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Abstract
Tucson, Arizona became a prominent educational battleground with the 2010 passage of ARS 15-112, legislation used to terminate Tucsons 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 Freyds (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 Lpezs (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.