ANTI-LATINX POLITICAL RHETORIC “All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic”

Running Head: ANTI-LATINX POLITICAL RHETORIC “All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic”: The Presence of Anti-Latinx Political Rhetoric and Latinxs as Third World Threats in Secondary U.S. Citizenship Curriculum Christopher L. Busey, PhD. Assistant Professor, Critical Studies in Race, Ethnicity and Culture School of Teaching and Learning Affiliate Faculty, Latin American Studies University of Florida PO Box 117048 Norman Hall 2-202 Gainesville, FL 32611 Phone: 352-273-40401 Email: [email protected] Alvaro Corral, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Political Science Wooster University Kauke 101 Wooster, OH 44691 Phone: 330-287-1931 Email: [email protected] Erika Davis, Ph.D. Student School of Teaching & Learning Critical Studies in Race, Ethnicity and Culture Center for Latin American Studies University of Florida Email: [email protected] ANTI-LATINX POLITICAL RHETORIC 2 Abstract Anti-Latinx political rhetoric characterized by racist and nativist appeals have been at the center of Donald Trump’s campaign and governing strategies. This outward expression of anti-Latinx sentiment poses an ethical conundrum for K-12 educators and scholars of education, especially for social studies educators who are inherently implicated given social studies’ natural curricular inclination to engage with matters of citizenship. Thus, the presence of anti-Latinx ideas in the nation’s civic and citizenship-oriented curriculum warrants urgent attention. This study builds upon Chavez’s (2013) the Latinx Threat Narrative as a framework, by examining secondary U.S.-oriented civic and citizenship curricular standards to determine how U.S. Latinxs and Latin America are positioned vis-a-vis the United States and its dominant political ideologies. Findings indicate that Latin America, and by extension, Latinxs are regularly situated as social and political dangers to the overall welfare of the United States, suggesting the presence of what we refer to as the Latinx Third World Threat Narrative. We argue that this hemispheric homogenization of Latinx peoples in curricular standards flattens important historical and cultural distinctions thereby facilitating exchange of anti-Latinx stereotypes present in contemporary political rhetoric. We also show how U.S. Latinx civic agency is encoded as an illicit, corrupt, and destabilizing force. In light of our findings, we argue that educators must acknowledge the ways that curriculum is complicit in maintaining nativist ideologies about Latinx peoples and Latin America and critically reexamine curricular standards as a state apparatus. Keywords: Anti-Latinx, Latin America, Latino Threat Narrative, Political Rhetoric, Citizenship Education, Curriculum Standards Introduction ANTI-LATINX POLITICAL RHETORIC 3 The use of racially charged political rhetoric, long a regular feature of presidential campaigns, has become both a divisive fixture and governing strategy under the Trump administration. A major, and perhaps central, target of Trump's racist rhetoric has been directed towards Latinx immigrants. An indelible moment representative of Trump’s anti-Latinx rhetoric occurred during a 2016 presidential debate with Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. During a segment of the debate which focused on immigration, Trump conjured false narratives of Latinxs, mainly that Central American migrants are violent, “bad hombres” (see October 19, 2016 Presidential Candidate Debate). This was one of many moments during the campaign and subsequent administration in which Trump channeled long-standing tropes about Latin America or used foreign policy to address domestic and social life in the United States relevant to U.S. Latinxs (e.g., assertions that Mexico will pay for a border wall). In fact, Trump’s discursive associations between U.S. Latinxs and Latin America are consistent with Huntington’s (2004) “Hispanic Challenge” trope whereby immigrants from Latin America bring political, social, cultural, and linguistic traditions that are irreconcilable with the American “creed” (p. 31). Thus, the purpose of these attacks was to position Latin America and by extension U.S. Latinxs as economic, socio-cultural, and political threats to the general welfare of the United States—what Chavez (2013) refers to as the Latinx Threat Narrative. Trump’s populist invocation of the Latinx Threat Narrative superimposes a racialized line of demarcation which politically and socially excludes Latinxs from civic and national citizenship identity in the United States (de la Torre, 2018). In hindsight, this active boundary- making positioned Latinxs as a foreign menace and primed the mass public for the steady stream of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies to follow. With regard to education, we