Arizona Outlaws Ethnic Studies

Well, this should quiet down all the racial tension in Arizona: Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill designed to outlaw the Tucson school district's ethnic studies program—just hours after UN human rights experts issued a report condemning that very law. The measure is the brainchild of Arizona schools chief Tom Horne, who believes that the Mexican-American studies classes taught in Tucson high schools teach Latino students to resent white people.

“It's just like the old South, and it's long past time we prohibited it,” Horne, a Republican running for Attorney General, tells the AP. He's pushed for the law since 2006, when he heard that a Hispanic activist had told a class that “Republicans hate Latinos.” The law bans any classes designed to promote solidarity among a particular ethnic group. Tucson's schools offer Mexican-American, African-American and Native-American studies programs, but district officials say they think all are in compliance with the law.