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Author pushes Americans to immerse themselves in other cultures

Just when you're feeling good about being an American, Richard Rodriguez makes you doubt

Just when you're feeling good about being an American, Richard Rodriguez makes you doubt:

We are the loneliest people on earth. We are "always starting support groups for one thing or another." We seek a pharmaceutical or narcotic refuge for every imaginable malady, physical or mental. We are self-centered, vainglorious.

Feeling melancholic? Don't worry. Rodriguez says: "Americans are the most generous, creative, idealistic people on earth. We are a beacon of hope in a world blinded by - even shackled - by tradition."

These thoughts appeared to emerge from a handsome, charismatic 62-year-old Mexican intellectual - except it so happens that Rodriguez defines himself "more Irish than Mexican" and pays great homage to a platoon of Irish nuns from the Sisters of Mercy order in Sacramento.

Rodriguez was at his contrasting, contradictory zenith in late October before an audience of 200 gathered at Tucson's El Conquistador Hotel for the Arizona Humanities Council's 16th Annual Lorraine W. Frank Lecture. The annual presentation coincided with a celebration of National Humanities Month.

The author of several seminal works on race relations and ethnicity, Rodriguez is a regular on national news programs and writes for a number of publications. He is homosexual, anti-bilingual education and pro-cultural integration.

In his speech, Rodriguez pleaded for Americans to overcome self-imposed ignorance. "Learn a language not your own. Read a work by an author from another country. Don't understand the Black experience? Read Malcom X. Afraid of Islam? Go read the Koran," he said.

The author believes that, while American children know more than ever before, they don't know the significance of what they know. "One of our biggest challenges is to teach children to be aware of what they already know," he said.