WATCH: CODE WORD ALERT: Mark Steyn On Fox News Decries "Cultural Transformation" That Makes Arizona's Future Part Of Mexico (COMMENTARY)

(Arizona's Politics is an independent, non-partisan political news blog. When we engage in analysis or commentary, we attempt to label it as such. This article may be classified as "commentary".)
"Arizona's future is as an Hispanic society," said conservative talker Mark Steyn last night on Fox News. Citing an unsupported claim that "a majority of the grade school children are now Hispanic," Steyn claims that, "in effect", Arizona is now part of Mexico.

When Arizona's Politics came across his quote in a tweet from Fox News, we immediately searched for the full video, hoping that the context would show it to be a little less... uhhh... racist. No such luck, the video added the "cultural transformation" angle to his comments. (He analogized Arizona's future to Sweden's own cultural transformation into a Muslim country.)

(video will open in new window; Arizona comments start at 3:50)

First, Steyn makes an unsupported claim that "a majority" of grade school students in Arizona are Hispanic. Arizona's Politics searched for any figures that would back him up on that. The closest was a 2016 article by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, which went through state data to conclude that 44% of all students (not just grade school) were Hispanic. We asked AZCIR - a worthy non-profit, by the way - to help update that data. They did, and found out that 45.9% of students in Grades 3-8 are Hispanic. (We have reached out to Mr. Steyn for additional information and comments, and will supplement as necessary.)

Second and more importantly, Steyn's seemingly-uneducated - Arizona has always had a culture with large elements of Hispanic and Native American, and part was purchased from Mexico - and definitely-European-centric remarks can only fan the flames of fear and divisiveness.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson's reaction to the pronouncement that anyone who does not support the hardest of hard-line immigration stances is guilty of permitting Mexico to take over one of the 50 United States was not reassuring. He gave typical Carlson responses of "bewildering" and "it's real".

We welcome your comments about this post. Or, if you have something unrelated on your mind, please e-mail to info-at-arizonaspolitics-dot-com or call 602-799-7025. Thanks.