Blaxicans Richard Rodriguez Analysis

In Richard Rodriguez's essay “Blaxicans and Other Reinvented Americans," Rodriguez argues that using race as a base for identifying American’s is not valid; but that culture should be what defines a person's identity. As stated in the essay “I am speaking to you in American English that was taught to me by Irish nuns-...My brownness is the illustration of that collision or the bland memorial of it. I stand before you as an Impure-American, an Ambiguous-American (37-43).” This signifies that Rodriguez identifies himself as an Impure-American an Ambiguous-Americans. Rodriguez also states in the essay “I answered that I am Chinese and that is because I live in a Chinese city and because I want to be Chinese… I see photographs

Richard Rodriguez’s use of irony in his essay “Blaxicans and other Reinvented Americans,” supports his main claim that people can assimilate to new cultures because he dramatizes his ideas to emphasize his intended point. Rodriguez discusses how during an interview, he was asked if he identified as American or Hispanic. He responded that “[he was] Chinese, and that [was] because [he lived] in a Chinese city and because [he wants] to be Chinese… [he sees] photographs in magazines or documentary footage of China, especially rural China...and [he sees] what [he recognizes] as home.[He says] Isn’t that odd?” (Line 161-173). Rodriguez is Mestizo, so when he states that he is “Chinese” he is being ironic. When Rodriguez states that he is Chinese,

In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Blaxicans and other Reinvented Americans,” Rodriguez supports his main idea that a person can choose their own identity by giving an example from his own life experience. Rodriguez shares that he met a mixed girl in San Diego at a convention of mixed-race where they have to identify themselves as one race. He says, “This girl said that her mother was Mexican and her father was African, [but the girl considers herself as “Blaxican”]” (lines 188-189). By calling herself “Blaxican,” she reinvented her identity by creating a new word, just like how Rodriguez said, “ by reinventing language, she is reinventing America.” (line 189)

In the essay, “ Blaxicans and other Reinvented Americans.” Richard Rodriguez's suggest that an individual's identity is based on the cultural beliefs of oneself rather than based upon the individual’s race. Richard Rodriguez's states, “ I am Chinese and that is because I live in a Chinese city and because I want to be Chinese” (lines 163-165). Richard Rodriguez interprets his identity as Chinese in a manner of freedom and choice. Richard Rodriguez states that he is Chinese because he has the power to claim his own identity.

Although one’s racial and ethnic identities are predetermined due to genetics, attachment to a particular culture is not a birthright; one has to accept and understand the community in order to fully identify with it. When Robert Chang writes “one is not born Asian American, one becomes one”, he means just that. In Chang’s opinion, having Asian blood and living on American soil is not sufficient to call oneself Asian American, but the connection to the community allows one claim to the title.

What is the obsession with people’s need of identification? People need to understand that we all are different, not everybody can fit into a group. In her article, “Being an Other,” Melissa Algranati gives a personal narrative of her life and her parent 's life and how they faced discrimination and her struggles about being identified as an “other” even though she was an American born jewish and Puerto Rican. Michael Omi’s article “In Living Color: Race and American Culture” reinforces Algranati’s article since in his article he discusses about people ideas about race the stereotypes that they face. They have the same thought that Americans is obsessed with labelling people, they both discuss people’s assumptions of others based on how

Within the Mexican community, competing notions of racial identity has long existed. Aware to gradations of color in race and their shading of white and non white identity, Haney Lopez introduces the

