Rodriguez’s Chapter Four Summary Essays Examples

Summary and Extra Credit

This chapter revolved around how Rodriguez thought his having a dark complexion changed and defined certain things in or aspects of his life. In one instance in that chapter, for example, upon walking into an accommodation house, he was asked whether he ever went on a vacation trip before. His mother apparently explained to him that having a dark complexion or being a black for that matter had long been a symbol of poverty; perhaps up to a point that only a few number of blacks were known to have ever experienced going for a vacation or staying in a hotel.
He also remembered how his mother kept on reminding him to stay out of the sun so that his complexions would be kept from tanning. In this chapter, it was mostly about her mother’s admonitions about complexion because Rodriguez’s mother already knew how her son’s complexion would affect and define the different aspects of his life, perhaps even his destiny. Having adopted his mother’s admonitions, Rodriguez started to hate his dark skin; or the activities that he was taught may lead to an ever darker one. For example, he distanced himself from activities that may contribute to him having an even darker skin. He never participated in any kind of sports as a child. He also felt as if being dark made him unattractive to people especially to women.
In general, it affected a lot of aspects of his life. Another example would be how he made his decision to accept a friend’s suggestion that he consider a summer construction job while attending at Stanford University. He accepted the offer and when he talked to his father about it, his father knew how hard and apparently darkening and physically draining that construction job in the summer would be. Surprisingly, he enjoyed the short time he spent in doing that job. He knew how hard it was to do manual or physical labor although he realized that the limited amount of time he got exposed to the job also limited the development of his perception about the true nature of physical or manual labor. In general though, it can be said that at a young age, he learned about the different things concerning his complexion, his having a dark skin and its effects on his life, and the real nature of doing manual or physical work—things like his white classmates may not even afford to comprehend at a young age similar to his.

Rodriguez’s Chapter Five Summary

In this chapter, Rodriguez sharply criticized the way how the educational system works. To be more specific, he apparently hated the way how students like him get tagged both in terms of roles and affirmative actions as a minority student. At some point, one can argue that he somewhat felt offended whenever someone unconsciously classified him or them as a minority student perhaps because he feels as if being called one is an insult or society’s way of telling them that they are not normal people and must therefore be segregated from the rest of the normal people, or in his setting’s case, the majority students.
In this chapter, he also affirmed and supported the notion that the black civil rights leaders suggested during the 1960s—the notion that basically suggested that opportunities and access to higher education were not practically accessible to blacks. To be more precise, they were technically accessible but because of the different barriers present, they become practically inaccessible. In relation to his support for that notion, he also explained how that civil rights movement to uphold the rights of the blacks to access higher education opportunities failed as a result of the civil rights leaders’ too much focus on race as the only factor in lack of access to educational opportunities.
According to Rodriguez, race is just one of the many factors that contribute to that unfortunate fact about blacks and their access to educational opportunities and that other factors such as social class also play a key role, if not a bigger one. Being a highly educated man, he managed to escape the psychological barriers that being called a minority student have put in place. He began publishing articles about his reaction to the educational and cultural system in the society that he lived in and as a result, gained public popular attention.
In the end, he still thought that it is not right to categorize someone based on his cultural, racial, or ethnic status, but rather on the things that he achieved, the accomplishments he already made, and the brilliance of his personality. Furthermore, it was also in this chapter where he expressed his disappointment and surprise about the fact that there were some white students who think that they were the ones being oppressed by the minorities because the latter were apparently taking their seats in some postgraduate professional programs when in fact, it was the other way around.