focus back to academics.
