ENGL argument analysis

Bully

Boston, Massachusetts, 1987

In the school auditorium,  the Theodore Roosevelt statue  is nostalgic  5for the Spanish-American War,  each fist lonely for a saber,  or the reins of anguish-eyed horses,  or a podium to clatter with speeches  glorying in the malaria of conquest.  But now the Roosevelt school  10is pronounced Hernández.  Puerto Rico has invaded Roosevelt  with its army of Spanish-singing children  in the hallways,  brown children devouring  15the stockpiles of the cafeteria,  children painting Taáno ancestors  that leap naked across murals.  Roosevelt is surrounded  20by all the faces  he ever shoved in eugenic spite  and cursed as mongrels, skin of one race,  hair and cheekbones of another.  Once Marines tramped  from the newsreel of his imagination;  25now children plot to spray graffiti  in parrot-brilliant colors across the Victorian mustache  and monocle.