Question

Rodriguez concludes his argument with the statement, "i have come to you as Chinese. Unless you understand that i am Chinese, then you have not understood anything i have said." what does this striking statement mean? How does it relate to his central claim?

Answer 1

The central claim in Rodriguez's “Blaxicans” and Other Reinvented Americans is that the separation between white and black Americans is no longer the identity people use nowadays. Culture is not a static thing but a fluid one, and is changing constantly, individually and collectively. People are choosing other characteristics to identify themselves with and form communities.

With this final statement , Rodriguez is claiming that he has lived in a Chinese neighborhood for so long that he has acquired several aspects of that culture. Despite being "Hispanic", ethnically speaking, he doesn't have much in common with that culture, simply because it doesn't exist: people in Latin America don't identify themselves as "Hispanic", it was just a word created by the government to classify people. If it has ever worked as an identity people used to describe themselves, that use is decreasing nowadays.