Rasquachismo/a/x & Settler Colonialism (Poster 8)

• In Event: Theory-Stories and Social Studies Education

Abstract

Rasquachismo/a/x

This paper starts from the premise that social studies education and research rarely draws on Latinx/Chicanx theory. Centering the Chicanx concept of rasquache I wed social studies education with Latinx knowledge production in order to reimagine topics like geography, civics, social justice, and economics. Too often the (Latinx) bodies that hold our knowledges, histories, and theories are seen as vulgar, los de abajo, “juvenile, delinquent, still developing, and in need of constant surveillance and control” (Aviña, 2016, p. 470; see also Aviña & Morales, 2022; Author et al, 2022). However, rasquache (theorizing) shows how Latinx communities continually repurpose and subvert these deficit and racist views into tactical, agentic, and (critically) hopeful political subjectivities (Pizzaro, 1999; Author, 2021). Rasquache theorizing calls on social studies researchers and educators, then, to locate the playful, the underdog, the resistant, the underclass, the over-the-top, the margins, the peladita, the nonsensical, the dramatic, the beautiful, the mierda, the ironic, the tacky, the cheap, the brilliant, the brash, the chingada, the troche y moche, the margins, and the art(ist) as valid sources of knowledge production.

Settler Colonialism

Inspired by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg), Megan Bang (Ojibwe and Italian descent), this chapter invites readers to take a walk with the author in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and observe the destructive nature of ivy. Ivy is a daily reminder of settler colonialism—of not only the European invasion but of the ongoing violence of conquest. Within this context, the author lays bare the history of settler colonialism in the United States and how it forms the root system of K-12 social studies education and research. This chapter is a cautionary tale told from a story of witnessing the scar(ring)s settler colonialism inflicts in the hopes that by naming and tracing the root system of supremacist ideology we can confront our social studies past and present in order to build a different future.

Authors

• Timothy Monreal, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Sarah B. Shear, University of Washington - Bothell