Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T02:24:50.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rhetorical Barriers to Mobilizing for Immigrant Rights: White Innocence and Latina/o Abstraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Jamie G. Longazel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the summer of 2006, Hazleton, Pennsylvania passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act (IIRA). In this article, the politics that emerged in that law's wake are used as a case study to identify the rhetorical tools that justify and help achieve White dominance in local struggles over immigration in the United States. In tracing three successive waves of post‐IIRA activism, what legal scholar Thomas Ross has termed White innocence/Black abstraction—a racial narrative that absolves Whites of wrongdoing and obfuscates minority suffering—is shown to be a central theme in the discourse of Hazleton's White majority. This colorblind rhetoric is used to make exclusionary legislation appear justifiable and to curtail the efforts of immigrant rights activists. By bringing Ross's insights into a new substantive context (i.e., immigration) and outside the confines of formal law (i.e., legal mobilizations rather than judicial opinions), this article demonstrates the centrality of innocence/abstraction in on‐the‐ground efforts to defend existing social arrangements.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , Summer 2014 , pp. 580 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Beckett, Katherine 1997. Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blumer, Herbert 1958. Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position. Pacific Sociological Review 1:3–7.Google Scholar
Bonilla‐Silva, Eduardo 2006. Racism Without Racists: Color‐Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Boroff, David, and Planas, Roque 2012. Mitt Romney Says He Favors “Self‐Deportation” When Asked About Immigration During GOP Debate. New York Daily News, January 24. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election‐2012/mitt‐romney‐favors‐self‐deportation‐asked‐immigration‐gop‐debate‐article‐1.1010812#ixzz2J7qGrWcI (accessed May 26, 2014).Google Scholar
Cacho, Lisa Marie 2000. “The People of California Are Suffering”: The Ideology of White Injury in Discourses of Immigration. Cultural Values 4 (4): 389–418.Google Scholar
Cárdenas, Vanessa, and Kerby, Sophia 2012. The State of Latinos in the United States: Although This Growing Populations Has Experienced Marked Success, Barriers Remain. Center for American Progress. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/report/2012/08/08/11984/the‐state‐of‐latinos‐in‐the‐united‐states (accessed May 26, 2014).Google Scholar
Cervantes, Nancy, Khokha, Sasha, and Murray, Bobby 1995. Hate Unleashed: Los Angeles in the Aftermath of Proposition 187. Chicano‐Latino Law Review 17:1–23.Google Scholar
Chavez, Leo 2008. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Dana‐Ain 2007. Narrating the Mute: Racializing and Racism in a Neoliberal Moment. Souls 9 (4): 346–360.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1935. Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Dudas, Jeffery 2005. In the Name of Equal Rights: “Special” Rights and the Politics of Resentment in Post‐Civil Rights America. Law & Society Review 39 (4): 723–757.Google Scholar
Dudas, Jeffery 2008. The Cultivation of Resentment: Treaty Rights and the New Right. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Echegaray, Chris, and Eaton, Susan 2013. We Are from Hazleton: A Baseball Celebrity Helps Bring His Divided Pennsylvania Hometown Together. One Nation Indivisible. http://www.onenationindivisible.org/wp‐content/uploads/2013/06/ONIstoryNo.10‐hazelton_Final.pdf (accessed May 26, 2014).Google Scholar
Engel, David M. 1984. The Oven Bird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries in an American Community. Law & Society Review 18 (4): 551–582.Google Scholar
Erikson, Kai 1966. Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Fernandez, Henry 2010. Fighting Back Against Copycat Immigration Laws like Arizona's. Center for American Progress. http://www.americanprogress.org/wp‐content/uploads/issues/2010/08/pdf/fernandez_arizona_copycat.pdf (accessed May 26, 2014).Google Scholar
Fleury‐Steiner, Benajmin, and Longazel, Jamie G. 2010. Neoliberalism, Community Development, and Anti‐Immigrant Backlash in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. In Taking Local Control: Immigration Policy Activism in U.S. Cities and States, ed. Varsanyi, M. W., 157–172. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fleury‐Steiner, Benjamin, and Nielsen, Laura Beth, eds. 2006. The New Civil Rights Research: A Constitutive Approach. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Frankenberg, Ruth 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg‐Hiller, Jonathan, and Milner, Neal 2003. Rights as Excess: Understanding the Politics of Special Rights. Law & Social Inquiry 28 (4):1075–1118.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Carol J., Yngvesson, Barbara, and Engel, David M. 1994. Law and Community in Three American Towns. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Haney López, Ian 2003. White Latinos. Harvard Latino Law Review 6 (1): 1–7.Google Scholar
