An Analysis Of Mixed-Blood Stew By Richard Rodriguez
930 Words4 Pages
In the essay “Mixed-Blood Stew”, Jewell Parker Rhodes describes her mixed colored lineage and the penetrable makeup of all people along the color line. Rhodes recounts her childhood and shows how her family acknowledge each other of being more than just black and talk of all the race their blood consists of. She argues how people sees a black person; as black. She explains that black is not just black. Richard Rodriguez, author of “Blaxicans and Other Reinvented Americans” talks about how racial classifications, e.g. black, white, Hispanic, etc. should be discarded for they misrepresent the cultural and ethnic realities of today’s America (140). Rodriguez explains how culture has nothing to do with race and how certain labels (black, Hispanic)…show more content… She comments that doesn’t deny all the people in her blood and genes and that she passes it all on (393). She is grateful that millions of more Americans are checking more that a single box now. Although Rhodes considers herself as African American on the census, she knows that it doesn’t limit her bloodline. Rodriguez feels different about the racial category. He says that while he was in college Richard Nixon instructed the Office of Management and Budget to come up with the five major racial group in the United States (142). He goes on saying that no one will ever meet a Hispanic for it is a gringo contrivance and that in Latin America there are Chileans, Mexicans, or Peruvians but no Hispanics (142). Rodriguez is saying that Hispanic describes how that person lives and culture and even coining Hispanic as an ethnic term. Rhodes and Rodriguez both show how people are now choosing to identify themselves. Despite being learned to identify themselves from the color of skin they have, both know that there is more to it than just that. America is a changing country with mixed- colored people becoming more and more common. Assimilation is occurring everywhere and it can’t be helped. Culture and race is not the same thing and how some chooses to identify themselves is becoming very different. America is only going to become more diverse and categorizing each person racially is only going to preserve the notion of being