“THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF EVERY PRECIOUS AMERICAN VALUE”: NATIONAL IDENTITY AND POLITICAL STRATEGIES OF RACISM DENIAL IN THE TERMINATION OF TUCSON’S MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM by GLORIA HOWERTON (Under the Direction of Amy Trauger) ABSTRACT Tucson, Arizona became a prominent educational battleground with the 2010 passage of ARS § 15-112, legislation used to terminate Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program. After a seven-year legal battle, the 9th circuit district court of appeals ruled that racial animus was key to the implementation and enforcement of the legislation. This project is concerned with the continuing effort to seize upon and (re)produce a particular national identity that rests in individualism and whiteness. Attempts to promote certain values and identities as “American” emerge from an entanglement between the scales of nation, state, school district, and classroom. In the border state of Arizona, the looming spectre of the Mexico-U.S. border provides a base for politicians and political institutions to build and maintain power through fears of white loss and victimhood. In particular, I consider how these racialized fears are used as political tools, and how accusations of racism or racial animus are evaded in a process that I call “appropriative evasion.” Appropriative evasion is informed both by Freyd’s (1997) DARvo (Deny, Attack, Reverse victim and offender) which she observes as a tactic that abusers use to silence and confuse victims and accusers, as well as by Haney López’s (2014) dog whistle politics, which considers the use of racially coded political discourse as a tool to win political power while still evading accusations of racism. Appropriative evasion begins with an institutional betrayal that perpetrates racialized harm. It then involves a denial, followed by an attempt to undermine the standing of the victim or accuser. Finally, it appropriates the initial harm, casting both the accused politicians and institutions, as well as white America, as the true victims of racially- motivated attack. INDEX WORDS: Race; education; nationalism; law; Mexican American; Latinx; Arizona; political discourse “THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF EVERY PRECIOUS AMERICAN VALUE”: NATIONAL IDENTITY AND POLITICAL STRATEGIES OF RACISM DENIAL IN THE TERMINATION OF TUCSON’S MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM by GLORIA HOWERTON B.A., The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2009 M.A., The University of Georgia, 2013 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2019 © 2019 Gloria Howerton All Rights Reserved “THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF EVERY PRECIOUS AMERICAN VALUE”: NATIONAL IDENTITY AND POLITICAL STRATEGIES OF RACISM DENIAL IN THE TERMINATION OF TUCSON’S MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM By GLORIA HOWERTON Major Professor: Amy Trauger Committee: Steven R. Holloway Amy Ross Elizabeth St. Pierre Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people who deserve acknowledgement for their assistance and support during the completion of this dissertation. To begin with, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Amy Trauger, and my committee members, Drs. Steve Holloway, Amy Ross, and Elizabeth St. Pierre for their guidance. I would also like to thank the supportive community of professors and graduate students in UGA’s Geography department and friends in the wider Athens community. In particular, I am grateful to Leanne Purdum, Jonathan McCombs, Caroline Keegan, Christian Petterson, Gretchen Sneegas, Lowery Parker, Claire Bolton, Danielle Haskett, Sean Cameron, Kim Love, and Liz Payne for their advice, patience, friendship, and willingness to both help me fix the things that need fixing, and to be at peace with the things that couldn’t be perfected. I also want to acknowledge the wonderful community of friends and mentors in Arizona. Thank you to the University of Arizona Geography department for providing me a home away from home, and Dr. Sallie Marston for bringing me in to her group of advisees. There were also so many wonderful people that I met through the Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing who helped me re-think my project and provided important life lessons. I especially want to thank Dr. Anita Fernández who helped me immensely and was a source of strength in dark political times. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................................iv ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ..........................................................................................viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 Mexican American Studies ...........................................................................................4 Research context ...........................................................................................................8 Overview of research questions, methodology, and methods ................................10 Analysis overview ......................................................................................................12 Roadmap to the dissertation ....................................................................................14 2 THEORETICAL FRAMING ............................................................................................17 Understandings of race and racism .........................................................................19 Race and the liberal concept of the US “nation” ...................................................26 The emergence of neoliberalism ...............................................................................38 Race and neoliberalism ...........................................................................................41 Education and race in the United States .................................................................45 Appropriative evasion...........................................................................................53 3 METHODS AND METHODOLOGY .............................................................................62 Finding the core of the research ..............................................................................63 v Study Design ..............................................................................................................65 Data Collection .........................................................................................................67 Interpretation ........................................................................................................74 Study site: Tucson Unified School District ..............................................................79 Reflections ..................................................................................................................87 Conclusion .................................................................................................................88 4 BETRAYAL .................................................................................................................89 Appropriative evasion..................................................................................................90 Arizona ........................................................................................................................95 Tucson .......................................................................................................................104 Conclusion: institutional betrayal ..........................................................................124 5 DENIAL ..........................................................................................................................128 The denial .................................................................................................................129 Conclusion ................................................................................................................151 6 UNDERMINING ............................................................................................................152 Civility discourse .....................................................................................................155 Rudeness rhetoric and the MAS context ................................................................163 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................176 7 REVERSAL ...................................................................................................................178 vi Slander: personal offense .......................................................................................180 (Re)producing one of multiple American national identities ...............................183 Enrolling white America as victim .........................................................................204 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................209 8 CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................................212 Beyond the TUSD Mexican American Studies program .......................................216 Future avenues of inquiry .......................................................................................219