Along with other recent wackiness, Arizona’s state legislature passed a law, HB 2281, which aims to prevent or limit the teaching of ethnic studies.
HB 2281:
Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:
- Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
- Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
- Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
- Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.
This is not a new development — I first wrote about this on Savage Minds almost a year ago, although I figured it was the kind of right-wing looniness that makes great theater but never gets through the legislative process.
Arizona clearly has a hard-on for its Hispanic population, citizens and non-citizens alike, and this law combined with its other recent laws targeting Hispanics certainly makes White Arizona’s intentions against Hispanic Arizona crystal clear. The specific target of HB 2281, as I noted last year, is a set of programs offered in Tucson high schools that teach the history of La Raza, but the wider importance is a sort of forced and simple-minded assimilationism that lacks even the nuance of early- and mid-20th century “melting pot” models. Arizona is going on record saying there is one way of life, and one way only, that can be called “American”, and that way involves whiteness, English-speaking, and a subscription to the kind of bogus faux-historical mythical charter that makes up high school US history curricula nation-wide (and which, thanks to near-neighbor Texas, is about to get boguser).
But here’s the rub: what happens when the Texas curriculum — which, if allowed to stand, will shape history textbooks, and thus history curricula, throughout the nation — comes into conflict with Arizona’s HB 2281? Texas’ standards — and I’d venture the standards Arizona’s legislature wants to see imposed state-wide — are explicitly designed to promote resentment towards non-white and poor people (q.v. the exclusion of labor union history, the downplaying of the anti-slavery and ethnic civil rights movements, the excision of folks like Cesar Chavez as “irrelevant”) and, even more clearly, are designed to promote ethnic solidarity. In fact, HB 2281 itself is designed to promote ethnic solidarity, and quite openly so — the fact that Arizona’s legislators don’t recognize their own whiteness as an ethnicity, and their assimilationism as a way of advocating white ethnic solidarity, does not make it not so.
There’s plenty of case law, including Brown v. Board itself, that demonstrates that exclusion leads to stigmatization and therefore is not allowable in public education. Arizona may get rid of the ethnic studies classes it’s white, conservative leaders despise so much, but it’s white history, white literature, and white social studies classes — which is to say, virtually the entire curriculum outside of ethnic studies courses — is clearly illegal under the tenets of the new law.
And in fact, since the law’s main goal seems to be to eliminate courses whose enrollment is restricted by ethnic requirements, all those ethnic studies programs need to do is demonstrate that their courses are open to all. The state would have a hard time showing that any of them violate the principles listed above — teaching about Mexican history and the history of Mexicans in the US is not the same as teaching Hispanic kids to overthrow the government or hate white people. It would be easier, I think, for a Hispanic or African-American to prove that the traditional US history, literature, or civics class — especially one using materials shaped by Texas’ guidelines — violates those restrictions than for a white conservative to demonstrate the same for an ethnic studies class.
This is the blind spot in today’s resurgent assimilationism. Because American whiteness is seen (especially by white people) as a lack of race or ethnicity, and because American white supremacy works well to make itself invisible (again, especially to white folks) and thus “natural” and “normal”, white conservatives are unable to reflexively consider their own chauvinism, even as they target the supposed chauvinism of any other group that dares to claim a different identity. In fact, the same principle is at work in the labeling of same-sex marriage rights as “special privileges” when clearly it is straight people who enjoy a privilege denied to non-straight people.
There’s a good chance all this is moot, that HB 2281 will be overthrown in court or rescinded by a future, less loony state legislature, but I’d love to see activists grab onto this law and the leverage it gives to challenge the teaching of white supremacy, Christian ideology, and English Firstism in Arizona schools and, by extension, throughout the US educational system before HB 2281 goes away.
[Comments closed 5-10-10 due to off-topic posts and flaming.]
In contact sports blind spots can lead to your downfall. But in rhetoric I sometimes wonder if it isn’t the other way around. I am sure that I am smarter than Ronald Reagan but I am also sure that if you could hot tub time machine me to 1983 that he would beat me silly in 99 out of 100 debates and that the fact that he wasn’t as smart as me would be part of the why. I don’t think being more reflexive would give the pro-HB 2281 crew a greater chance of carrying the day, but being less reflexive might.
HB 2281:
Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:
* Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
* Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
* Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
* Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.
There’s a separation of church an state with is represented in schools. While you can have prayer groups, etc… you cannot have your groups funded through tax payer money. How is this any different? I know I don’t want any groups doing any of the things listed with public funds.
We are all supposed to be equal under the governmental system. If you cannot doing it for any one group, then you cannot do it for others. Do you think it’s ok for Aryan Nazi groups to promote white power in publicly funded programs? If not, then you can’t support any other groups promoting ethnic separation or superiority.
What I’ve noticed with all this hyperbole, is how close the rhetoric is to the recent right wing protests on health care reform. In both cases the interests of a small group of people have been transferred to being identified with the interests of wider society, even if it is against their own economic interests.
For example, I saw an article in the Huffington post which talked about this new law, but it was written in an incredibly misleading way.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/arizona-ethnic-studies-cl_n_558731.html
The article says that people with accents can’t teach in Arizona anymore, and that there isn’t an ESL program anymore, which is a lie. It’s histrionics.
My mom, sister, grandmother, and two aunts are bilingual teachers in Texas, so it made me worry a little, but it also made me very suspicious. I clicked on the links to the sources and the articles, which strangely was FOX news, which stated:
“The bill stipulates that courses can continue to be taught for Native American pupils in compliance with federal law and does not prohibit English as a second language classes. It also does not prohibit the teaching of the Holocaust or other cases of genocide.”
I don’t like it when people try to manipulate others though symbolic language, or so distort and selectively cherry pick information that it leads to a kind of rhetoric that divides people and keeps them from honest debate and discourse.
