Quote

I don't deny people their fantasy life, but I do think that we desperately need to start realizing just how complicated our reality is in America. Sitcoms just don't show us that.

Richard Rodriguez

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Rodriguez
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: July 31
Journalist
Teacher
Writer
San Francisco County
California
People
Shows
Sitcom
Reality
Desperately
America
Deny
Need
Complicated
Needs
Fantasy
Think
Realizing
Thinking
Start
Life
Show
Sitcoms

More quotes by Richard Rodriguez

Image
Learning can cause social fracture. Your people start expressing themselves.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
I find L.A. very interesting, partly because I think something new is forming there, but not in a moment of good fellowship as you might think from all this diversity claptrap. It's not as if we'll all go down to the Civic Center in our ethnic costumes and dance around.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
Affirmative action ignores our society's real minorities - members of the disadvantaged classes, no matter what their race. We have this ludicrous bureaucratic sense that certain racial groups, regardless of class, are minorities. So what happens is those minorities at the very top of the ladder get chosen for everything.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection that I find the energy of the essay.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
In some countries, of course, Spanish is the language spoken in public. But for many American children whose families speak Spanish at home, it becomes a private language. They use it to keep the English-speaking world at bay.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
fter the O.J. Simpson trial there was talk about how the country was splitting in two - one part black, one part white. It was ludicrous: typical gringo arrogance. It's as though whites and blacks can imagine America only in terms of each other. It's mostly white arrogance, in that it places whites always at the center of the racial equation.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
Mexico was most powerfully my father's smile and not, as you might otherwise imagine, not language, not pigment.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn't forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
When a society doesn't know what to do with its young, it's in real trouble. When the young don't know what to do with society - at the very least, revolutions start there.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
After the second chapter of Days of Obligation, which is about the death of a friend of mine from AIDS, was published in Harper's, I got this rather angry letter from a gay-and-lesbian group that was organizing a protest against the magazine. It was the same old problem: political groups have almost no sense of irony.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
I think what education gives you is a voice. It gives you a way of talking to a judge. When a policeman pulls you off to the side of the road, you have a voice. When you cross a border, you have a voice. When you are writing to express your opinions, you have a voice.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
The Indians had to be either killed, or herded into reservations, which were essentially concentration camps, and forgotten. Their history had to be absolutely obliterated so that we could believe that we were living on virgin soil.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
Intimacy is not trapped within words. It passes through words. It passes. The truth is that intimates leave the room. Doors close. Faces move away from the window. Time passes. Voices recede into the dark. Death finally quiets the voice. And there is no way to deny it. No way to stand in the crowd, uttering one's family language.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
What really terrifies Americans is the prospect that the Indian is very much alive, that the Indian is having nine babies in Guatemala, and that those nine babies are headed this way. This is one reason why Americans hold on so dearly to the myth of the dead Indian.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
There is San Diego - this retirement village, with its prim petticoat, that doesn't want to get too near the water. San Diego worries about all the turds washing up on the lovely, pristine beaches of La Jolla. San Diego wishes Mexico would have fewer babies. And San Diego, like the rest of America, is growing middle-aged.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
So many of my friends tell me they’re not religious. I’m like, Of course you’re religious. You watch Oprah Winfrey, don’t you?
Richard Rodriguez
Image
Of course, San Diego chooses not to regard the two cities as one. Talk about alter ego: Tijuana was created by the lust of San Diego. Everything that was illegal in San Diego was permitted in Tijuana. When boxing was illegal in San Diego, there were boxing matches in Tijuana when gambling was illegal, there was always Tijuana.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
I think it's an important thing for a Mexican to say, especially now with the rebellion in Chiapas. Mexico has to confront her Indian face, and yet she refuses to do so. When you turn on Mexican television, it's like watching Swedish TV: everyone is blond.
Richard Rodriguez
Image
So, rather than becoming multicultural, rather than becoming a person of several languages, rather than becoming confident in your knowledge of the world, you become just the opposite. You end up in college having to apologize for the fact that you no longer speak your native language.
Richard Rodriguez