A Response to Critical Race Theory: What Does Narrative Tell Us About Resistance?

In Martinez’s text “Critical Race Theory Counterstory as Allegory: A Rhetorical
Trope to Raise Awareness About Arizona’s Ban on Ethnic Studies,” she highlights the way in which people can become undermined by using the allegory of a woman named Rosette Benitez. Rosette Benitez is an esteemed professor and a “pioneer in the field of Biomedical Engineering,” yet her identities as a woman of color have proved that these qualifications are often not enough to put her in the same league as her peers (Martinez 2). This is especially underscored through her relationship with the conservative senator, Russell Borne. Though her project working with immortality is intensely valuable to the society at large, she is under-credited and sought to be excluded from the group that receives the treatment she herself worked so hard to create.

Throughout this story, Benitez faces a lot of bigotry, especially that directed at her by Borne. Many of the initiatives that Borne wanted to put into action were considered “‘anti-chicano,'” and Rosette’s cousin, Alejandra, had a personal vendetta against him as she considered him hugely racist (Martinez 5). Though at first Benitez thought that Alejandra was overreacting, this proved not to be true as Borne opted for wanting to completely dismantle bi-lingual education for Spanish-English speakers, restrict Hispanic/Latinx cultural practices to the home, and to remove immigrant-related history from all textbooks (Martinez 6). Essentially, Borne wanted to erase the voices and identities of Spanish speakers in the United States. At first, Benitez did not take issue with these seemingly radical motions, that was, until Borne took away her voice as well. Not only did Borne refuse to refer to her as “Dr.” and tell her to dumb down her language for a more general audience, Borne also gets all of the press and attention for her ideas regarding immortality, and once they turn her project against her, they then ask her to spearhead the campaign supporting it (Martinez 11).

Martinez uses this narrative to give voice to the real problems that people of color face in everyday life. She proves here through her allegory that people of color are constantly forced to play by the rules of people in more privileged positions and sacrifice their own moral judgments at times in order to get ahead. Not only are they often times spoken over, but they do not receive the proper attention or credit for the work they have done in generating ideas and being innovators and people of influence. Martinez is able to express this frustration through her story because even though Benitez does everything right and doesn’t make waves, something that people in minority groups are told to do all the time, in the end, she is still, for lack of a better term, screwed over.

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: Anti-Racist Activism: Teaching Rhetoric and Writing, 7 Aug. 2013.