Nada El Sawy's 'Always Running': Article Analysis

Iman Albarakat, April 16th 2017, Memo #6: Difference & Inequality in Everyday Life

We are taught that no two people are alike. But why is it that we are socialized to see a certain race or gender as the superior one? In society we see each other as white or other. We have been socialized to see white as the superior race, that if you aren’t white, you are lacking and should strive to achieve “whiteness”. It may seem harsh to assume that but it has been deeply ingrained into our society that we don’t even see it anymore. In Wildman & Davis’ article about privilege, they speak about what is privilege and who has privilege. They also speak about the way privilege is maintained. In Nada El Sawy’s article, she talks about due to her race/ religion she is categorized in a certain group. Nada lacks the privilege of being a white Christian American. In “Always Running”, Rodriguez speaks about he was raised in California where knowing English was mainstream but when he was in grade school, he didn’t have that privilege, and for that he suffered at school.

Rodriguez spoke about how his mother was often times discriminated against by white people because of the fact that she looked Mexican. She and her children were at a park wanted to sit at a table that was previously occupied by a white woman, and when the white woman came back and saw Rodriguez’s mother sitting at the table she demanded that she move, but since Rodriguez’s mother did not speak English the white woman immediately exclaimed “Go back to your country!”. Rodriguez’s mother didn’t have the privilege of knowing English, but the not all states have English as their official language. In the US the official languages are Spanish, French and