Haney López, Ian 2006. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, Kent 2014. Supreme Court Refusal Ends City's Illegal Immigration Case. Standard‐Speaker, March 4.Google Scholar
Katchur, Mark 2008. Group: IIRA Forced 20‐Plus Businesses from Hazleton. Standard‐Speaker, April 16.Google Scholar
Katchur, Mark 2011. Latino Influx Spurs First Population Increase in Hazleton in 70 Years. Standard‐Speaker, March 10.Google Scholar
Kroft, Steve 2010. Welcome to Hazleton. CBS News. http://cbsnews.com/8301‐18560_162‐2195789.html (accessed May 26, 2014).Google Scholar
Kubrin, Charis, Zatz, Marjorie S., and Martínez, Ramiro Jr., eds. 2012. Punishing Immigrants: Policy, Politics, and Injustice. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Longazel, Jamie 2013a. Moral Panic as Racial Degradation Ceremony: Racial Stratification and the Local‐Level Backlash Against Latino/a Immigrants. Punishment & Society 15 (1): 96–119.Google Scholar
Longazel, Jamie 2013b. Subordinating Myth: Latino/a Immigration, Crime, and Exclusion. Sociology Compass 7 (2): 87–96.Google Scholar
Longazel, Jamie, and Fleury‐Steiner, Benjamin 2011. Exploiting Borders: The Political Economy of Local Backlash Against Undocumented Immigrants. Chicana/o‐Latina/o Law Review 30:43–64.Google Scholar
López, María Pabón 2012. An Essay Examining the Murder of Luis Ramirez and the Emergence of Hate Crimes Against Latino Immigrants in the United States. Arizona State Law Journal 44:155–173.Google Scholar
Maira, Sunaina 2004. Youth Culture, Citizenship, and Globalization: South Asian Muslim Youth in the United States After September 11th. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24 (1): 219–231.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael 1994. Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nill, Andrea Christina 2011. Latinos and SB 1070: Demonization, Dehumanization, and Disenfranchisement. Harvard Latino Law Review 14:35–66.Google Scholar
Provine, Doris Marie 2007. Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Provine, Doris Marie 2009. Justice as Told by Judges: The Case of Litigation Over Local Anti‐Immigrant Legislation. Studies in Social Justice 3 (2): 145–160.Google Scholar
Provine, Doris Marie, and Doty, Roxanne Lynn 2011. The Criminalization of Immigrants as a Racial Project. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 27 (3): 261–277.Google Scholar
Roediger, David R. 1991. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Rogin, Michael 1987. Ronald Reagan, the Movie: And Other Episodes of Political Demonology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Romero, Mary 2006. Racial Profiling and Immigration Law Enforcement: Rounding up the Usual Suspects in the Latino Community. Critical Sociology 32 (2–3): 447–473.Google Scholar
Romero, Mary 2008. “Go After the Women”: Mothers Against Illegal Aliens' Campaign Against Mexican Immigrant Women and Their Children.” Indiana Law Journal 83 (4): 1356–1389.Google Scholar
Ross, Sonya, and Agiesta, Jennifer 2012. AP Poll: Majority Harbor Prejudice Against Blacks. Associated Press, October 27. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap‐poll‐majority‐harbor‐prejudice‐against‐blacks (accessed May 26, 2014).Google Scholar
Ross, Thomas 1990a. The Rhetorical Tapestry of Race: White Innocence and Black Abstraction. William & Mary Law Review 32 (1): 1–40.Google Scholar
Ross, Thomas 1990b. Innocence and Affirmative Action. Vanderbilt Law Review 45 (2): 297–316.Google Scholar
Rubio‐Goldsmith, Pat, Romero, Mary, Rubio‐Goldsmith, Raquel, Escobedo, Manuel, and Khoury, Laura 2009. Ethno Racial Profiling and State Violence in a Southwest Barrio. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 34 (1): 93–123.Google Scholar
Steinbugler, Amy C., Press, Julie E., and Dias, Janic Johnson 2006. Gender, Race, and Affirmative Action: Operationalizing Intersectionality in Survey Research. Gender & Society 20 (1): 805–825.Google Scholar
Tarone, L. A. 2006. Groundbreaking: After Passionate Debate, Hazleton Passes Illegal Immigration Law. Standard‐Speaker, July 14.Google Scholar
Tarone, L. A. 2007. Barletta Team Vows Appeal. Standard‐Speaker, July 27.Google Scholar
Varsanyi, Monica, ed. 2010. Taking Local Control: Immigration Policy Activism in U.S. Cities and States. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883).Google Scholar
Lozano v. City of Hazleton, 496 F. Supp. 2d 477 (2007).Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Illegal Immigration Relief Act, Hazleton, PA, Ordinance 2006–18 (2006).Google Scholar