Racism And Discrimination Short Story

Comparative Essay: Racism and Discrimination

Born on 1966, Sherman Joseph Alexie, a Native American writer, wrote a short story entitled, “Indian Education,” in which he describes his most racist memorable events that he experienced while in school, from 1st to 12th grade. Alexie’s story is greatly similar with Sumaya Al-Ghazawi’s “Mixed Races, Mixed Feelings” in which a biracial girl tells a story about her racist experiences at school. In both Alexie and Al-Ghazawi’s stories, it can be seen that both withhold the same point of view and theme of racism, however they have different settings, races, and people that discriminate the main characters, Sherman Alexie and Audrey Kibs. Both stories are told in the first point of view, from Alexie and Kibs’s point of views. Alexie

Both stories concentrate on the same theme, racism and misconceptions about a racial group. In Alexie’s story, he was being pushed around and bullied by the other kids in his class, mainly for being, “ugly”(1). Everybody around Alexie was being racist towards him and discriminated his Native American or Indian culture. Even authorities were racists, such as his teacher, "What 's that boy been drinking? I know all about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young”(53). This teacher is assuming that if you 're of Indian culture, you grow around and are influenced to drink at a such young age, due to Alexie fainting in the gym. Also, in Al-Ghazawi’s story there is fixated theme of racism as well. Kibs, as a biracial girl, had many racial encounterments too, and assumptions about her family and black and white culture. She heard her close friends assuming that her father was not a good man, “Her father probably went to jail or something, he’s a bad man...I mean he is black...Her mother probably gave birth to her as a teen”(3-4). After being racist towards her father, assuming he went to jail because he was an African American, they also assumed that her mother gave birth to her at a