Contexts of Lived Realities in SB 1070 Arizona: A Response to Asenas and Johnson’s ‘Economic Globalization and the “Given Situation.'

Arizona matters to us. Arizona is what Jacqueline Jones Royster would call our "home place."1 We studied together at the University of Arizona during the passing of SB 1070, which legalized racially profiling Latin@s "reasonably suspected" of being undocumented, and HB 2281, which outlawed Mexican American Studies in Tucson Unified School District. Because of our research and Arizona ties, we are responding to the recent Present Tense article, "Economic Globalization and the 'Given Situation': Jan Brewer's Use of SB 1 070 as an Effective Rhetorical Response to the Politics of Immigration" by Jennifer J. Asenas and Kevin A. Johnson. Our purpose is to problematize, complicate, and personalize the discussion presented by Asenas and Johnson. We feel that the article would have benefitted significantly from critical inquiry that engaged with the situation on the human level as well as taking into consideration the history of Arizona as the 'given situation.' As a demonstration of a methodology based on lived experiences, we also provide a counternarrative to further emphasize ethical considerations that were overlooked by Asenas and Johnson's use of logocentric strategies to discuss the dehumanizing policy of 58 1070