Blending of Brown America

The Blending of Brown America America is often referred to as “the melting pot”, a place where a variety of races, cultures, or individuals assimilate into a cohesive whole. But is America simply living culturally cohesive or are the various colors of America melting together to create a “brown America”? Chicano essayist Richard Rodriguez discusses the topic of a brown America in his novel Brown in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America. By definition, race is each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics. Although this definition doesn’t define race as simply black or white, it divides people according to their “distinct” characteristics, which creates room for the “other”. The “other” refers to those who do not fall into one distinct category. In the novel, Brown, Richard Rodriguez argues that race cannot be simply defined; through historical examples and personal experiences Rodriguez undermines the notion of race by representing the middleman, the brown. The term “brown” holds more meaning than simply a color in our racially deterministic society. The goal of Rodriguez in Brown is to create an impure, indistinct and contradictory America. Identifying himself as brown, Rodriguez writes: Brown has allowed me to reconcile myself to myself, that is, to allow for the unevenness of my life, to allow for its contradictions, to not have to figure everything out in my life, to see it as whole rather than as partial. (Hansen)

Rodriguez hopes to undermine the notion of race in order to prove that America is more than the preconceived cookie-cut image of black or white. As a Hispanic homosexual in the disapproving Catholic religion, Rodriguez is a contradiction himself. He thrives off the idea of confusion stating, “Only further confusion can save us.” (Hansen) Rodriguez attempts to write his novel “brownly” for the reason that, “brown confuses” (Rodriguez, pg. xi). He holds the idea that the term brown is a paradox, confusion, and a contradiction, which is the same manner in which he views himself. Rodriguez embraces the ability to be a contradiction by experiencing two or several things at once, for example a Catholic and a homosexual. By failing to fall into neither the black nor white racial categories, Rodriguez identifies as an occupant of the “passing lane in American demographics”. In Chapter Six Rodriguez writes, “My role is the man in the middle, the third man; neither” (Rodriguez, pg. 125). He proposes the idea that since Hispanics are a mixture of European and African American decent, they should logically fall in between the two color lines. Hispanics should technically take on the role of being gray, however he states that he is visibly brown, “darkish, reddish, terra-cotta-ish, dirt-like, burnt Sierra in the manner of the middle Bellini” (Rodriguez, pg. 126). The idea of a “middle race” was repeatedly rejected in American history. As Rodriguez describes in Chapter Six: A child of black-and-white eroticism remained “black” in the light of day, no matter how light her skin, straight his hair, gothic her nose; she was black as midnight, black as tar, black as the ace of spades, black as your hat. Under the one-drop theorem, it was possible for a white mother to give birth to a black child in America, but no black mother every gave birth to a white child. A New World paradox. (Rodriguez, pg. 135)

