Discussion Post: Team Emme, Nate, Paola, Bethanne, and Ivette

It is disheartening to see that the harmful effects of HB 2281 and SB 1070 on the Latino community in particular, are similar to the way that the Black Codes of the antebellum South tried to regulate the extent of African Americans ability "to engage in rights afforded to the larger White citizenry" (p.297).  As I read this article, I questioned why I never critically engaged in conversations about the impact of these bills in Arizona in high school when they were introduced.  As I studied the Civil Rights Movement in high school, it almost seemed as the 60's was the time that civil rights issues were fought and advances were made, but unfortunately the fight is still not over.  This struggle is not over and it continues as seen with these two bills in 2010, and recently with the Arizona School Superintendent wanting to ban the Spanish language in Arizona.  

As the "Critical Literacy for Xenophobia- A Wake up Call" explained, it's a mistake to view the texts of the two bills and the sound bites as "separate examples of school policies on curriculum, the role of market ideologies in education, or the role of law enforcement in immigration enforcement" (p.296).  Each of these issues is intertwined and these texts are reflective of more than just Arizona politics and immigration in current times.  In the same way that we need to examine HB 2281 and SB 1070 as connected to each other and the current politics and social issues, we will need to guide our students to be able to analyze texts together and to connect concepts across media types.  

What are some ways that we can delve into the critical analysis of these texts individually but also across these texts/events/etc for a deeper understanding of the underlies that intertwine these issues?  How can we guide our students to understand the depth of these issues/events/texts/etc individually but also how they are dynamic parts to the systematic issues that exist?  How can we delve into these conversations at each grade level in a way that is appropriate to their current understandings yet challenges them to think further about current issues?   

Both HB2281 and SB 1070 "creates a much sharper knife with which the state can incise the channels for institutionalized racism to systematically sequester, undereducate, miseducate, and bankrupt entire populations of children, particularly children who come from homes where standard English is not the mother tongue" (p.).  These two bills greatly oppress people whose mother tongue is not the language that all of the policy is written in.  What can we do as educators to truly break down these "channels for institutionalized racism" that cause so much harm to families and students, not just in Arizona but in various places across society?  
 Further, what is our role as educators to break up this system that we are jumping into and that we live in, while at the same time working to break them down?  The article poses the question that critical literacy has not yet answered completely: how do we reconcstruct while we are reconstructing"?   What more can we do and how can we help our students become active social agents to break down these injustices?