The first two seem pretty unproblematic, though so much so I have to wonder why they even have to be stated. But the third and fourth seem ishy. I mean, what exactly are the metrics for such things?
“But the third and fourth seem ishy. I mean, what exactly are the metrics for such things?”
Yeah, I see that. I think the way to get around this is to be fair and do a civics class as an elective that teaches students the unique histories and characteristics of ethnic groups in the US. Everyone is in an ethnic group, some of us are in a few. I’ve literally stopped trying to define myself. I think if I had a solid sense of group identity I wouldn’t have been so drawn to anthropology.
Whatever it is, it has to avoid ethnocentrism.
I know I’ve dealt with a La Raza group in my work in Dallas. It wouldn’t be right to give any details, but man there is some anger in some of the people in that group.
I personally don’t see much wrong with forming a group to lobby your interests and persuade policy. That’s rather democratic. I really don’t like it though when groups pretend that this isn’t exactly what they are doing, and try to hide themselves in universal brotherhood type language. A lot of these groups want what they want for a small subgroup of people, and call other people racists when they call them out for doing it, or for attempting to do it themselves.
I mean Wall Streets got hundreds of lobbyist working away on Congress, and not for a second does anyone believe that they’re doing it for any reason than to make a bigger profit. Its the same. I’m not quite naive enough to think that a lot of people in La Raza aren’t simply trying to position members to gain more power over policy for the sole benefit of it’s members.
If it was any other ethnic group out there they would care less. They want an open border policy for one particular ethnic group, and that’s it. They also pretend that there is one ethnic group of Latinos or Hispanics that actually have the same interests and opinions on this issue, which is an illusion. There are as many views as there are people. I’ve worked with a community organizer in a largely immigrant neighborhood. She moved here from Mexico 26 years ago, learned English, went to school and now has a good job. And she told me in an interview:
“It’s rare to see a professional Mexicans move here, most come to work, and not for school. They come from poor areas. Sometimes I hear a teacher say, ‘the immigrants come here and bring a little Mexico’, because, they still have that cultures and everything, and they don’t want to speak English. In my community, we need to find the balance.”
I’ve got so much data like that, but these debates don’t allow any of that reality, the nuance of the situation come about. They paint people with black and white strokes and then we fight.
Rick, when you say that:
They also pretend that there is one ethnic group of Latinos or Hispanics that actually have the same interests and opinions on this issue, which is an illusion.
Is that much different from the imagining that high school civics textbooks are doing, regarding illusory Americans?
What I see as part of the argument in this post is that civics and history classes that aren’t specifically labeled as ethnic studies are often that — ethnic studies for white people, and quite alienating for others. So when you say that ethnocentrism needs to be avoided, then I would ask who gets to decide what of the many varieties of ethnocentrism are labeled as such, and whose identity projects are ethnic versus whose get to be labeled as civic
Sorry, should have made it clear what I was actually quoting. It was:
I agree with Rick: “I know I don’t want any groups doing any of the things listed with public funds.” It would seem very, very simple to have classes and activities at a public school that didn’t violate that law in any way while being superbly educational– unless, perhaps, it really is necessary to promote resentment instead of change and synergy, to keep out the Irish*, and to teach that ethnic solidarity (which may be a myth, the closer one looks at it) is more important than people, in order to educate.
If that “perhaps”is true, if those things are necessary, then schools have a lot of drastic changing to do, while if the law is (as I suspect) a piece of (uncommonly good) ‘common sense’, then nothing that _should_ be going on anyhow has to cease.
*Irish used for comedic effect, because I am partly ethnically Irish, and in hommage to Blazing Saddles.
How do you ensure or, alternatively, acceptably limit coverage? The U.S. population now includes, I suspect, people from almost everywhere on earth. Certainly every nation, but what about subnational groups? Do we have 10 minutes each for the Kurds or the Catalans?
“What I see as part of the argument in this post is that civics and history classes that aren’t specifically labeled as ethnic studies are often that — ethnic studies for white people, and quite alienating for others. So when you say that ethnocentrism needs to be avoided, then I would ask who gets to decide what of the many varieties of ethnocentrism are labeled as such, and whose identity projects are ethnic versus whose get to be labeled as civic”
That’s a good point. That’s true.
When I think about it anthropologically and holistically I have to wonder about this common assumption though. I think we are falling into the same ‘skin color equals ethnicity’ trap that everyone else is. I am 100% behind the AAA’s Race Project, and this is where they can focus their attention. You’ve changed my mind, I think rather than teach about our differences, which are already quite well marketed in popular culture, we should have a kind of 4 field anth. course, that teaches kids that ethnicity is something that a person is not born with. That we are one species, and that differences are only cultural. Languages are all similarly patterned and deconstructed, and we have a shared past. Perhaps there’s too much teaching of difference, and not enough commonality.
The assumption in your statement is that somehow people with white skin and a European family background are being taught their history in civics and history classes. Is that true for the Irish, Italians or Germans in the US? The reason we have compulsory, universal education is because there were too many German kids that weren’t learning English, and too many soldiers didn’t speak the same language on the US side in WWI. That’s also why you can’t take a language course until high school in the US. They learned that a person wasn’t likely to actually learn the language if taught late in school, which would minimize Germans learning their language in school. Latinos are just the flavor of the decade in US ethnic issues. My attention span isn’t that short when it comes to history.
Are people like me whose family background comes from 6 countries from all over, most of which have been in the US for only two generations connected to that history? How about the entire working class, is it their history?
What we are taught, as Howard Zinn has pointed out, is the history of states and elites. I have nothing in common with those people, and my skin color doesn’t magically change that. There are many families in SoCal, and in Southern Texas that have been there since it was Mexico and were always elites that built cities. They have more in common with the history we’re taught, even though they have Spanish (European) sir names.
