Richard finally was able to overcome the fact that he was a Mexican worker and considered himself just a worker. Race didn't matter. I think he had learned something with this job, because throughout his childhood, and even throughout high school, he was often ashamed of his heritage and he was ashamed to be considered a minority in society. This job finally let him be okay with who he was, and although he didn't stay with that job for very long he learned something from it and from the other co-workers. I think that must have been pretty amazing for him.
The word minority is sometimes used to sound like a bad thing. A minority isn't really a bad thing at all. There are minorities everywhere. An example might be when Congress votes on a bill. If 25 people vote yes and 35 people vote no then the 25 people that voted yes become the minorities. So a minority is not always necessarily a bad thing. It is hard for me to quite understand how he felt about all of the trouble he had dealing with being underprivileged. The reason I say underprivileged is because there may be times that were hard for him simply because of his race and heritage. His first days of school he knew only 50 English words. Knowing only 50 words must have been extremely tough for him to be able to concentrate in school because he probably didn't understand everything at times. I think his book did a good job of portraying to the reader how it actually was for him and his family. He gives examples of how his mother would talk about going to the grocery store. She sometimes didn't find any Spanish speaking workers so it made it hard for her when she needed help. She probably had to point to pictures or try to pronounce things in English just to get the workers to understand what it was she wanted. Richard probably encountered some similar things while he was still young and while he still didn't know how to speak English very well yet.