BingQing Wang 1

BingQing Wang
Professor Malvin
English 114 B
20 May 2016
Always Running: Racism in Immigrants
From ancient stone age to modern society, people have made a tremendous amount of
changes that completed separated people from two ages. However, there is one thing that has
never changed, the progress of passing down their knowledge to the next generation. In another
sense, that is how people improve and change. Book has been the choice of keeping knowledge
for thousands of years and there have been countless talented writers that is shining like the stars
upon the sky. With millions and millions of books we have right now, there is basically two types
of book. One type of story is based on imaginations, like The Lord of the Rings. On the other
hand, we have stories that are based on real life inspirations and experiences, like Luis
Rodriguezs Always Running that is basically his autobiography and talked about racism
towards immigrants, which, as an immigrant myself, has touched me deeply.
The inspiration that motivated Luis Rodriguez to write Always Running is also touchy.
As a poet in Chicago, gang seems like a word that will never hinges to Luis Rodriguez, but
surprisingly, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran gang member in his teenage life and he knew all the
darkness that lives with gang life. That is why he wrote his life down as Always Running after
he noticed that his son joined gang. Luis Rodriguez tried to warn his son with his own life
experience and luckily, as a poet, he could write it down for everyone to see.

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Like the title of his book, he was constantly running, both running physically from crime
scene or the police, and running away from the life that was making him suffer since his
childhood life. No way of getting help from anyone, in fact, his family hated him as well, Luis
chose to help himself. He formed a gang group with couple friends and to him, the gang group
means justice as he did not care about how other people feel about gang group because other
people are the people that looked down on him. Luis now can fight back all the prejudices that
people give to him with the fist of justice. By the age that normal child is still going to school,
Luis was already a veteran member of gang warfare. If we take a step back, we will notice that
everything started with racism that harmed little Luis heart that eventually led him in the gang
life.
In Luis Rodriguezs autobiography, Always Running, the sign of racism is always shown
in the story. As an immigrant from Mexico, Luis never faced equality and justice. He was
constantly targeted and picked on by others at school and everyone, even his teachers, chose to
be blindfolded about it. Most of the people who targeted Luis, do not even know him, they do
not even know what kind of personality he has. Everything was done based on first appearance
and the fact that Luis has brown skin. Sadly, it does not only occur in Luis autobiography, same
type of evidence has always happened in our daily lives, the only difference is obviously or not.
The prejudice that people are giving to immigrants have almost become an instinct that
sometimes they have done it without realizing they are doing it. It sounds comfort that people did
not mean to be racist, but in fact it is more pitiful to immigrants that people are not doing it on
purpose but as a custom.
Some people say that government has already passed various numbers of laws to protect
immigrants. They are right, there are laws that protect immigrant and punish people that are

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being racism, but the laws are only protecting the immigrants, the laws do not change any of
the prejudice that people are showing. People say that the number of racisms have significantly
decreased thanks to government protection, however, I think the completely opposite that the
problem of racisms have never been changed. People are more used to what they do to
immigrants and do not consider them as a sign of racism, it is just a common attitude that
people show to immigrants type of stuff. Similar to animal protection, there is always protect
dogs/cats organizations while we have never seen any type of organization that protects fish or
chicken. People could get sued if they got found out torture a dog/cat and will get fund thousands
of dollars or even get a trip to jail while we kill and eat fish/chicken without any disturbance.
World has never been fair to everyone, but the unfairness is more used to lean on immigrants
side.
In Luis autobiography, the bully and prejudice that he got from others are the cause of
future story. Luis become a gang member because he wants to become a dominant force and seek
for equality using his way. In Always Running, Luis has said I dont mind paying for my
mistakes Sometimes we pay even when there is been no mistake. Just for being who we are
Just for being Mexican. That is all the wrong I have to do. For immigrants, we are being treated
differently from others simply because of our race and skin color. Constantly, an immigrant
walks into a store and the store keeper will communicate with hand expressions and rolling his
eyes back and forth, treats immigrant as a five years old kid that is still in kindergarten. In
college, some professors complain about immigrants are forming their own little groups in the
corner and ignore other classmates. In fact, we all have receive somewhat racism from high
school and we do not want to be treated as second rate and been seen as trouble when put in

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groups with other classmates. Just like whatever we say will be called as Ching Chong Ching
Chong, no matter what we do, we are always wrong since the start.
The United Stated, the freest country in a way, accepts people from all over the globe and
gives all people the opportunity to success they say. In fact, everyone has the opportunity to be
success in everywhere, not only the United States, however, in the United States, while
opportunities are given to all people, some people tend to struggle more for the same treatment
that others are getting. Asians and Mexicans tend to have less success rate when apply for a job
in an USA company. According to Money website, only 5 blacks and 9 Hispanic CEOs at 500
biggest companies. The data tells the truth that although people are talking about equality and
opportunity, the data showed the cruel truth of peoples real thought and racism has always been
there and never being changed.
The problem with modern society is that people know the fact that racism is wrong and it
should be changed, but they never consider themselves as the people that start to change. Just
like how lazy people push their works, I am going to work tomorrow, tomorrows tomorrow so
on so forth. And this is also the reason why most of the charity commercials about change as a
human being has always with something as Be the Generation that starts to change and yet
rarely any people do so. The way to solve the problem hinges on how people see themselves and
racism is just one of the many problems that people are having nowadays.
There is so many people that have faced racism and every one of them have their way of
dealing with it. Either they choose to accept it or fight back and defend their own thoughts of
justice. In the book Always Running, Luis choose to deal with it by himself. He got no helps
from his family, in fact, his family gave a rougher time when he felt down. The gang club that he
formed first with three friends was his first shout to the society about the prejudice that he got

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ever since he got to the land even though he never did anything wrong. The gang life gave him
the freedom to do whatever he likes that he does not have to worry about being treated unfairly
because he will fight for it instead of waiting for people to lay to him, which has reflected a
problem of modern society that people all have different opinions about racism and tend to argue
who is right. Argue causes chaos and fights. We often see news about how foreign traveler get
teased by native citizens which lead to fights and international problems. The autobiography
from Luis is just one of the many racist stories that have happened on this land and it should be
seen and be treated seriously by the society.
The prejudice that native citizens have towards foreigners did not just suddenly appeared,
it was influenced by the people from the 20th century, from generation to generation. It has
already become an instinct like when we talk about bee, we think about honey, in this case, when
they hear about foreign people, they come up with things that their elders told them even though
they have never feel it themselves. This is a problem that people have, if a lot of people say so,
even if you dont know it is right or not, people is going to believe it, because, they all said so, so
it has to be right.
The book Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez, showed us a story of a Mexican
struggling in the cruelness of the society towards immigrants. Things that others could have right
away are never been in Luis hand and eventually pushed him to the dark side and became a gang
member. In modern society, there is much more similar evidence happened in real life that
people are forced to be in the dark. They have taken enough of what they got and have never
been treated fairly. If immigrants have been treated as every other, Luis would not have become a
gang member. However, racism is still happening in our life every day and in order to change,
we have to start to not only spread equality, but also done equality.

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Work Cited
Always Running Luis Rodriguez Chapter 6
Be the Generation that starts the change online commercial
5 blacks and 9 Hispanic CEOs at 500 biggest companies Money