In many of the texts we have read this semester, we have seen how the act of creating s narrative can be used to fight discrimination and injustice. Typically, these narratives tend to be personal narratives where someone recounts either their own story or the story of someone they knew dearly. These stories help to show the effects of injustice because they personalize discrimination and often put it in language that is very understandable. The article, “Critical Race Theory Counterstory as Allegory: A Rhetorical Trope to Raise Awareness about Arizona’s Ban on Ethnic Studies”, written by Aja Martinez does not give her narrative in a personal format, instead, she uses an allegory to help to explain the point she is trying to make. Allegories help to explain complex issues in the same ways that personal narratives help to explain issues; they take abstract ideas and ground them in something real. In the case of Martinez’s article, her allegory wasn’t so much “real” as much as it was a dramatization. It put her message in a way that could keep a lay audience intrigued and interested for an entire article. This type of allegorical presentation of the material is a powerful way to write against resistance because it puts it in a way that common people can understand.
I think one of the more powerful ways that Martinez makes her point in this article is by using the main character, Rosette, as part of the opposition to the point she was trying to make in the article. Dr. Rosette is a major supporter of the idea of the American dream and that everyone has the same access to becoming successful but they just have to want it as badly as she did (Martinez 3). In the article, this led her to be a proponent of issues such as affirmative action. In a way, Dr. Rosette becomes the person who American assimilators pictures as what they want people of different ethnic backgrounds to be. This was so powerful because she saw that the work she did and the people that she supported eventually led to the destruction of her people; and in the case of this article, it was the literal erasure of her people as the white immortals live on past her people. It was powerful because even though she was warned by her mother, she didn’t realize what she had helped create until it was too late. In this way, it shows the real-life consequences of supporting legislature such as the anti-ethnic practices in Arizona. I also think that one of the really interesting ways that she makes the story come to life and seem very real is by, in the beginning, having real sources of things that have really happened. In this way, she shows that while the latter part of the story is dramatized, the beginning part is often a real challenge that many people in her position deal with.
I think that this story is trying to make the reader realize that the erasure of cultural studies from schools will have a similar result to this. While it won’t lead to the erasure of heritage through immortals outliving them, it will lead to the erasure of a people by the loss of their history. As Dr. Rosette’s mother says to her, “A people without a history also have no future” (Martinez 6). If people are not exposed to and understand the importance of their heritage then they are much less likely to pass it down to their children and slowly but surely a heritage is lost. Martinez is trying to show the importance of allowing schools to continues to support the teaching of different heritages.
Works Cited
Martinez, Aja Y. “Critical Race Theory Counterstory as Allegory: A Rhetorical Trope to Raise Awareness about Arizona’s Ban on Ethnic Studies.” Across the Disciplines, vol. 10, no. 3, Aug. 2013. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,url&db=eric&AN=EJ1116014&site=eds-live.
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