Marginalization and Racial profiling

Isolation and Ethnic Otherness : As Seen Through Alexie and Piercy

Racial profiling is a concept which underscores America 's problematic history of ethnic abuse . The hierarchy which has held Caucasian descendents of European lineage at the top of a pecking with sharp legal , economic and social consequences can be detected in both our laws and our literature . In a discussion which touches upon several works from ethnic `others ' in American society , we can see that the pattern of profiling and marginalization is still very much alive . In Yellow Woman` by leslie Marmon

Silko , `The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven` by Sherman Alexie and `How to Date a Browngirl , Blackgirl Whitegirl , or Halfie` by Junot Diaz , there is evidence that America is made up of a diverse array of ethnic groups which are separated by chasms of cultural difference as well as power distinctions

In `Yellow Woman ' the author tells of the experience of one coming from the southwest native culture , which has experienced a long history of both aggressive racial oppression and cultural genocide . In the experience that the narrator details , during a walk with the mysterious Silva , we see how the lure of the European descended cowboy can serve to undermine the true culture of the American west . Though the story is couched in an erotic tryst between the two characters , the repeated sense of the woman as stepping outside of herself is suggestive of the marginalization of her culture , which she finds herself largely willing to submit . She observes herself to be apart from her true cultural identity when making love to and walking with this man . She contends that I am not Yellow Woman . Because she is from out of time past and I live now and I 've been to school and there are highways and pickup trucks that Yellow Woman never saw (Silko , 1169 ) Here , there is a clear connection which is made between the racial disposition and one 's modernity . Such is to say that the ethnicities of the natives , here , is made to seem almost archaic . This is a sensation that clearly helps to instigate the marginalization of this culture , if not its people directly

Still more insidious , in Alexie 's story , we can see that the saga of Native American suffering is long and difficult to reconcile . The degree and permeation of cruelty visited upon those who first inhabited this great continent would be such that most contemporary recognition of Native Americans takes the specific form of remembrance for their suffering . From the perspective of the average American , it could be roughly deduced that the genocidal behavior of North America 's European colonizers would sufficiently wipe out the so-called `Indians ' in collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven shows facilitated by the manner in which Native Americans have been shunted aside in contemporary society to live in bleak reservation lands

Alexie offers a pastiche of narratives and anecdotes concerning life on a Spokane , Washington reservation , with the...