Exile Benjamin Saenz Analysis

Benjamin A. Saenz, in “Exile: El Paso, Texas,” illustrates, by means of anecdotes and narratives from his individual experiences, that to be profiled and identified by the color of your skin as a possible illegal immigrant is flippant, demeaning, and misguided. Through his experiences, being profiled in El Paso, a border town to Mexico, Saenz illustrates that looking Hispanic does not deem an individual as an illegal immigrant, does not categorize any individual as a criminal, does not demand for a Hispanic to be profiled, interrogated, beaten and discarded. Saenz, in describing his experiences, attempts to illuminate to his audience that profiling creates an environment of paranoia in populations of people that are possibly of an immigrant
This illumination of profiling can best be described by Saenz when he recalls crossing the border from Juarez. He states, “In early January, I went with Michael to Juarez… On the way back, the customs officer asked us to declare our citizenship… He looked at me, ‘Where in the United States were you born?’… I noticed he didn’t ask Michael where he was from” (Saenz 283). From this passage, Saenz was not inquiring as to why he was asked, but why Michael was not; however, to the audience it should be clear as to why—Saenz was profiled as a Hispanic who would prevaricate to cross the border into the United States even though he himself was already a United States citizen. Additionally, though not present in the previous passage, Saenz uses descriptive diction to explicate his feelings, to provide a visual for what he himself is experiencing internally. At the beginning of the passage the mountains are “Mexican purples,” beautiful, while the place where he resided in El Paso was “a perfect place,” yet in the latter section of the passage his attitude toward his town and the mountains has drastically altered. He now sees his town as “deserted” with “streets… empty like the river,” which all
In doing so, he was attempting to eradicate the notion that all Hispanics along the border are illegal immigrants, but illustrate that racial profiling of minorities is injustice, and that profiling is a systematic abuse of a population striving to survive in a harsh and cruel environment. Even so, I already believed this to be the case. Racial profiling in itself does not allow an individual an identity, but instead slumps minorities into stereotypes that the majority bestows upon them. By profiling an individual one erases the individual and instead creates a caricature of a racial group. This, in turn, generates racial bias that has led to countless deaths and mistreatment of minorities which has led to an excessive racial tension. Saenz, when he wrote this narrative was recollecting events in 1985, yet his purpose still resonates in the present. Furthermore, reading his narrative, he has not altered my opinion on the subject, but bolstered it. Racial prejudice and profiling is a systematic abuse of minorities when it is used at the degree it is now, 2015; a scaling back would relieve racial tension and allow American minorities to conclude they belong, they now have a