America has never had a very wide vocabulary for miscegenation. We say we like diversity, but we don't like the idea that our Hispanic neighbor is going to marry our daughter. America has nothing like the Spanish vocabulary for miscegenation.… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
In the Sacramento of the 1950s, it was as though White simply hadn't had time enough to figure Brown out. It was a busy… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
Books should confuse. Literature abhors the typical. Literature flows to the particular, the mundane, the greasiness of paper, the taste of warm beer, the… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
Mexico is sex and Canada is mind. There is much about Canada that I find admirable - the treatment of immigrants, for example, particularly… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
My decision was sparked by affirmative action. There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to me -… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
Who knows what Yale thought it was getting when it hired Richard Rodriguez? The people who offered me the job thought there was nothing… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
I have a good black friend who is a doctor, but he didn't become a doctor because he saw other black men who were… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
In some ways I consider myself more Chinese, because I live in San Francisco, which is becoming a predominantly Asian city. I avoid falling… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
I think the universities have co-opted the intellectual, by and large. But there is an emerging intellectual set coming out of Washington think tanks… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
You don't know Mexico, man. You have trivialized Mexico. You are a fool about Mexico if you think that Mexico is five blocks. That… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share 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,… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
What has happened in the last generation is that Tijuana has become a new Third World capital - much to the chagrin of Mexico… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
We're looking at complexity. We're looking at blond kids in Beverley Hills who can speak Spanish because they have been raised by Guatemalan nannies.… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share 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… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
For me, diversity is not a value. Diversity is what you find in Northern Ireland. Diversity is Beirut. Diversity is brother killing brother. Where… — Richard Rodriguez Copy Share Image
