Richard Rodriguez

If anything is to be understood about Richard Rodriguez it is that he is not a minority. He is in fact a son of Mexican immigrants who came into this country and through harsh labor were able to set him up for a good education, what no longer makes him a minority. Education to him is not just the key to escaping poverty, but it is the key to enlightenment and entering the public world through assimilation while escaping the private world that minorities live in. Richard Rodriguez was born into a similar world that exists today amongst the Mexican community where darker skin is seen as unattractive and a danger in the United States. His assimilation process is heavily based on the pursuit of education, on the power of language, and the role …show more content…
The most important value is on the status of being a minority, of which he no longer considered himself to be. Officially, what does it mean to be a minority but to be part a small group of people within a community or country, differing from the main population in race, religion, language, or political persuasion? This is clearly then not what Richard Rodriguez sees as being a minority but is instead those that do not mature into the public world and continue to speak in their private tongue. In the United States the public language and identity lies with English while his private language- the language of comfort and family is as he states ghetto Spanish. This establishes the basis for his argument against bilingual education, teaching in both English and the native tongue of Latinos, …show more content…
In his definition of a minority, the poor who have yet to assimilate into the public life are those who need aid most, but since affirmative action acts only in higher education, it inadvertently helps only those who are middle class and no longer classify as a Richard minority. He feels that he was able to escape the minority label by leaving the private world, feeling only reinforced by the barrage of opportunities he gained for his skin color. He could not find moral justification for the improvement of nonminority lives in higher education, when to him the public and private language conflict should be resolved at a young age. While both Latino civil rights leaders and Richard himself disagree on the merit of affirmative action, both sides aim to increase the amount of minorities becoming professionals while limiting burden on others as in a utilitarian