Is Arizona making a run for this title of ignobility: The Most Racist State in the U.S.?
It’s a question that definitely needs to be asked now, with the passing of SB1070 on top of its already sordid history.
I mean, take a look:
1) Arizona was one of the last states to observe Martin Luther King Day, to where the National Football League, which had an increasing percentage of African American players, voted to yank 1993’s Super Bowl XXVII from Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe and awarded it instead to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. (Faced with a boycott, Arizona voters finally approved the holiday by ballot in 1992, and on March 23, 1993, the NFL awarded the 1996 Super Bowl XXX to Tempe.)
2) Arizona emboldens a crusty, creepy, crackpot like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who proclaims himself America’s Toughest Sheriff – a guy who revels in dressing up inmates in pink underwear, endorses such things as tent cities for prisoners in the dead of desert summers, and thinks progress in law enforcement is going back to the days of chain gangs. Not to mention his absolute obsession with rounding up – with total impunity – anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant, to where seemingly anyone darker than himself is a reasonable target.
3) Arizona Governor Jan Brewer last week signs into law the anti-immigrant SB1070, which only further breaks an egregiously broken immigration system. It encourages, among other ugly things, racial profiling as well as a show-me-your-papers-or-else police state where immigrants unable to produce documents showing they are allowed to be in the U.S. could be arrested, jailed for up to six months and fined $2,500.
Way to go, Arizona!
You’re well on your way to winning a title no state in the union should ever want to win.
So, we wonder: What’s next on the agenda?
Waterboarding anyone with an accent?
Huh?
Shame on you.