“You’ve changed my mind, I think rather than teach about our differences, which are already quite well marketed in popular culture, we should have a kind of 4 field anth. course”
BTW, I know of a Jr. High teacher that’s getting her MA in anthropology here in Texas to start a pilot anthropology class in Jr. High as a civics/social studies requirement. The school district has green lighted it to see if it can work.
I know it’s annoying when someone posts 3 in a row. This is my morning time wasting ritual.
I came across this brilliant article about propaganda. It outlines exactly what I’m seeing here.
http://atheism.about.com/od/criticalthinking/a/propaganda.htm
I’m glad to see this conversation coming around to some kind of productive discussion after a disappointing first start yesterday. But I do want to interject something here — I think it’s important to distinguish between theoretical correctness and people’s lived experience of race. While as an anthropologist I certainly am aware of the biological non-reality of racial categories, and teach from that perspective, I am also aware that the reason I *have* to teach it is that for most people, race is a primary categorizing tool and a central part of their lived experience of being *them*. While the last generation has seen increased efforts to revive distinctions like “Irish-American”, “Italian-American”, and “Jewish-American”, these ethnicities are comfortable because their distinctness is safely *non*-racial – I can be hyphenated without losing the privileges my whiteness, however socially constructed, brings me, something that is not true for “other” Americans: Mexican-AMericans, African-Americans, or Asian-Americans. We still live in a society where a major newspaper can print the headline”American Beats Kwan” when an American skater of Polish/Russian descent beats an American skater of Asian descent.
Obviously high school textbooks don’t say “white President Abraham Lincoln did this” and “white general Sherman did that” — which is exactly the issue. White students are encouraged, by forces both in and out of school, to identify as Americans-without-ethnicity, to identify with the social elites whose history is presented in high school history books, the literature presented in high school literature books, and so on. We’re sold a myth of mainstream America, and that mainstream is white — and every deviation from whiteness is carefully marked. Yes, there is a class perspective embedded as well, and that’s important — and one of the reasons its important is that, in encouraging identification of whiteness, and thus Americanness, with the particular history of white elites, we are *prevented* from identifying with the history of non-white non-elites with whom white non-elites have much in common. This is to *somebody’s* interest, and that somebody is *not* white non-elites!
Here’s the point: I live in Mexico. The history of the Southwest is a history of people with names like Lopez and Rodriguez and yes, Chavez, names that do not appear very often in history books. I live in a state that is marked by a history that is excluded from mainstream US history — even the names mark a history that isn’t told (nobody ever took a gambling weekend to The Meadows, Snowy State — but Las Vegas, Nevada, absolutely! And yet Nevada plays into US History books primarily as a Mormon outpost and Union Pacific milestone).
Try this test: Name 5 Asian-Americans who have played a role in US history akin to, say, Molly Pitcher’s. Name five Latinos whose role has been of the level of Nathaniel Bacon’s or higher. What about Native Americans — there names are blazed on our cars, city names, and deep in our environmentalists bleeding hearts, but can you give 3 details about the lives of Crazy Horse, Seattle, or Geronimo, or name 3 salient things about the culture of the Comanche, Mohawk, or Nez Perce? This is American history as much as the Scandinavian timber workers, the Appalachian coal miners, the Irish indentured servants.
Finally, let’s not be naive — Arizona’s legislature is on a tear not because they believe in the integrity of education but because they believe in the integrity of whiteness. My great-grandfather was an “illegal alien”, yet I’m quite sure that he is not at all the person Arizonan whites are worried about. Everyone makes excuses for my non-English-speaking Danish great-grandfather, even as they insist that Mexican immigrants pose a grave danger to “our” United States. What’s happening in Arizona is racial panic, pure and simple — it’s not new, and it certainly isn’t a bow to anthropological notions of the social constructedness of race. Arizonan whites are at war against a people that they see as inherently less-than, and it is this panic and fake color-blindness that has led them to adopt a language in HB 2281 that can very easily be used against them.
I think everyone here understands the distinction between race as biology and race as culture. The fact that you felt compelled to draw it out is a little condescending.
I don’t ever miss the chance to educate people about this when I can. There are people I work with in low-income neighborhoods that don’t even know what the word “ethnicity” means. One elderly woman didn’t know what to say when I asked her for her ethnicity on a survey,
“my what? Oh, I’m a colored-lady, Black, I’m an African American.” I thought it was interesting that her answer unfolded in the same order that the category has changed during her lifetime.
Needless to say this ignorance is on us to undo.
I never use racial or ethnic concepts in a report I write without at least a brief explanation. My last one was:
As Collins (1988) tells us, “Social life is relational; it’s only because, say, blacks and whites occupy particular kinds of patterns in networks in relation to each other that ‘race’ becomes an important variable” (413).
“Obviously high school textbooks don’t say “white President Abraham Lincoln did this” and “white general Sherman did that””
White in that instance would mean British, because every other group is marked. The decedents of early British immigrants are a small minority in the US. The fact is that I don’t think anyone here knows the formulaic ethnic combo that made up Lincoln, or any most other historical US figures. I get your point, but I’m not sure if it is accurate. I have no data on how “white kids” or anyone else feels when they take history class. I would think that if someone does automatically think to themselves, “Lincoln was a white guy, and I’m not white, therefore that’s not my history and I feel aliened now,” then that is something they’ve been taught to think in a program like what has just been banned in Arizona.
I don’t even remember how I identified with historical figures or whether I ever did. In my mind the distinction between a “White” “Italian,” “Mexican” “Black” whatever never registered regardless of who or what color the person was. I simply wasn’t taught to think like that in my home, and I’m learning that is rare. Perhaps that’s why I don’t get it. But, if that’s the case, kids shouldn’t constantly have ethnic and racial differences pointed out to them. They sure as hell shouldn’t have it done in a public school.
