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How Immigration Changes The Concept Of Race By Wendy Roth

859 Words4 Pages

In the past, race was often seen as objectively concrete; a definable trait in the individual that correlates them to a specific heritage. History has greatly influenced certain representations of race. Today, the concept of race has moved away from one’s biological background towards a way of dividing individuals into a category. Literature in particular has had a tremendous impact on the way in which race is perceived. Authors deploy stereotypes strategically to their cultural objects in order to make a particular argument with regards to this representation of race. In “How Immigration Changes the Concept of Race”, Wendy Roth introduces the idea of racial schemas as the different ways people can understand and interpret race. She explores …show more content…

Roth references three cases of individuals and the similarities and differences in which they use to racially identify themselves. There are many different ways of classifying race. Mulato, Black, and Latino are three different ways that Agustín, Raquel, and Isandro respectively, think about the same racial mix. Agustín describes the racial categories that exist in the Dominican Republic: blancos (white skinned), negros (black skinned), and mulatos (mixed skin). Even though Agustín is a man with dark skin and African features, he places himself within the mulatos majority. “I understand that I’m a mix of blanco and negro, of Spanish and African origin…[I’m] mulatos… not totally negro but instead a mix” (Roth 12). Raquel has pale light skin, straight black hair, and appears to be mostly European. She also agrees with Agustín’s claim that there are only three races, but contends that the understanding of her racial identity extends to other factors beyond social standards of race based on skin color. “There would be your ancestry-you need to look at your grandparents, your great grandparents. You need to look at the shape of your mouth, the size of your ears, how your nose is, the texture of your hair…the color of your eyes, the color of your hair” (Roth 13). Being that Raquel didn’t fit exclusively into one of the socially accepted racial categories, she felt as though she had no other options than choosing Black because “I’m not White or Asian. So I must be whatever is left.” Isandro is a Puerto Rican man with medium-brown skin. He identifies his race –and that of practically everyone around him in Puerto Rico –as Latino. “A lot of people say that Latino doesn’t exist as a race” and because of this, Isandro struggles to racially identify as either White or Black. According to him, Latinos are not

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According to “‘Blaxicans’ and other Reinvented Americans,” Richard Rodriguez argues throughout his essay, that culture should be what defines a person’s identity, as opposed to race. Rodriguez portrays his mentality on these aspects when it is implied that an individual is able to assimilate to another culture (214-216). Therefore this reveals Rodriguez’s beliefs. Rodriguez demonstrates that although a person may have been born with a specific race, that does not define them. Rodriguez, an American, transferred to a Chinese culture and says that this makes him Chinese.

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To support this claim, Rodriguez uses the example of Nixon’s inclination to divide America into five racial groups in the 1970s (407). From this point, Rodriguez focuses on one of the five racial groups: Hispanic. To illustrate the ludicrous nature of the term Hispanic to describe race, Rodriguez says that “such a definition suggests I have more in common with Argentine-Italians than with American Indians; that there is an ineffable union between the white Cuban and the mulatto Puerto Rican because of Spain” (407). Rodriguez uses this quote to show that the broad sense of the term “Hispanic” is not only misleading, but also incorrect when it is used to describe race. The term “Hispanic” classifies two arguably dissimilar groups such as Argentinians and Italians into one category.

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Mr. Diaz says “We’re in a country where white is considered normative; it's a country where white writers are simply writers, and writers of Latino descent are Latino writers. This is an issue whose roots are deeper than just the publishing community or how an artist wants to self-designate.” (pg2)

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1 Samantha Carrillo Ms. Alcala ELA 11 Period 3 14 August 2017 Within the essay “ Blaxicans and other Reinvented Americans “ by Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez’s uses irony throughout his essay by stating to be Chinese but in reality, he is Hispanic. He also mentions how he is Mestizo, not only does he go by one race but by several races that in reality are not what he is. He identifies himself as Chinese because of fact that he lives in a Chinese city and well because he wants to be Chinese.

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Rodriquez expresses a deep nostalgia for his loss of his private life. He encapsulates the private sphere with the Spanish language, familial relations, ethnicity, and the Chicano identity. Spanish becomes an intimate and romanticized notion of his culture, he fears the meaning is lost in translation, “The problem was ... that though I knew how to translate exactly what she had told me, I realized that any translation would distort the deepest meaning of her message: It had been directed only to me. This message of intimacy could never be translated because it was not in the words she had used but passed through them” (31). Rodriguez’s inability to distinguish between ethnicity and race is problematic.

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I can relate to her observation about skin color effecting your status because when I was a child in school the largest group of kids, usually white, would only want to play with other white kids and since they were the largest group they controlled the playground. Subtle experiences like this show that there is something bigger happening that is effecting the U.S. This problem of status based on race stems from the fact that most people that are not Hispanic do not have a problem identifying themselves in terms of race because most can pick Black or White or Native American. For the Hispanic population we are left somewhere in the middle and so we cannot identify with the larger groups. This also ties into another point that Rodriguez touched on and that was about immigrating to the U.S and having to assimilate into America. As Latinos were coming to settle in the United States they had their own social hierarchy from their native country, now that they moved they had to conform to a new social construct that was already in place.

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Rodriguez implies how a competition has arise in America between Hispanics and African people, yet “ In Latin America, one sees every race of the world. One sees white Hispanics, one sees black Hispanics, One sees brown Hispanics who are Indians, many of whom do not speak Spanish”(pg.89). Thus, this reveals how Hispanic people come from many different backgrounds and are all over the places and how some even do not know Spanish which many people would assume they do. Eventually, Immigrants have identify American

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