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Re: Arizona - WTF?
I'd be curious to see what actually gets done over there. I never really thought Arizona was a racist state. If you were racist, you wouldn't want to live there. I don't really know the details of the other things you mentioned but I dunno, I always thought MLK day was kind of a silly holiday too (and I don't believe I am a racist). The accent thing is very disturbing but I'll wait for more details - yeah this sounds pretty bad but I can understand. In college I had several professors whose accents were so thick that many students ended up doing pretty badly because they couldn't understand a word they were saying. I wonder if this "law" is going to affect people with "normal" Mexican accents or only the really thick ones. This sounds like a law that ultimately will not have any teeth. The backlash from 'enforcing' this would be huge.
As for this bill, you got me, I really don't have much of an opinion on it yet, I'm just saying I'm not surprised that Arizona is taking action given what's going on there. To be honest, every bill that I have followed almost never has the types of effects that are speculated. The one bill that really affected my life (the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act) was supposed to take away my source of income for good, but in the end it did almost nothing besides make depositing and withdrawling money online harder. My initial impression was that it was bad because it invites racial profiling, but honestly I don't know if there's a better idea for curbing the problem.
Many people are assuming "reasonable suspicion" means "anyone who is brown". I find it kind of shit that the governor who passed this won't even really say what we're all thinking. Again I would have to see how it's being enforced. Maybe this law will say that we can ID people because they're Mexican and throw them in jail because they didn't have their passport in the same way IRS law says they can force a person to show reciepts for everything they own and prove they have no 'hidden income' or they can give them stiff penalties. Scary, but almost never happens. Actually, if the police who 'enforce' this are smart and non-biased, I don't think it would really effect the innocents too much, and may give them the ability to bust some bad people they couldn't before. You know how Al Capone went down for tax evasion...
The second part looks real fuzzy, and again I'd have to get a real-world example of something that actually happened before I can really pass judgement on that. Maybe you're disillusioned with America and I'm too optimistic, but I can't see that scenario you came up with ever actually occuring.
Calling this a step towards a "shameful chapter" really sounds like an overreaction to me. It's like you feel as though this bill gives racist cops the ability to jail any Mexican for no reason. You can claim the bill looks fascist and indeed parts of it do, but if it's anywhere near what people are fearing there is no chance it stands as written. The law hasn't even been enforced yet and already they're talking about MLB moving the All-Star game because the Latinos (which are like 40% of the league now) would refuse to play. As I recall, the Patriot Act gave the government some really, really scary powers too, but I can't think of any abuses or anyone who was even affected at all by it.
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