Analysis Of Richard Rodriguez's Essay 'Blaxicans'

Immigrants have helped shape American culture and Identity in several like bringing diversity and defining what it means to be “American” ways as shown in Richard Rodriguez's essay titled “Blaxicans’ and Other Reinvented Americans”. The author's main claim is about cultural identity which ties in with Paul Wallis’s essay Op-Ed: American identity crisis? What’s an ‘American’ identity”. These documents are similar because they both conversate about assimilation and culture being a mixture of ethnic groups, meaning assimilation is not limited. In Blaxican “Blaxicans’ and Other Reinvented Americans” Richard Rodriguez argues that using race to identify yourself is utterly wrong and that assimilation into a culture is what should be a factor in identifying. To get back on topic, the author shows …show more content…
What’s an ‘American’ identity” by Paul Wallis, Wallis walks us through ethnic groups, assimilation to create a fundamental culture and he also talks about how America is the perfect example of this cultural diversity can be seen when the author talks about Multiculturalism and the term ‘multi cultural society. This term implies a functional society where the groups interact and exist. This means that multiculturalism is America is having more than one culture while multi cultural society means America has more than one ethnic group and is part of a society. The coined term is better because it is more open and shows unity as a group. When the author wraps up their final thought we get a glimpse of what the author's definition of an American is, and according to the author an American is someone who lives in America. We can pull this from the author's last remark “You might want to ask the big green chick with the torch in New York about what’s an American. She's seen a lot of them come and go.” this proves that bringing diversity is being American because immigrants are diverse if they live in America than they are diverse