-----Original Message-----
From: Jeremy Janes <jjanes at silcom.com>
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Taking ruthless advantage of California's recrudescent antipathy for >unwhite immigrants, the dreaded Unz (Ron, aka Attila the) invented and >bankrolled the ghastly measure under whose provisions bilingual >education is being dismantled here.
I am appalled that the Nation gave Unz column space, since he is not a liberal in anything other than the European classical sense. But he is also more interesting than Buchanan, since it is worth remembering that he vigorously opposed Propostition 187 and is quite close to many pro-immigrant activists.
The educational theory behind Prop 227, the anti-bilingual education initiative that passed last year, is a bunch of crap, but I will tell you that there were a number of hard-core latino activists who supported Unz in that campaign, mostly because in many suburban schools, bilingual education had just become a shitty dumping ground for latino kids, much as special education has become a dumping ground for a wide range of minority students.
There are (or were) a wide range of wonderful bilingual education programs in cities like San Francisco, but Unz was able to gain a certain degree of latino support for his initiatives precisely because he was not seen as a Buchanan-like racist. That may make him more dangerous and an especially bad reason for the NATION to give him additional credentials.
He is much more in the Jack Kemp wing of the GOP in seeking to build alliances with conservative elements of the nonwhite community.
--Nathan Newman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/19990514/ba09aa85/attachment.htm>