People switch their ethnic identities daily in most of the US, because ethnic identity is largely about gaining social and cultural capital. Pretty much anyone that’s a 2nd generation American can effortlessly claim “American” as an ethnicity without the majority of people questioning them once they open their mouths. Sometimes not even then. I think it’s funny when people ask my wife is she’s actually from Japan or if she’s a native Japanese American. I’m like, “did you hear that thick accent?”
When people claim something else, they are doing it for a reason. It can be imposed on them, but usually only for 1st generation immigrants that still have an accent.
You can deconstruct these identities rather easily. People didn’t claim these ethnicities until the 1960’s or so.
Here’s another anth. 101 lesson, we use patrilineal decent, so we can only trace our family history through our fathers. If we trace actual genetic history we’d have a few hundred direct ancestors in only a few generations. Instead we, and I mean anthropologist, buy into the ancestry.com bullshit everyone else does.
Can anyone think of a historical figure from the 19th century on that is taught with a ethnic moniker added to their names?
Well, I would say that in modal Middle America descent is properly bilateral. But if you mean what surname the child takes you have touched on a difference that matters—there are plenty of non-modal Middle American groups where that practice isn’t the norm.
My favorite is Ely Parker. When he’s taught at all. Sigh…
They don’t say “Yankee bastard Sherman did that,” either, but in the South any semi-competent teacher manages to correct the omission.
Is it possible that you are overtheorizing this? In lieu of a little more evidence I find what you are saying believable but not necessarily convincing. What if the lawmakers are just pandering? What if they are just simpletons? What if they are just afraid of change? All of the above may cross over with racial panic, but do they?
“Arizonan whites are at war against a people that they see as inherently less-than, and it is this panic and fake color-blindness that has led them to adopt a language in HB 2281 that can very easily be used against them. ”
I think I’ve already said this, and MTB made a similar point, but that’s a long walk with no data. History says your wrong, as I’ve already pointed out, when there was the ban on German in the early 20th century and that was why universal education was adopted, at least that’s the reason given by many legislates at the time. Germans, by and large wouldn’t be considered another race other than White people.
This isn’t racial, this is cultural. We also need to know the specifics, about exactly was going on in the schools. They could be entirely in the right on this, I don’t know. I haven’t heard one media reporter give any of this information, because they are in the business of getting people upset enough to consume their product.
“My great-grandfather was an “illegal alien”, yet I’m quite sure that he is not at all the person Arizonan whites are worried about. ”
BTW, I have a great-grandfather that was an illegal immigrant from Mexico too. Came and picked tomatoes on a farm. Doesn’t count. That was a different time, there were different jobs, laws, and a different economy. There was no FBI either and you could rob in one state and hide in another. History, like culture is relative. He also had to change his name from Ayala, to Allala. The family myth goes that he had to change it, because the town had a bunch of French immigrants, and they didn’t like the Spanish, so my grandfather couldn’t go to school with the Spanish spelling. Who knows if that’s true.
My grandfather from the other side came to the U.S. from Mexico legally, because again things were different. It took him 7 years to get his citizenship, and they tried to draft him for WWII so he moved to Venezuela until the war was over, which is where my uncle was born. We are a mutt people no?
These issue are ultimately economic. From the direct and historical research I’ve done it seems that in the late 1960’s the radical left made it a mission to sign up as many low-income, minorities on AFDC and then protested until it paid about as well as an entry level job. This took a lot of people out of the labor pool, which allowed, especially with the economic recover and lax regulations after the 1982 recession, more and more immigrants to get jobs “sin papeles” (without papers).
I’m trying to piece together the political economy of illegal immigration and the rise of drug culture in the urban field site. I don’t think any of the classic sociological theories like just racism, or crack, or broken window theory, or whatever fit the area at all. Older black residents kept telling me things like:
“My grandfather used to cut the lawns over in [rich part of town] for years, and he’d come and get the kids from over here to help him. Now who’s cutting them very same yards? Mexicans… … they don’t have no black help, nothing, and I be looking at the people, but it ain’t the people… …they done moved on, it’s they’re kids doing this; cause the kids don’t care, they just want their yards cut, but back in the day, their fathers and momma they had black people cutting their yards, and now all the sudden. The grass ain’t no greener. So, now it’s a Mexican.”
Or a black woman:
I worked at [major tech firm] for 20 years, but then when I try to buy a place, I didn’t make enough money, you know, but when other people come in, either they can get things done, or buy’em a house, and qualify I guess… …But, people that’s been struggling for years, you know, you go to school, you go to work, or whatever, but you can’t get above a certain line, then when we look at our kids, you know… …doing landscaping and stuff like that, you got Spanish people, they come out real quick.
I already posted a quote from aformer La Raza organizer Mexican American for 26 years above.
Here’s one from a Mexican American community activist:
It’s an issue that’s been a part of the community for a long time, the ethnic strife… …it’s like, perception or reality that you have two ethnic groups being played by what used to be the majority group to try to both get the same piece of the small little sliver of pie left… …Whether that’s reality or perception, I think the two ethnic groups, the Mexican Americans and African Americans have bought into it… …I think that started with the 60’s, I really do.
Then other Mexican Americans complaining to me that they would have been able to take advantage of good programs over the past few decades if they didn’t have to compete with the recent immigrants.
Are those last two folks bigoted against their own claimed ethnic group. This isn’t isolated stuff.
I think its too easy, and rather lazy, for an anthropologist to turn to the catch all racism to social phenomena, but that ignored the underlying political economy that’s at the heart of economic competition between ethnic groups. It’s too easy to dismiss working class white folk as racist and not actually hear what they are saying, to look at underlying patterns. If you think poor working class white folk have power, then I want to see that data. So when a good number of working class black, and Mexican American folk say things to me that white folk aren’t allowed to say anymore, I felt like I should explore it. Find patterns, be a social scientist.
