Several men on campus decide they prefer the women’s restroom. A straight-A student earns her first C. The president declares a pre-emptive war on another nation. Our parents no longer tell us right from wrong. We all attempt to figure out how to reach our dreams. Our college experience is definitely brown; our world is brown. Before you begin another litany of complaints about reading Richard Rodriguez, step back and give his work a real chance. If you aren’t a freshman and haven’t read “Brown” (or if you are a freshman and haven’t read it yet-you rebel, you), take a serious look at what Rodriguez is saying-it applies directly to your life at this very moment. Rodriguez writes about “brownness,” not just with regard to race or ethnicity but as a part of every life experience.
I know you think the book is confusing. It confuses me, too. In fact, it confuses me more every time I reread it, but it’s supposed to be that way. Rodriguez tells us that “brown confuses.” It’s the “cement between leaves of paradox.” Paradox is confusing-it makes you hold your head in your hands and take thirty aspirin, but dealing with paradox is how we move forward as a society.
It doesn’t matter whether you are talking about confusion of identity within blended cultures, the twin paradox you learn about in physics or mathematical formulas suggesting that eleven dimensions exist. As humans we haven’t developed the capacity to understand reality accurately. In fact, if we assume that science will continue to disprove previous theories regarding the way the universe works, we can be pretty sure that a lot of the beliefs we now have about the world we live in are inaccurate. For example, if it’s true that eleven dimensions exist, as a four-dimensional being it’s impossible to even comprehend the physical world around us correctly.
To think on a deeper level, we need to become comfortable with brownness. Unfortunately, brown by definition isn’t comfortable. Rodriguez tells us it isn’t pure. We have trouble dealing with impurity; we can’t tie it up in a little package with a bow and classify it as x or y. “Brown bleeds through the straight line, unstaunchable-the line separating black from white, for example.” Brown is not knowing for sure what the right answer is or what the right action is. It’s making mistakes. It’s our life.
I invite those who classified the book as simply a piece about being Hispanic to look at the book again. I think this is something we should all read seriously. Within his work, Rodriguez has presented us with problems about the way society thinks and has challenged us to change the way we view our world-the first step to changing the way the world operates.