The Harvest Gypsies Analysis

Treating someone poorly based on their ethnicity, physical appearance, or race, is the opposite of what the term “fair” should be. Working their hardest for a decent living, Puerto Ricans endure the sufferings of being mistreated by the society of America for simply being Puerto Rican. In an excerpt from “The Harvest Gypsies”, by John Steinbeck, it describes how “the migrants are needed, and they are hated...that they are ignorant and dirty people, they they are carriers of disease, that they increase the necessity for police and the tax bill for schooling in a community, and that they are allowed to organize they can, simply by refusing to work, wipe out the season’s crops.”(4). The major flaw in all these reasons is that they are all stereotypes of the Puerto Rican community, where they negatively convey the …show more content…
Instead of regarding someone based on a factor that they cannot even alter, work should be judged by the person’s work ethic. If a Puerto Rican migrant is working hard and effectively, then in no way should that person be punished as if they are slacking off or doing no work. Puerto Ricans work hard enough to at least earn an amount of money that will provide their families with an adequate welfare, but they only obtain enough to keep themselves from dying from famine. Any type of labor should provide the worker with at least minimum wage and nothing less in order to fairly reward someone for their effort. Moreover, Steinbeck also depicts how American migrants and Puerto Rican migrants are treated differently by the society in America. “It should be understood that with this new race the old methods of repression, of starvation wages, of jailing, beating, and intimidation are not going to work; these are American people.” (20). Although both Puerto Rican and American migrants are working the same job, Americans do not have to face the cruelties Puerto Ricans have to