I think you missed this part…
States that this act cannot be construed to restrict or prohibit:
Ø Courses or classes for Native American pupils that are required to comply with federal law.
Ø The grouping of pupils according to academic performance, including capability in the English language, that may result in a disparate impact by ethnicity.
Ø Courses or classes that include the history of any ethnic group and that are open to all students, unless the course or class violates this act.
· Prohibits rules pertaining to the discipline, suspension, and expulsion of pupils from being based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or ancestry.
I didn’t miss any of that part, but upon further review my call that this bill is a bit of a head scratcher stands…
So good of the Great State of Arizona to deign to follow federal law.
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What violates the act, of course, is far from clear.
I think a lot of the confusion and vitriol involved in this debate is a misunderstanding how laws are worded, current immigration laws and how they are enforced, and how laws/statutes, regulations are enforce universally.
So: “So good of the Great State of Arizona to deign to follow federal law.”
That’s just legal speak. It’s a whole unique kind of linguistic pattern. Laws must walk a weird and fine line of specificity and generality. The changing of a single word in the constitution can change the seeming intent of the whole document.
State law can say anything as long as it doesn’t violate federal law, and that is almost always expressly stated in the law itself. Otherwise, it is almost guaranteed to go to court and end up in the Supreme Court.
Similar linguistic issues surround confusion over the other law making illegal immigration against state law. It was already against federal law, so this is just a matter of expanding the role of state officials to have a power that federal officials have had for decades, largely without incident. I think its a little unfair to state officials to assume that they are so much more evil and racist than feds. that they will become Nazi Brownshirts, rounding up people and putting them on a train.
Before this change in law there was a single federal law, which concerned a single population and could only be actively enforced by federal officials. That is really strange. Think about it. 50 miles away from the border there are customs check points on every highway going north. Within that 50 mile radius feds enforced the law. Outside of that radius, the law ceased to be actively enforced. Nothing about the law itself changed, only the expansion of enforcement.
The ID thing:
For a long time all non-citizens have had to care ID everywhere. My wife a permanent resident, has to be able to produce her green card at any moment. I grew up on the border and learned very young that border patrol couldn’t just randomly walk up to people and ask for ID though. They had to have a reasonable suspicion of why they were asking. Again, is state law enforcement somehow automatically more incompetent than border patrol or ICE?
Now for citizens like me. It’s pretty much the same thing. An officer can’t just ask me to show ID, but if he has a reasonable suspicion that I am doing anything wrong in any legal way, then he can. If I’m driving and I don’t have ID he can take me to jail.
1. What happens if they ask someone for ID without being able to prove probable cause?
Same thing that happens now. You can take the officer to court for a violation of civil rights, and sue. Happens all the time.
2. How does cop constitute reasonable suspicion?
How do they do it now for every other law that they enforce? Same way. Cops are not stupid people. They’re like human lie detectors.
3. Cops are just people, what happens if they make a mistake?
See question one.
Police live in a world of nebulous rules and regulations. Every single situation they deal with is different, and they have to use experience, training, their gut, and collaboration with others, just like everyone else does at work.
The tricky thing is whether he can ask—not demand—your ID, and then, when you say you aren’t under any obligation to produce it, interpret your refusal as PC-level suspicious behavior.
Yeah, from working in a court room that language used under oath is a whole different thing than otherwise. The ”[c]ourses or classes for Native American pupils that are required to comply with federal law” is in there for a reason, all right. Native American tribal governments deal with the federal government on a nation-to-nation that leaves Arizona pretty much out in the cold on this count. This particular chunk of text might suggest something about the understanding of the relationship between ethnicity and nationality underlying this legislation. That is obviously a whole ‘nother thread.
A bit of anecdata about how identification happens in education. I teach the freshman seminar, in which we select a book as common reading with student identification as a criterion. Last year we used A Home on the Field, about a plucky high-school soccer team of mostly Latino immigrants winning the NC state championship. We hoped the students would identify with the athletes their age, especially since one of the team members was now a student here, but that left them cold. On the other hand they connected very deeply and productively with the economics of cheap chicken, which they all eat, and which then provided the entree’ (heh, heh) to all the other issues of ethnic politics in the book.
The year before we used They Poured Fire On Us from the Sky, an account of the civil war and refugee crisis in southern Sudan. Again the hope was that the main protagonists’ similar age to our students would create the grounds for identification. Not so much, as it turned out, not even among our Black students; that is, until one of the authors came to campus with pictures. His personal testimony and the visuals did the trick.
My short tentative conclusion is that much of the thinking on both sides about how to support or damp ethnic consciousness through education is magical. Of course people do learn all sorts of stuff about that, but I doubt much of it happens in schools. Not that I know.
Oh, and most of my time is spent teaching introductory World History. From which I know that the vast majority of students come to university with habits of mind that make them shocked when I want them to take the shrink-wrap off their History textbooks and actually read them.
“The tricky thing is whether he can ask—not demand—your ID, and then, when you say you aren’t under any obligation to produce it, interpret your refusal as PC-level suspicious behavior.”
That’s circular logic and not allowed legally. You can refuse, which I would, but if the officer is one of those asshole cops, and they are on every force probably, and they demand it to the point of using violence then comply and fight it in court later. I mean if there are no witnesses, and the cop has a spotless record and no complaint, probably rare in these cases, then it could be your word against theirs. Then they’d have to invent probable cause later, which leaves them open having their statement picked apart by the same methods used on suspects. I mean then you’re getting into the level of corruption of planting evidence (I’ve seen it at border crossings). If you’re dealing with a corrupt cop then you’ve got bigger problems, and really for a cop like that profiling, planting evidence, not using a warrant, etc… then all civil rights for everyone can be violated.
