Overall Impression: Like colored crayons melting together on the sidewalk, we have a brown society and we should get used to it. America is a melting pot of diversities and that melting is creating a brown society. Richard spoke to us as Brown. He is an great collision of races, religions, and cultures. He has a varied ethnic background and learned to speak English from Irish Nuns. His talk covered the history of several nationalities and covered such browning issues as race and religion.
NATIONALITY
We used to be a black and white society. Africa and Europe. It was an insightful moment at the academy awards to see Halle Berry, along with shots of her white mother, saying what her award meant for Black people. There was no mention of Brown. In Brazil there are a wide variety of Brazilian-Portugese mixtures and their language has 300 words for Brown.
Every African-American he knows seems to be part Indian. (Cherokee, sioux, Cheyenne, Mohican.) However there is limited historical mention of sex or mixing in our histories. He mentioned how African-Indian marriages produced kids who looked Chinese. The sex released the Mongolian traits in their heritage. Like all the food will eventually taste like chicken, everybody will start to look Chinese or Italian. Living together and near each other we start to absorb parts of the others, both physically and psychologically. "Assimilation Happens!"
RACE
There are no hispanics in Central America. There are no Asians in Asia. President Nixon established census categories for race that have caught on. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islands, and Indian/Eskimo. However Hispanic is not a race, it is a culture or an illusion thereof. What does happen is that "hispanic" is used in the census as a weapon against African-Americans. Mr. Rodriguez, though Hispanic looking, would define his culture as African-American. [ed. This leads me to think that the use of categories to simplify one thought process, like census taking, can obfuscate the details or reality of other processes. Chris Rock, an "African- American" comedian has a routine that also demonstrates this called "Niggas vs. Black People." (On his DVD, "Bring on the Pain.") Both groups are categorized as Black or African-American for census purposes, but behave very differently in real life.]
RELIGION
Religion has the power to separate us and it has the power to bond us. His parents lived on a brown religious street. To hear Mr. Rodriguez describe it, there was a different religious/nationality combination in every house on his street.
FOOD
He closed with a story about interviewing a Klan-type skinhead in Los Angeles. This person was moderately against the local Mexican population. When they decided to go out for lunch Richard figured Mexican food probably wasn't on the list. "Actually," the skinhead said, "I like Mexican food." Richard's reaction was, "Are you kidding? There's an Indian making love to a Spaniard in that Burrito. Sometimes an African sneaks in and makes it a threesome."
MISCELLANEOUS IDEAS
- In difficult times we need to most value and exercise our right to free speech? - Jim's intro (But does that mean you can say anything anywhere, or that you should not have to pay to say anything? And are we also allowed "free listening" too?)
- From the Religion section: "We are going to war against parts of us." I think the connection was that there is a little of each one of us in everyone else.