are ANTI-LATINX POLITICAL RHETORIC 4 concerned with how the Latinx Threat Narrative has become one of the many political curricular discourses for codifying citizenship as White, and the Other (read Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American) as non-citizens who lack “the mental capacity, character and temperament to engage in democratic affairs as full citizens” (Brown & Urrieta, 2010, p. 65). More than any other subject area, social studies communicates to students who contributes to nation-building projects, the meaning of U.S. citizenship, and what universally qualifies as accepted civic action (Author, 2016; Brown & Urrieta, 2010; Hess & McAvoy, 2014; Journell, 2019; Journell, Breeson, & Ayers, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 2004; Urrieta, 2004). Thus, how ethno-racial groups are framed or obfuscated in the curriculum is crucial to whether or not students come to view themselves, their communities, and their peers as citizens and civic actors (Author, 2016; Bondy, 2017; Ladson-Billings, 2004; Woodson, 2016, 2017, 2019). The purpose of this study is to illustrate how collapsible Latin American tropes and current anti-Latinx sentiments are reproduced in curriculum across the United States. Drawing from and expanding upon Chavez’s (2013) notion of the Latinx Threat Narrative as a framework, we analyzed secondary social studies curricular standards across all fifty states and the District of Columbia to determine how anti-Latinx and anti-Latin American political rhetoric is reified in U.S. civic and citizenship-based curriculum.1 More specifically, we focused our analysis on secondary U.S. history and civic (e.g., American government, economics, and politics) curricular standards, which along with textbooks are often deemed “official knowledge”. The following research question guided our study: 1 This analysis was conducted from 2018-2019. We recognize that certain states may have adopted different standards after our analysis was conducted. ANTI-LATINX POLITICAL RHETORIC 5 1. In what ways do secondary U.S. civic and citizenship education curricular standards situate Latinxs and Latin America within the Latinx Threat Narrative and current anti- Latinx political sentiment? In this article, we first describe how extant literature has addressed Latinxs and Latin America in U.S. social studies curriculum through state-specific curricular analyses. We add to this body of literature by conducting a nationwide analysis of standards within the backdrop of rising anti- Latinx nativism. Second, we explicate our extension of the Latinx Threat Narrative to include Latin America, and therefore advance the Latinx Third World Threat Narrative as more representative of the ideological flattening of Latin America and U.S. Latinxs vis-a-vis political tropes present in curricular standards. Third, we explain key findings from our analysis along the lines of foreign policy, domestic policy, and social policy—political axes used to circulate discourses about Latin America and U.S. Latinxs as a foreign threat (Chavez, 2013; Haney Lopez, 2014; Santa Ana, 2002; Santa Ana, Moran, & Sanchez, 1998). To demonstrate the currency of Latinx Third World Threat Narrative in our findings, we align our explication of the standards with comments made by Donald Trump. We conclude our study by drawing attention to how civic and citizenship curriculum functions as a purveyor of racist nativism, which works in tandem with broader conservative political discourses about Latin America, Latinxs, and various racialized ethno-racial groups. Why Standards? Why Latinxs? A Contextual Note Although content standards are only one of numerous multimodal forms of what constitutes school curriculum, they are often treated as official instructional guides. However, given that standards should be understood as tentacles of state politics (Heilig, Brown, & Brown, ANTI-LATINX POLITICAL RHETORIC 6 2012; van Hover, Hicks, Stoddard, & Lisanti, 2010), we begin from a place that recognizes standards as not only politicized forms of knowledge, but also as policy. In some cases, state boards of education assign greater influence to standards by making it lawful or unlawful to teach critical issues beyond the established standards (Heilig, Brown, & Brown, 2012; Vinson & Ross, 2013). Likewise, the influence of political and corporate entities behind high stakes testing and teaching licensure exams allows for standards to act as mechanisms of surveillance (Au, 2013; Evans, 2015; Polikoff, Porter, & Smithson, 2011; van Hover et al., 2010). State content standards also guide textbook authorship, further linking them to the joint political and capitalistic endeavor to control processes of civic knowledge socialization (Apple, 2000, 2001; Heilig, Brown, & Brown, 2012; Loewen, 2007). Hence, curricular standards warrant scholarly attention precisely

Load more