{"id":20572,"date":"2012-02-13T00:39:42","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T00:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20572"},"modified":"2012-02-13T03:10:12","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T03:10:12","slug":"replacing-history-with-fiction-in-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20572","title":{"rendered":"Replacing History With Fiction in Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"

Replacing History With Fiction in Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Nation<\/a>
\n2012-02-08<\/p>\n

Gary Younge<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1997 black America gained a new hero when Tiger Woods<\/a> putted himself into history at the US Masters<\/a>. Within a few weeks, it had lost him in an unlikely fashion\u2014to a bespoke racial identity articulated on Oprah\u2019s<\/a> couch.
\n\u00a0\u2002
\nDoes it bother you being termed \u201cAfrican-American\u201d? Oprah asked him.<\/p>\n

It does,\u201d said Woods, whose father was of African-American, Chinese and Native American descent and whose mother was of Thai, Chinese and Dutch descent. At school he would tick \u201cAfrican-American\u201d and \u201cAsian.\u201d \u201cGrowing up, I came up with this name: I\u2019m Cablinasian [CAucasian, BLack, INdian and ASIAN]. I\u2019m just who I am\u2026whoever you see in front of you.\u201d According to an editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times, Woods could not have been more praiseworthy if he\u2019d scored a hole in one wearing a blindfold. \u201cHe justly rejects attempts to pigeonhole him in the past,\u201d claimed the editorial. \u201cTiger Woods is the embodiment of our melting pot and our cultural diversity ideals and deserves to be called what he in fact is\u2014an American.\u201d
\n\u00a0
\nIt is a peculiar fact of modern Western rhetoric, as prevalent among liberals as conservatives, that nationality is understood as a liberating identity, whereas ethnicity, race and other markers are regarded as confining. There are far more black and Asian people in the world than there are Americans. Racial identity is no less diverse than national identity. But somehow to describe Woods as black or Asian traps him in a pigeonhole, while to define him by his nationality sets him free.
\n<\/strong>\u00a0
\nSuch was the ostensible motivation of the Arizona<\/a> officials who banned Mexican-American studies from the Tucson schools. Tom Horne, the state attorney general who surfed into office on a wave of anti-immigrant bigotry, wrote the legislation, which claims the curriculum \u201cadvocates ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.\u201d By the end of January officials were going into schools and boxing up Paulo Freire\u2019s<\/a> Pedagogy of the Oppressed<\/a><\/em>, one of the books banned for \u201cpromoting ethnic resentment.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Replacing History With Fiction in Arizona The Nation 2012-02-08 Gary Younge In 1997 black America gained a new hero when Tiger Woods putted himself into history at the US Masters. Within a few weeks, it had lost him in an unlikely fashion\u2014to a bespoke racial identity articulated on Oprah\u2019s couch. \u00a0\u2002 Does it bother you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,26,10],"tags":[5202,3155,9612,2831],"class_list":["post-20572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-uk","tag-arizona","tag-gary-younge","tag-paulo-freire","tag-the-nation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}