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Richard Rodriguez: An Interview
This is a powerful observation about how the white poor are treated in this country. You can read the complete interview at the url below.
JO SCOTT-COE
Do you feel that poverty is becoming, in a way, the new race? That is, do you
think the hostility toward the poor has overtaken racism in some ways, or in some
places?
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ
I do, in a way. I have always felt that the white poor are deliberately ignored in this country. Their exclusion from affirmative action is the most overt sign of a
middle-class diffidence. I’ve always felt an affinity for the white poor, and the
writers I connected to growing up—especially the English writers, such as D. H.
Lawrence—were working-class kids. Lawrence would never have been considered a
minority in this country. But his father was a coal miner.
JO SCOTT-COE
How do you see white working-class kids functioning as a minority in America
today?
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ
Take, for example, Bill Clinton. During the Clinton Administration, just after
he had been impeached, somebody in the White House speechwriting office
phoned me to ask if I had any suggestions about what the president might say in
his State of the Union address. I thought it was a joke, of course, so I hung up. But
the guy called back. He said, “We’re serious, and you can call me at the White
House at this number if you need to.” So I called, and sure enough, it was the White
House. I sent Clinton a memo in which I said, “Why don’t you ever talk about being
a loser?” I didn’t talk about this in the letter, but Clinton’s mother was five times
married—
JO SCOTT-COE
And beaten by at least one husband?
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ
Yes, and Clinton had to stand between strange men and his mother many times.
He knows the stench of alcohol on men’s breath on Saturday nights in America. Yet,
I told him in my memo, you never talk about losing. You’re always focused on the
ascent. Here you are, humiliated by Congress, why don’t you talk about what it’s like
to press your face against the glass, to look in at America from the outside? It’s a
brilliant opportunity to connect with losers. Well, of course, my memo met with
silence from Pennsylvania Avenue. A true story. . . .I believe these things very deeply. I’m always struck by how many people don’t 'make it' in this country. I hear a lot of stories, quiet stories, about people who
work really hard and get nowhere. Or stories of downward mobility. A famous writer
sits next to me at a banquet and tells me about his son who lives on food stamps.
The American story doesn’t go in just one direction.
I think maybe the reason we feel this hostility for the white poor is that so many
middle-class white families feel themselves just at the edge of poverty, that they
could slip at any time. So they try to distance themselves from the poor, to say there
could never be a connection. But I don’t want to be a part of that. And then it’s the
problem of our Puritanism, our civic religion that glorifies success as God-given, a
sign of election. Which makes poverty, of course, a moral failing.
— Richard Rodriguez and Jo Scott-Coe
Narrative Magazine
2006-08-01
http://www.narrativemagazine.com/content/html/365/toc
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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