Summary Of Hunger Of Memory Richard Rodriguez

In the autobiography Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez the author employs the theme of higher education to defend his views on affirmative action. He shares his views and experiences on the issue as a minority alienated in a majority white American society in the 1960’s-70’s. Although he was a well–educated Mexican American, his ethnicity classified him as a minority. In college, despite being anti-affirmative action, Rodriguez still reaped the benefits of affirmative action. He believed that affirmative action should not be not be determined by race, but student’s intellectual ability to complete college.Affirmative action in his eyes not only discriminated against non-minority, but also gave way for failure due to the lack of proper schooling before post-secondary institutions for minorities. The term minority student means that students were disadvantaged and were underrepresented in America. Richard argues that the people who affirmative action was designed for were not benefiting because affirmative action was not

Knowing: I was not disadvantaged like many of the new nonwhite students who were entering college, lacking good early schooling.” (157). He believed that he was solely considered a minority because of he checked the Hispanic box indicating his ethnicity, even though he received a good catholic school education all his life and came from a middle class family in Sacramento California. During this time in his life, Rodriguez realized that he had a strong discomfort at being the beneficiary of affirmative action. His outcry of his true emotions in 1970 resulted in praised by politicians but caused cultural tension between him and the Hispanic community because he pointed out that any lessened ethnicity in college was considered a minority under affirmative action. Richard wanted to point out that not every person associated with an underrepresented race is a