Fueling White Injury Ideology: Public Officials’ Racial Discourse in Support of Arizona Senate Bill 1070

Abstract

In a seemingly post-racial moment in 2010, Arizona’s Senate Bill (SB) 1070 was under fire and challenged as racially discriminatory. While the 2010 immigration bill was popular among white Arizonians, critics charged that SB 1070 could facilitate the racial profiling of all Latinos/as in state law enforcement officers’ efforts to check the legal status of those they suspect are undocumented. Analyzing 70 recordings from the Arizona house floor, press conferences, and television interviews during 2009–2012, I investigate how public officials discuss their support for this contested legislation. Proponents of the bill largely used color-blind maneuvers in response to questions concerning racial profiling but simultaneously constructed racialized undocumented immigrants as criminals and economic burdens. Consequently, political supporters of SB 1070 engaged in a racial discourse evoking an implicit white injury ideology that positioned whites as injured by the presence of racialized immigrants, while all Latinos/as were constructed as outside the (white, injured) citizenry.

Apathy and Color-Blindness in Privatized Immigration Control

“…Consequently, by explicating the normalization process of the privatization of immigration control, our research contributes to scholarship on legal violence that describes the abuses suffered by immigrants that stem from these “normal” practices (Menjívar and Abrego 2012). Moreover, we also contribute to scholarship that examines the role of color-blindness and similar ideological frameworks in justifying the oppression of immigrants (e.g., Armenta 2017b; Rodriguez 2018) by revealing a framing strategy that overlaps with but diverges from the central frames of color-blind racism.…”

“…Because cultural shifts invalidated and stigmatized overt racism, elites may rely on frames stemming from color-blind racism , which gradually took the place of Jim Crow racism as a dominant racial ideology. 3 Bonilla-Silva (2017) identified multiple frames of color-blind racism that have emerged in recent immigration scholarship (e.g., Armenta 2017b; Rodriguez 2018).…”

Romaphobia in Romanian press: The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian migrants in the European Union

“…Modern-day racism has become more subtle and is constructed through less explicit racial codes which often rely on colour blind ideologies (Bonilla-Silva, 2006) or draw on the white injury rhetoric (Cacho, 2000). Such expressions of racism belittle the importance of race when accounting for existing social inequalities, while at the same time portray the whites as victims of racialised groups (Bloch et al, 2020; Rodriguez, 2018). According to Bloch et al (2020) these are contemporary expressions of the new racism and new nativism and they rely on reversing the victim/villain dichotomy.…”

“…The ‘white injury’ rhetoric (Cacho, 2000, Rodriguez, 2018) runs through these accounts of the ordinary Germans. Such accounts thus rely on reversing the victim-villain dichotomy while playing down racism (Cacho, 2000) and it is a form of recontextualisation which is less documented when it comes to the Roma.…”

Racialized im/migration and autonomy of migration perspectives: New directions and opportunities

“…2, 109). Taking this approach, scholars have examined how hyphenated Latina/o‐American self‐identification processes by those not perceived as White are formed through “racialized assimilation” (Golash‐Boza, ; Vargas, Winston, Garcia, & Sanchez, ; Vasquez, ), others have uncovered the institutional mechanisms of racial profiling that inform immigration law enforcement practices and racialized criminal justice regimes that police the boundaries of belonging (Armenta, ; Bowling & Westenra, ; Goldsmith, Romero, Rubio‐Goldsmith, Escobedo, & Khoury, ; Romero, ), while many have interrogated the ideological and discursive forces of White supremacist nativism that exclude non‐White im/migrants from US civil and political life (Bloch, ; Cacho, ; Chavez, ; Feagin & Cobas, ; Jacobson, ; Rodriguez, ).…”