Senate Bill 1070 & House Bill 2281

By: Stephanie Perez

Thesis

Senate Bill (SB) 1070 and House Bill (HB) 2281 have had crippling negative effects on the Chicano/a population of Arizona and their social standings in this Anglo society. SB 1070 also aides the state government and their officials in making economic gains at the expense of the Chicano/a people. These bills are detrimental to the development of the Chicano/a communities and keep them under the oppression of the white men in power in Arizona.

Evidence for SB 1070

Economic gains are made from SB 1070 by people with political power because they work with organizations who privatize prisons, this basically lets these organizations make profit based off of the number of people that are sent to prison. These organizations design laws like SB 1070 and pay politicians to make them legit; they do this by literally paying them off and ensuring that the politicians vote for the laws in their favor. These laws ensure that more people will be sent to prison therefore increasing the profit for the organizations. 1070 makes negative social impacts on Chicanos by portraying a negative image of them by criminalizing them. This law allows police officials to racially profile Chicanos and places them in a sub-class category. Once people in authority start to categorize and racially profile people, it therefore becomes socially acceptable to think of people, specifically Chicanos, in a negative and low way.

SB

Evidence for HB 2281

HB 2281 removed the Mexican-American studies from the

core curriculum of students in Arizona, which negatively affected the Chicano student population through the number of student graduating and moving on to higher education. This will impact the Chicano/a community economically because there will be less people moving on to higher education therefore less of them will be in higher paying professional careers. bill affects the Chicano/a community socially as well because it is denying them the ability to study their culture especially because several books, written mainly by Latino/a authors, were banned. Therefore this bill is saying that only one American experience is important and the others dont matter. Socially this is the first step into abandoning the Chicano/a history completely.

This

Implications
In

the end, Chicanos in Arizona today continue to suffer from oppression by the white man, and woman, in power through pieces of legislation. Senate Bill 1070 contributes to the oppression of Chicanos in Arizona by creating an ideology that undocumented workers take the jobs of Americans and that all undocumented workers are bad for the country both socially and economically. This creates a sentiment against Chicanos which all of them will face regardless of citizenship status. Similarly, House Bill 2281 also attempts to keep Chicanos oppressed by refusing them the ability to take Mexican-American studies courses as and banning books, specifically, written by Latino/a authors. This prevents students from thinking about the United States history in a critical manner, which in turn prevents them from challenging the white man in power. In both cases it is important to be educated in what is happening due to these pieces of legislation and to challenge the integrity of the bills that are being pushed onto the Chicano/a people of Arizona.