Brown, Is It More Than Just a Color?

Brown, Is It More Than Just A Color?

At this years literary festival I got a chance to view the 7:30-9:00 presentation on Thursday by Richard Rodriguez. Rodriguez was a spirited and motivated speaker whose center focus was the color brown. He explores the concept of being "brown" in America. He illustrates how there is an emergence of multiracial people who redefine the definitions of minority and majority. He insists that America as a whole is heading towards the color brown; even though it's accidental. His main point of his presentation was the mixture if cultures and his own personal quest to find the color brown.

Rodriguez discussed how the Hispanic population is continuously rising. He is very angry that being Hispanic is not having a defined race such as black or white; black and white are easily defined by blood. He contends that Hispanics are united by culture. A positive factor of just being a culture is that you can easily share it with others by recipes, prayer, dance and more. Rodriguez questions why they are as a people associated with the color brown. He concludes that everything turns brown in time. A great example of his on how everything browns in time is the story of Adam and Eve. He focuses on the apple, and how after they eat took a bite of it and tossed it aside, the apple eventually browned.

He openly jokes on how in 1972 President Nixon finally makes creates the fabulous five races and how Hispanic is now an official race. Rodriguez disputes the notion that Hispanics will replace African-Americans as the minority. He refuses to believe that any race can be replaced, they can only be mixed. He goes on to talk about the mixture of races, and interracial couples who create the "brown" people. He defines brown as a tertiary color, because it is derived from more than two colors. Rodriguez assumes that in the year 2020 census it will be the last time they ask for race because it will have become too complicated.

I found his exploration of the color brown to be very interesting and stimulating. I never would have thought a color such as brown could have so much depth before Rodriguez's presentation. I think he did an excellent job as a speaker, and he also picked a creative topic.