The formation of segregated barrios and the development of a wealth of community-provided services showed that Mexican-Americans were not content to be marginalized by the United States. Instead, they were embracing an empowering new sense of self-determination and referring to themselves as “Mexicanos or as members of a larger, pan-Hispanic community of La Raza.” At this time La Raza referenced individuals of the Mexican “race”, whether they were in Mexico or in the United States, and was particularly important in the United States, where race was more important than citizenship. In the late 19th and early 20th century United States, race was determined by purity of blood, and there were only two races—white and black. White meant the individual had “pure blood” (European blood); black meant that the individual’s blood included indigenous or African influences. Being white meant being able to exercise one’s constitutional rights and being treated as a normal member of society’s dominant group. Being black meant that, regardless of whether he or she was a citizen, the individual would face discrimination similar to that which I described earlier. When the Spanish conquerors mixed with the people of Latin America, forming the mestizo, or mixed race, population that now composes most of the region, they removed themselves from a “white” classification in the United States. Thus, by engaging with the concept of La Raza, which connotes a mestizo race and population, Mexican-Americans rejected the binary nature of race in the United States and embraced what made them different—their indigenous-mixed blood and the cultural heritage that accompanied it. While the abuse directed towards Mexican-Americans may have

"Events in the nineteenth century made it abundantly and irrefutably clear that race as a concept sui generis superseded social class as the dominant mechanism of social division and stratification in North America." (Smedley 219) For many decades people have been using race as a way to classify humans into different social categories. Lower, Middle, and Upper classes were created to divide humans into appropriate categories using their individual lifestyles, financial income, residence, and occupation. People decided to ignore this classifying system and classify one another,

The English term ‘race’ is believed to originate from the Spanish word raza, which means ‘breed’ or ‘stock’ (Race). People use race to define other groups, this separation of groups is based largely on physical features. Features like skin color and hair don’t affect the fundamental biology of human variation (Hotz). Race is truly only skin deep, there are no true biological separations between two ‘racial’ groups. Scientifically speaking, there is more variation between single local groups than there is between two large, global groups; the human variation is constantly altering (Lewontin). The majority of today’s anthropologists agree that race is a form of social categorization, not the separation of groups based on biological

To many people across a variety of different nationalities and cultures, race has been proven to be a key factor for how society views you in the eyes of those who are prominently in charge. The term race has been brought up in recent years, to be considered a form of identification, as the word race is used to describe physical characteristics such as a person’s color of skin, hair, and eyes. When in reality, the correct term they should be using is Ethnicity. As a result, the term race is used to separate people into sub-categories based on the color of their skin. This type of classification, is a man-made creation used by society to classify certain groups of people into lower classes, while keeping the predominate group in charge at the top.

Race is a social construct that was created by the Europeans in order to minoritize different racial groups. In the reading by Bonilla-Silva, he defines race to be manmade, “This means that notions of racial difference are human creations rather than eternal, essential categories… racial categories have a history and are subject to change.” For example in a lecture by Dr. Aguilar-Hernandez, he stated that the Irish, Italians and Jews were called black before but are now considered white, Mexican-Americans were also considered white up until the 1980s. These ideas lead to the racialization of racial groups.

In the United States it is not uncommon to hear the question, “What are you?” This seemingly simple question stems from the American belief that individuals can be divided into different biologically defined racial groups. However, anthropologists have long argued that U.S. racial groups are a product of American cultural constructions, meaning that racial groups are not genetically determined but only represent the way cultures (in this case Americans) classify people. For example, in the U.S individuals are classified into different races based on their heritage. However in Brazil, people are classified into a series of “tipos" based on their physical appearance. In the article “Mixed Blood”, Jeffrey Fish supports the claim that race is nothing more, but a social construct by demonstrating the cultural basis of race by comparing how races are defined in the United States and Brazil.

People are usually categorized in terms of race and/or ethnicity. Race is a term typically used to classify people according to similar and specific physical characteristics. Ethnicity is a term more broadly used that connects people according to an inherited status such as: a shared ancestry, language, history, religion, cuisine, art, clothing style, and/or physical appearance, etc.

Society has a way of making assumptions based on one’s physical characteristics. Often at times we categorize individuals to a particular social group. In regard to society’ perception of an individual this however, contributes to the development of social construction of racism. Most people want to be identified as individuals rather than a member of specific social group. As a result, our social identity contains different categories or components that were influenced or imposed. For example, I identify as a, Jamaican, Puerto Rican and a person of color. I identify racially as a person of color and ethically as Jamaican and Puerto Rican. According to Miller and Garren it’s a natural human response for people to make assumptions solely