A lot of people don’t know this, but when you reenter the country, you lose a lot of your rights until cleared by ICE. If they have a “reasonable suspicion” they can (no shit) take your car apart in front of you, and leave it like that and make you call a tow truck to take away your car to get put together on your dime. Do not fuck with a customs agent when you cross. I’ve personally never had a problem, and I crossed at a young age probably 2 or 3 times a week into Mexico, because my dad did a lot of business there.
I didn’t see it, but a punk friend swears to me that a customs guy put a nickel bag in his car because he gave him a lot of attitude, and did this to him. The dude smoked a lot weed, so he’s not the most reliable witness.
The point is that its not good to start with the “if” hypotheticals, because they would be valid under all other situations; citizen or not.
“Oh, and most of my time is spent teaching introductory World History. ”
I get the same reaction when I talk to people in the field about their legal rights. I was talking to a priest that serves a large immigrant populations in my city, and telling ways to work to avoid imminent domain in the barrios that his people live in. He was like, “they can’t just take someone’s land and bull doze his home to build something else,” oh yes they can. Actually, mine is a progressive city, so they actually banned imminent domain in all low-income areas of the city. The next step is to ban land speculation. I hate speculators.
Really, what we need is a very honest and data rich national discussion of immigration period. That gets destroyed when the propaganda machine kicks into gear. I mean I don’t think illegals bleed the system at all. In what they pay in payroll, sales, and other taxes, they pretty much break even with services or maybe put more into the system than they take.
But you see that discussion has zero to do with the legal discussion we just had.
I’ve worked with cops and God love ‘em, I could never, ever do their job and I know that the vast majority eat shit on a daily basis for far too little money. But I also know that any gifted police officer doesn’t work for the law, the law works for him. Most of the time the general public should be happy that that is the case. But then there are your bad eggs that do the same thing.
To bring this back around to the situation in Arizona, I am sure that plenty of the cops there don’t want to be saddled with enforcement of this new law. Sure, they now have a new power to help with habitual criminals who are living undocumented and off the grid. But there must be officers who have spent years building a good relationship with communities made up of mostly illegal immigrants. Their PC is the fact that all of these people have told them the truth about their status. What are those guys going to do when SB 1070 goes into effect?
What they’ll do is look the other way like they do with a thousand other little irregularities that are merely a distraction from the much more important and complex business of negotiating and maintaining local systems of relationship and order. And they’ll apply their new power selectively when it affords them an opportunity to deal with someone who’s creating trouble. Just like all the other laws the whitebread boyscouts think would create a utopia of peace, prosperity and conformity if only we could get the wording just right.
“Their PC is the fact that all of these people have told them the truth about their status. What are those guys going to do when SB 1070 goes into effect?”
I agree that they generally make the law work for them. I also know from the cops I know and talk with, and ask questions about this stuff, that not all cops equally apply the law. That’s usually a good thing, because they tend to be lenient towards people they think are generally “good” people are people they can work with, and fully apply the law when they think someone is just no good. I’ve had a few openly admit that fact.
I also thought about this aspect. A Tuscan cop sued Arizona right after this law was passed for this very reason. Personally, I think this falls under the wishful thinking category. By and large this population does not call the police, ever. I mean unless there is a dead, bloody body in the living room. I’ve got a buddy that used to live in the barrio in West Dallas, who now lives in East Dallas, and people, not even illegals, will call him and ask him to call 9-11 for him.
I’ve driven around with police that work around these areas so I can get their input for reports, and they’ll have a weird reaction when they drive into the barrios like, “I’ve never been here before. No one has ever call from here.”
A cop is never going to get someone to admit illegal status to them. A good cop will simply not ask the question if there are other more important things involved, but there are some cops that are like law robots.
“What they’ll do is look the other way like they do with a thousand other little irregularities that are merely a distraction from the much more important and complex business of negotiating and maintaining local systems of relationship and order.”
They’re cops, not anthropologists. They regulate the law, not social relationships. That’s role confusion on your part. I admit to the same confusion of their roles too.
The Sergeant in charge of my field site area has ordered his cops to build more relationships with residents, especially the kids.
It’s a misconception among academics and upper class leftists that people in low-income areas hate the police. They hate that the police don’t give them as much attention. They want the police there more often. Criminals that terrorize people in the areas hate the police. Police forces are so ethnically mixed that the old days of good ‘ol boy justice is mostly a thing of the past.
Rick, I know what cops’ job description is. An important theme of this conversation including by you has been the real-world slippage between formalities and practicalities.
Rick, I believe this comment (“That’s usually a good thing, because they tend to be lenient towards people they think are generally “good” people are people they can work with, and fully apply the law when they think someone is just no good.”) which you wrote answers your previous query cum comment: “If you think poor working class white folk have power, then I want to see that data. So when a good number of working class black, and Mexican American folk say things to me that white folk aren’t allowed to say anymore, I felt like I should explore it. Find patterns, be a social scientist.” Race often structures, influences, overdetermines the perception of who the ‘good’ people are, and often does so *implicitly* and *unconsciously.*
This question of perception tracks back to another comment you posted: “I think everyone here understands the distinction between race as biology and race as culture. ” That the social fact of *white privilege*–regardless of class–keeps sliding off the proverbial table, raises the question of exactly what definition/concept of race–and of power–is being used. Perhaps ‘we’ are not all in agreement as to what the distinction of race as biology and race as ‘culture’ actually is. I, for one, am not: I do think that “poor working class white folk” have power–that whiteness itself is a kind of power–especially after the Henry Louis Gates/Cambridge police incident last summer, and the question of why the cops were called in the first place, and whether they would have been called had the caller seen two (similarly-dressed) white males trying to get into the same house. I think Dustin is spot-on in raising the question of whiteness as an unmarked category, and to ask what this (i.e., its normativity and invisibility) means to and for the teaching of American history (or, for that matter, for the teaching of anthropology), especially in relation to who is understood to be ‘ethnic’ and who is perceived to be advocating ‘exclusion.’
