Blog Post 5: Whose Dream is “American?”

Aja Martinez’s allegory tells a different resistance story than the ones we have read up to this point. Besides the fact that she’s resistance-writing fictionally, the main player is assimilationist. Rosette Benitez doesn’t fit the mold of “oppressed speaking out against the oppressor.” In fact, she almost becomes the oppressor by trying to breakout from the oppressed.

Early on, we learn that Rosette resisted her traditional Mexican-American culture in Arizona by distancing herself from her multi-cultural family after receiving a private-school education and living with a white family. Her mindset is clarified when she says, “her cousin simply didn’t understand the value and necessity of assimilation and its importance for getting ahead in life” (pg. 5). In a way, though, is she wrong?

We – as in liberals — don’t like to swallow the idea of assimilation as a success tactic because it negates the “American melting pot” ideal and associates more with the conservative “white American Dream” ideal. However, had Rosette not lived with the white family, attended private school, rejected her family’s culture and formed her own “white” life outside of her Chican@ heritage, would she have become a successful scientist? Would she have had the same opportunities had she not assimilated to white culture? Rosette even makes that claim, thinking, “they had every opportunity I had” about her cousins. But did they?

And yet, even with all her professional success and assimilationist motivation, her heritage follows her into a Capitol Hill Boardroom, where she’s confronted by a racist, nationalist, and (likely) sexist senator named Russell Borne, the perfect symbol of the stereotypical American South. It’s not until the end of the story that Rosette realizes she can’t escape her heritage and her race will always place her lower on the totem pole, regardless of perceived “success.”

Martinez’s allegory is an example of storytelling as a kind of resistance because Rosette represents a storyline that may be familiar to people like her and digestible to people who are not. At points in this story, I even found myself (a socially-liberal moderate) rooting for her assimilationist practices because it seemed to bring her success. If this is the way to equal opportunity, maybe she should be trying to “fit in” (don’t worry, I only thought that for .2 seconds).

The point: even though this multicultural scientist from Arizona did everything she could to achieve “The American Dream,” she realized too late that this “dream” was made for/by white nationalist slave-owners. It’s resistance-writing because I, the reader, want Rosette to succeed, but she cannot because of the societal barriers created by people of my skin color. In trying to resist the oppressor she suppresses her culture, but she realizes too late the toll it will take on her family, and familial ties is a theme everyone can understand.

Source:

Martinez, Aja Y. (2013, August 7). Critical race theory counterstory as allegory: A rhetorical trope to raise awareness about Arizona’s ban on ethnic studies. Across the Disciplines, 10(3). Retrieved from
https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/race/martinez.cfm