Racial Discrimination: The Good, Bad, or the Ugly
...father after the song was over, ‘my generation of Indian boys ain’t ever had no real war to fight. The first Indians had Custer to fight. My great-grandfather had World War ², my grandfather had World War 2, you had Vietnam. All I have is video games’ (Alexie). This conversation took place between Alexie and his father Shah 3 when they were returning from a basketball game one night and they were listening to a Jimi Hendrix’s song. Alexie tells the reader that the Indians had to face a lot of problems and that there was no way out of it. Most Americans may not know about the Indian rights or about the Indian treaties but they have a soft corner for them and the reason for that is hard to tell. Silko speaks about the immigration problem that persists in the United States and the effects that it has on the people as well as the development of the people. She was born and brought up on the Laguna Pueblo reservation and she describes the people as being very patriotic in spite the way the U.S. government treated the Native Americans in those days. She tries to tell us that they suffered a lot of problems due to racial discrimination and also sometimes due to their accent or sometimes just because of their names and this troubled her a lot and sometimes she feels like they are not treated as other Americans are and which brings about a feeling of hatred which is justified from her point of view. “Silko, right from child hood has had the feeling that she could travel anywhere they want to as proud citizens and this right was denied to them in the early twentieth century”(Silko 619). She tells the reader her views as an American Indian and how she feels. Her feeling about being American Indian was very vivid. Silko knows about the things happening at the borders and the consequences of not co-operating with the border patrol policemen. So related to this she describes a trip from Albuquerque to Tuscan after a promotion of her new novel Almanac of the Dead. It was a long journey and she was very tired after a long day and so she leaned back on her seat and took a small nap. But then she felt that the car was slowing down and she wondered that why the car was slowing down. She was puzzled by the things happening because it was midnight on a long lonely road and who would stop them at this time of the hour on the highway. When she sat straight on her seat she then Shah 4 realized that they were stopped by the Border Patrol cars and another van stopping their way. As mentioned earlier if one does not cooperate with the Border Patrol they could get into trouble so Silko and her friend did exactly what they were told to do by the Border Patrol. They were first surprised because they were hardly stopped before this journey so they both scared and nervous. And Silko had that typical feeling when someone knows that there is trouble coming up ahead. The Border patrol men had the reputation of troubling the people who they think are immigrants or to people on whom they have a doubt. She knows about many incidences when the people were treated badly by the Border Patrol men, and everybody knew what kind of people they were. Silko and her friend were searched thoroughly by the “sniffer dog” (Silko 620-621) as well as by the Border Patrol men and this made her feel odd because not everyone was being stopped by the border patrol men but only those who were not white and this is what was going on at that time, and this Racial discrimination was ruining the life’s of those who were not white Americans but descendants from other countries. The main idea of Silko in sharing this experience with the reader was to make them familiar with the hardships that the people were facing due to racial discrimination and she in her place was absolutely right by the way she reacted. No one had a right to interfere in the matters of other people just because they are not white, this was the message that she wanted to pass on to the people. As stated by Mary McLeod Bethune “If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything . . . that smacks of discrimination or slander”. This shows that racial discrimination was making the life of non-white people in America and they were facing a lot of problems like limited rights Shah 5 and privileges than the Whites and this was protested by many people. Racial discrimination is problem going on all round the world and there are more and more people protesting against it but only a few succeeded. Like Martin Luther King was fighting for the rights of the blacks and succeeded to quite an extent. He protested against the discrimination of the blacks at the time When they were taken to other countries as slaves and were ill treated by the whites. So the immigrants or the non whites and the people who have come from other country were facing a lot of trouble by the border patrol and also by the government. Many people like Martin Luther King showed distressed against this behavior. And as stated earlier people had hard time in dealing this problem, and this can be seen from a poem written by Gary Soto in which he describes a scene where in the Border Patrol raid the factory where in he worked: “At the factory I worked In the f...