Sorry about that, I was being told that 4+2 didn’t equal 6.
“Race often structures, influences, overdetermines the perception of who the ‘good’ people are, and often does so *implicitly* and *unconsciously.* ”
You and everyone with similar comments are assuming, often wrongly that race or ethnicity are major determinants in who is considered good or bad by the police in question. Most of the officers I know are black and Hispanic. This is Texas and most cities have not been a majority “white” for some time now.
In my home town I was one of a small handful of kids with white skin, and light colored hair (there are European Mexicans, watch a Novela on Telemundo) at a high school of 5,000 and a 50% drop out rate. My Spanish is shit, because it would shock people and they’d always say something, so I would hear things in Spanish and answer in English. I grew up thinking that people didn’t like white people, so this whole assumed reversal shocked me when I first moved up north.
As you know, the more you take measurements of something the more of a chance or getting a significant result, which statistically would be a Type I error. Social scientists that measure ethnicity and race generally begin with very biased assumptions, and only measure one thing. These unconscious assumptions that you all trying to point out to me as though I haven’t seen the data in the literature as long as I’ve been alive, contain the seeds of an unconscious assumption that isn’t studied. This something we dare not speak of, lest we are branded and stigmatized with invented guilt.
In your mind this flow of assumption is one way, but that’s not true. Misunderstandings are common among all groups. It’s like history froze in 1960 in social science. It is your unconscious assumption that when you hear or read the word “cop” that it’s some white guy, probably with a mustache, and perhaps mirrored sun glasses. It’s because people allow other people to guilt trip them for their own advantage that we let people get away with things that we wouldn’t let other people get away with.
This is a very biased and paternalistic attitude that by and large is the unconscious aspect of US culture that is invisible to most anthropologists. There is an assumption that “we” have to protect “those” people, as though they’re children. As thought they have no say over their own lives, and no agency in their own history.
The linguist John McWhorter has talked about the linguistic patterns that surround this paternalism, which again is a subtle form of racism, largely developed during the War on Poverty in the 1960’s. Poor minorities became people went from being needed to be made like others, to being people that needed to be taken care of and protected. It’s when elite “white folk” developed this new paternalism, and everyone else bought into it, that allowed people to basically be angry just because.
He calls this:
Therapeutic alienation: defined as “alienation unconnected to, or vastly disproportionate to, real-life stimulus, but maintained because it reinforces one’s sense of psychological legitimacy, via defining oneself against an oppressor characterized as eternally depraved.” (McWhorter 2005:6).
It’s the “eternally depraved” abstraction that comes into the minds of elite whites, and makes them feel sorry for others, which is probably the most insidious and subtle form of racism. Not saying you’re racist, just saying that the narrative is, and like discourse of development, this discourse in still invisible.
White privilege is also largely an illusion in 2010. When people say “white privilege” they are invoking a particular cultural meme, a particular why of dress and speech. The US president conveys and embodies that meme more than I ever could. Part of the discourse is the way that elites feel they need to educate people about things they read about, or were told about by someone. Go, go to a working class, white neighborhood and talk to me of privilege. Go to Appalachia. When people warn other not to “act white” they aren’t referencing a working class poor guy. Tell me, when you go to the barrio, or a poor black neighborhood, if you have ever been, do you feel that what you see is your fault, and that you need to save people? How condescending is that?
Current evidence of this paternalism you say? Here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dukMrL_MBGs
Is it really good anthropology to tell a person you have never met and know nothing about what s/he is thinking? Your assumptions are arrogant and deeply flawed, especially for an anthropologist. You did not read my previously statement carefully because you are working from a set of assumptions that will not be dislodged by any counterfactuals. You are not interested in thinking as critically about how others experience the world as you are demanding that others defer to you. Your comments about what kind of mental picture I have in my head about what a cop looks like are baseless and fallacious. They are arrogant, condescending projections. Furthermore, you assume–wrongly–that Mexican American or African American cops can’t themselves have negative views about Mexican Americans and African Americans. You also assume–wrongly–that my comment about the assumptions made in the Skip Gates/Cambridge incident were directed only at the police. What about the assumptions of the caller, and the potential role race played in determining that two (black) men trying to get in a house were trying to commit a crime, for example? Interesting how you assumed–wrongly, again–that I am white/a white elite and thus am peddling ‘guilt.’ I am not white, for the record. And for those who are not white, white privilege is quite apparent, even in 2010–especially when assumptions of unqualified personhood assume a white (and male) subject. Your assumptions belie the very white privilege you are deeply invested in disavowing. Please attack someone else, I am not interested in being the straw person for your ‘2+4 does not equal 6’ anger and resentment. All privilege is not class-based, even for poor whites.
[This was posted at dwax.org becuase the commenter had trouble passing out math/spam protection problem — possibly they used non-unicode character set or something similar on their computer. Anyway, I posted it here for them. –Dustin]
Rick
“You’ve changed my mind, I think rather than teach about our differences, which are already quite well marketed in popular culture, we should have a kind of 4 field anth. course”
BTW, I know of a Jr. High teacher that’s getting her MA in anthropology here in Texas to start a pilot anthropology class in Jr. High as a civics/social studies requirement. The school district has green lighted it to see if it can work.
Rick–this is absolutely wonderful. I have been saying this for the past ten years. Can I connect with her?
As for the person who wrote their comment (Privilege Questioned ) I agree with you. White privilege is an access card bestowed on those who “look, pass, say they are white” and those as well who are of European ancestry. I see the empirical evidence every day.
