G.I. Sifuentes

“G.I. Jose” is another worth reading essay. It is very organized essay and it gets straight to the point. No story is told and rather it serves as one example that Hispanics encounter in everyday life about how they do feel that they are not part of the whole. Each of the paragraphs are structured in a similar fashion; the author states the problem, over analyzes it, includes other minorities, and then explains why It is discrimination. This enhances his ethos because as English not his only language he will then approach a structured form of organization. He constantly repeats to make up for the lack of detail but that will not discredit the sources that are used and the points that are made. One of the strongest points in the essay is that when he describes the Caucasian soldier to possibly be African-American. In the era of colonialism and through the modern age, Caucasians declared that they were the sophisticated people and that other cultures should imitate them. In the United States this belief has deteriorated but in third world countries it still exists. The United States cannot forget its past and the way it treated African-Americans through its history. Doing so will cause similar mistakes to occur and will make people seem that they do not want to confront facts. It is also not good that education has reserved little about the suffering the Chinese encountered constructing the railroads or the Native Americans and their Trail of Tears. Back to the essay, the fact that a computer image is used rather than an art image or photo signifies that the army may want conformity. Minorities do not exactly want that because forgetting where they came from is making them destroy who they are. Finally going to the requirements to join the army, why would the program assume that illegal immigrants would want to join the army? Ideally the program should not include the information of residency if the only Hispanics applying were already born in the US or are legal residents. Including it proves that a great deal of Hispanics have tried to apply and that Hispanics care about this country, and whether legal or not they appreciate that the US is allowing everyone to pursue the American Dream.