The dismantling of our future
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T h e d i s m a n t l i n g of ou r f u t u r e Latino Studies (2010) 8, 299–303. doi:10.1057/lst.2010.39
A man’s admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him. (De Tocqueville, 1955[1856]) When it comes to respecting rights, the country’s downward spiral is clearly intensifying. In the past 6 months alone, for example, we have witnessed blatant attacks on rights and human dignity in US society, including, K K
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the enactment of Arizona’s SB 1070, officially promoting racial profiling; the establishment of officially endorsed censorship through HB 2281, which bans ethnic studies classes and textbooks in Arizona’s public schools; the official condoning of the removal of teachers who speak English with heavy accents from Arizona’s classrooms; multiple efforts to begin the process of repealing the fourteenth amendment through proposals to deny citizenship to the US-born children of undocumented immigrants; frontal attacks on religious freedom and rights, in the form of a “debate” on the building of a mosque near New York City’s “ground zero,” which has led, in the words of William River Pitts, to a growth in hate crimes and violent threats against Muslims;1 ongoing attacks on equal rights for gays and lesbians through the challenge to the judge’s recent ruling on Proposition 8; the arbitrary dismissal of a government official, Shirley Sherrod, in Georgia, who was forced to step down from her post as Director of Rural Development, without recourse to a fair hearing, because of slanderous lies posted on the internet.
To these we must add the ongoing abuses of power through immigration raids, and in detention and deportation centers, as well as the escalating hate crimes and violence, particularly but certainly not only, against Latino/as in the United States. The test of a just society lies in the protections afforded to its least fortunate members. Yet in the case of the United States, how can these even be measured? r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 8, 3, 299–303 www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/
1 In River Pitts’ (2010) words, “Mosques have been firebombed. A Muslim cabdriver in New York City was savagely slashed by a man screaming anti-Islam epithets. A Sikh man was punched in a store for wearing a turban, even though he was as
Editorial
Muslim as a church steeple. The controversy over the Cordoba House project has inspired a rash of threats against the Imam in charge, the Muslims involved, and the building itself.” 2 This is to say nothing of course about the ongoing web of deceit and lies concerning, for example, BP’s environmental catastrophe, the bank profits, the withdrawal of the US troop presence in Iraq; Blackwater’s “30 false fronts” that obtained “millions of dollars in federal government contracts” (Risen and Mazzetti, 2010), and the President’s “Muslim” faith (Pew Research Center, 2010).
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After all, today, only lies surround every attack, every act of violence, every threat against the rights of all in
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