Book Burners and Banners Lose a Battle in Tucson – Conservatives Take Another Hit

And Maybe Jon Stewart Will Stop Calling Them Ignorant Yahoo’s (They Could be Semi-Illiterate Yahoos)

One can usually tell who the people are that fight against freedom.  They are the ones who say they champion freedom.  They have to say that to try and distract everyone away from their practices as opposed to their preaching.

In Tucson the freedom fighters (meaning fighting against freedom) had succeeded in banning books on Latino culture from the public schools.

The works have been deemed “controversial” by some local media but are widely assigned in universities and high schools across the West. The seven reinstated books are: “Critical Race Theory” by Richard Delgado; “500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures,” edited by Elizabeth Martinez; “Message to Aztlan” by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales; “Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement” by Arturo Rosales; “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire; “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo Acuña; and “Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years” by Bill Bigelow.

Well the opponents of thinking said they weren’t really banned.

Tucson officials have said the books were never “banned,” per se, because they were either made available to students in libraries or stored in district warehouses.

Oh, right, taking them out of the schools and storing them in district warehouses is not banning them.  Students were free to break into the warehouses and scrumptiously read the books.  But one can just imagine the horror foisted on young people perusing “500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures”.  Actually that book was okay, but that one was singled out by the book banners because most of them could only read picture books.

And while some books are back, apparently other books, are not allowed.

Beyond the seven books, a much larger list of books (most by Latino authors) were deemed inappropriate for teaching in Arizona schools, including works by Urrea, Junot Diaz, Sandra Cisneros and Dagoberto Gilb.

But heck, one can see the point of book burning conservatives here.  Let Latino students read books about the Latino culture in Arizona and next thing you know they will want to vote and drive and stay out of jail for offenses like having Hispanic heritage.  In fact they may come to regard their heritage as something special, instead of what conservatives think, which is that being Latino is Un-American.