If the Supreme Court allows SB 1070 to go into effect, bigots and nativists in AZ and elsewhere will be emboldened to step-up their attacks on immigrants and other minorities. While most people’s behavior will not change, it is the extremists’ agenda and their actions that we should fear the most. In short, as a result of the desperate and bitter last gasps of a powerful few in today’s majority population, the most powerless among us will bear the brunt of the impunity to come. Despite the bill’s passage, I do not believe that the overwhelming majority of Arizonans are racist. I do believe, however, that racism inspired the creation of 1070 and similar legislation aimed at “protecting” what former Sen. Russell Pearce calls “the America I know.” A cursory reading of history, of course, reveals that the America Mr. Pearce knew, the world of his childhood and mine, is a world that routinely abused people’s civil and human rights — particularly people in so called minority communities. I am just old enough to have lived as a child in the era of nation that legally still sanctioned segregated housing, water fountains, swimming pools, restaurants, schools and hospitals. Is that the America that Pearce and others insist they need to take back? If so, I don’t want that America back. Pearce can have it. Better yet, may I say, “Mr. Pearce, go back to your country.”  Go back to the America you knew so well and I’d rather not know at all.