This paradox is also exemplified in the film Pinky (1949). In the film, the topic of biracial individuals is addressed. Pinky, a black-and-white mixed race woman is defined as black in her court case, despite her white skin color. She is treated with harsh disrespect after being discovered to be of a mixed race. Rodriquez can summarize the reasoning for her treatment in the quote, “one of the first lessons in America, the color-book lesson, instructs that color should stay within the lines” (Rodriguez, pg. 135). America has come a long way since the idea of mixed race was a taboo. As stated in the article, Red, Brown, and Blue by Ellis Cose, “Between the 1990 and 2000 census, the percentage of racially intermarried couples nearly doubled.” This accepting generation is contributing to a much more racially diverse America. In the year 2000, the census allowed Americans a larger range of options; the racial categories increased from five to six, which allowed Americans to claim more than one racial identity. This progression towards a more tolerant America is simultaneously creating the “browning” of America. With this concept came the idea that the white race will no longer be the majority in America. Cose makes two points to estimate the future of America. To start, the census represents the tolerant youth who “are less likely than their elders to erect rigid racial walls” (Cose). By eliminating these walls, biracial relationships are much more accepted in society. In turn, the white race will become mixed, thus creating a much more broad definition of “white”. Secondly, Cose argues that whites are not in danger of becoming a minority because the category will have expanded to include many of the categories we currently consider to be minorities. With more people identifying as white, the category will not decrease; it will broaden. This argument correlates with Rodriguez’s idea of a brown America because it accepts mixed race, however it provides an argument that although the category is becoming more diverse, the population is continuing to identify under the label of “white”. Rodriguez, as a Hispanic man identifies as brown because, “Brown is a color that is not a singular color, not a strict recipe, not an unexpected result, but a color produced by careless desire, even by accident; by two or several” (Hansen). As a child, Rodriguez wanted to identify as white; however over time he came to accept and be proud of the face that he was brown. One term he hesitantly accepts is “Hispanic”. As he describes in Chapter Five, “Hispanic has the least reference to blood. There is no such thing as Hispanic blood. Though I meet young Hispanics who imagine they descend from it” (Rodriguez pg 106). Rodriguez writes that, “Chicanos resist the term because it reduces the many and complicated stories of the Mexican in America to a mere chapter of a much larger saga that now includes Hondurans and Peruvian and Cubans” (Rodriguez pg. 108). Rodriguez describes how Chicanos do not want to share their space with the Latinos because it overlooks all that they have been through in America. To solidify their presence in America, Chicanos attempted to make “bilingual education” their main political focus in the 1960’s. In turn, the “English only” movement was brought to the surface to legalize English as the official language. This movement would endanger the Spanish language, which has become unofficially the second language of the United States. In our current society, almost all instructions are in both English and Spanish and middle-class white Americans are signing their children up to learn Spanish. Despite the desire to keep Spanish from legally being an official language, Rodriguez states, “they (white middle-class Americans) ask if I know of a housekeeper who might inadvertently teach their children Spanish while she dusts under the piano” (Rodriguez pg. 115). This contradiction further proves that America is in fact, browning. When discussing the topic of how whites view themselves against the “brown” population, Rodriguez stated that, “It seems to me that whiteness became a kind of freedom, and a kind of emptiness too” (Hansen). White people have the “white freedom” to incorporate what they want from other cultures. Whether it is listening to other cultures music, eating other cultures food, or simply doing what they please, whites have freedom. This is what Rodriguez wishes to see in all races eventually. Throughout the novel, Rodriguez refers to a man that he surprisingly identifies with, Richard Nixon. Rodriguez writes that he identifies with Nixon’s, “insecurity, his ruthlessness and his crudeness that always struck me as true” (Hansen). He credits America’s color spectrum to Nixon, as after Nixon it was easy for people to identify with an ethnicity. Rodriguez states that, “It was Nixon’s conniving and dark eyes that also told me about the scheming that goes on in America. And his willingness to betray his own memory of himself by anointing me Hispanic was part of the seaminess of the whole story” (Hansen). By identifying as a Hispanic, Rodriguez was able to further engage in the concept of a browning America. Although a cynic on many topics throughout his novel, Rodriguez ends with an optimistic outlook on the browning of America. He references Jose Vasconcelos’s La Raza Cosmica (1925): The days of pure whites, the victors of today are as numbered as the days of their predecessors. Having fulfilled their destiny or mechanizing the world, they themselves have set, without knowing it, the basis for the new period. The period of the fusion and mixing of all peoples.

Rodriguez epitomizes this excerpt throughout his novel. Through the browning of America, the days of “pure whites” are diminishing. With the government adding more races to the census and Spanish becoming the unofficial language of the United States, the idea of a brown America is quickly becoming more of a reality than an idea. This browning has led Rodriguez to the conclusion that: I realize now that life is uneven, that I will always be Catholic as inevitably as I will always be a homosexual, that I will always be at odds with my identity, that I will always belong in some odd way to Latin America and that I will always belong to this other place, this country that is not at all like Latin America. That I will have all of those identities and that I will live with them in a brown way. For a man who has struggled with this and has sort of turned his life into an odd exercise in self-laceration, it comes with some great peace, almost as though I don’t need to write anymore.

Through out the novel Brown, Rodriguez successfully undermines the preconceived notion that race is black or white. He presents the middleman, the area in which he identifies, to prove that America is no longer a separation of white and black, it is a blending mixture of multiple cultures and races, a brown America.