And…thank you Dustin!you said: “While as an anthropologist I certainly am aware of the biological non-reality of racial categories, and teach from that perspective, I am also aware that the reason I *have* to teach it is that for most people, race is a primary categorizing tool and a central part of their lived experience of being *them*. While the last generation has seen increased efforts to revive distinctions like “Irish-American”, “Italian-American”, and “Jewish-American”, these ethnicities are comfortable because their distinctness is safely *non*-racial – I can be hyphenated without losing the privileges my whiteness, however socially constructed, brings me, something that is not true for “other” Americans: Mexican-AMericans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans.”
Folks please memorize this. And keep a picture of it mentally when you enter these discussions. I would also like to again add, skin color appears to be the all in all determinant in society for ascribing a category of this false biological concept of race, and Prof. Gates who is running around doing DNA historiography is ridiculous.
I am not entering the fray, because it has to do with legal issues and changes that will affect the economics of business in America. As well if you arrest persons,even if it is dismissed or expunged it still remains on your record, and can prevent future employment.
Let me leave you with this: for 40 years I worked on my ethnocentrism. I am Cuban. I am the descendant of the quintessential hodge podge. I will not use “mutt” as President Obama did because I believe that to be offensive. Any one of my relatives can fit into about 20 ethnic categories. From popular and erroneous common public perceptions. From Asian, European, African phenotypes to pink cheeked or black as night. Please. Please my fellow anthropologists do what you can to destroy the “racial” labels. We all know why A.A.’s are still marginalized. We know why then they set themselves apart. The same for the Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn,or the Haitians, or any other group who share common mores and values.
The problem in America particularly is that “race” is Institutionalized.
I can attest to the real feeling of what it is like to carry oneself as a human above all other labels and categories and feel free.
True I have been reading and studying for 40 years, and I read everything, not just anthropological papers but it’s a good feeling to be able to express and understand the cultures that surround us. I don’t bite my tongue when I am speaking with my Russian, Italian,Polish, Columbian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Israeli, Southerner,Northerner or Westerner and so forth acquaintances and friends.
Yes I do have a lot of explaining to do, each and every time there is a confrontational issue being discussed, but at least I get that information out there one person at a time.
They don’t have to agree, but they should at least know, if not then what are we anthropologists doing to make this country, this world a better place?
I ask myself that question everyday, which is why I chose to travel solo. I am now in law school. There are new frontiers on the horizon and I want to add that to what I have been learning all of these years. It was very nice being here, I just found this blog, but I have to get back to my studies. !Adiosito!
“Is it really good anthropology to tell a person you have never met and know nothing about what s/he is thinking?”
That’s exactly what you did to me. I realized the turn of events, the irony of it. The fact that you are still blind to them is telling. You emphatically stated that I was blind to White privilege, and therefore blind to what is supposed to be a major cultural discourse in the literature. All I did was say that you seemed to be blind to a cultural discourse that is almost nowhere in the anthropological literature, and instead were parroting the known discourse, which happens to be subtly racist and harmful.
I consciously wrote the sentence, “I’m not saying your racist, I’m saying the narrative is,” to juxtapose the rather condescending way you told me in so many words, ‘I’m not saying your racist, just blind to the racist structure of society.’
To be much more accurate there are two privileges in our society. There is White privilege and there is Black/Brown privilege. I have to go to bed, but I’ll outline each tomorrow. Personally, in 2010 I’d rather have the Black/Brown privilege. I would easily have gotten into any school of my choice, all the scholarships I would need, etc…
What’s White privilege in 2010? Someone doesn’t get looked at funny in a store? A cop maybe doesn’t give you a second look? Yeah, that’s devastating stuff.
One simple example will clear this up: When a young black man’s basketball game isn’t that good, everyone tells him he needs to get better, he needs to practice, he needs to suck it up. When that same young man’s grades are suffering, no one tells him those things?
That simple fact is a product of White guilt, and it is both racist and devastating to that young man.
I don’t even know how we got on this subject. Wasn’t this thread about a school law?
“Rick–this is absolutely wonderful. I have been saying this for the past ten years. Can I connect with her?”
Absolutely. Let me ask her how you can contact her. I met her for the first time a couple of weeks ago. U. of North Texas is near Dallas, and I was asked to speak on an incoming class of students about my work in the city. The program in 100% applied so everyone get a mentor if they need, and everyone has to find a client and agree upon a deliverable. I always need grad. students. so I’m trying to pull a few. The program in has 5 fields: eviromental, Business/Design, Migrants/Refuges, Border, Medical, and educational. We get a lot of teachers coming through and doing their practicums in the school district.
This is the first pilot anthro. class I’ve heard of at that level though.
There’s another fantastic opportunity at an elementary in my field site. He school lies on the fault line of a traditional African American community and a Hispanic community. She was been trying to promote ethnic cohesion for 3 years now, and things are getting better. There’s still a lot of misunderstanding between the two groups, and they don’t hang out together.
The Principle have an amazing idea to start a organic community garden at her school. The a lot of curriculum can come out of it, but the plan is to get the families to take food back home and traditionally cook it, and then get together at the school and share it with others. Sharing soother’s food is sharing in their culture. It used to be worse. She used to have her recent immigrant families pull their kids, because they didn’t want them going to a black school. But, it’s gotten better over the years.
There’s another teacher that’s getting his MS in anth., but his project in on the teachers and why they resist continuing education so much. No, I can get you a phone number right now:
Contact:
Dr. Mariela Nuñez-Janes
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Co-director Ethnic Studies Program
mariela.nunez-janes@unt.edu
She’s an educational anthro. and she might that student’s adviser. I think they have 3 there. Dr. Mariela is working with local kids in highschool. She’s got a video story telling project thing going on with unprivileged kids.
Let me know what happens. Tell her Rick gave you the info. Rick the guy doing the project for Dallas. She’ll know.
night!