English
22/01/2015
White Man Bringin’ Us Down
Sherman Alexie's story Flight Patterns is the fictional account of a young aboriginal man named William on his way to work, whom encounters an Ethiopian man named Fekadu. The story engages with cultural stereotype from a direct, first-person perspective of this aboriginal man living in the United States of America. Through this first-person view the reader is able to experience a stream of consciousness type narrative which helps put stereotyping in perspective. Stereotyping is inevitable and is not at all restricted to minorities, which is made readily evident by the numerous cultural references in the text; it is a natural function of the human brain to stereotype others.
Before Alexie has not yet expended an entire paragraph before he puts forth some stereotypical humor, informing the reader that "[William is] the bemused and slightly embarrassed owner of a twenty-first-century American mind" (266). This statement is a little bit more subtle than some of the remarks William and Fekadu will make later on, but is ironically a very key point in the whole tale. The white man made up 77.7% of the U.S. population census in 2012 (USCB line 9) and it is safe to say that when the topic of cultural stereotyping comes up, most people’s minds picture the stereotyping of ethnic minorities by the white man. That is precisely why William thinking this thought is so brilliant, is that the thought itself is a jest and a stereotype at the white man. Let us assume that by the term American, it is white-American what is implied. Now allow me to pull the referenced sentence apart for you: the twenty-first-century American mind is a reference to the mind of an American at a point in the information age when knowledge is considered absolute power. The typical American will rack up massive amounts of data in its head drawing parallels between knowledge and power. The problem with this is that the types of knowledge the American is putting away up there is completely useless crap! It memorizes the names of singer-songwriters, the names of the wives of those sing-songwriters, what those singer-songwriters like to eat for breakfast et cetera; the type of information which the only potential application of would be to participate in the television show Jeopardy (in other words there is no true application at all for this information). The average American is so busy concerning itself with useless scraps of information like this that it is all too often topics of very real concern and potential benefit are entirely overlooked. Bemused is how William refers to this state of mind. Bemused is to be “lost in thought; preoccupied” (Bemused adj. 2) and it is with this word in particular that William sends a politically-correct zinger out at the jaw of the great white man. This is also why William feels “slightly embarrassed” (Alexie 266), because as a proud aboriginal man he expects himself to be above the sways of the impressionable white oppressor. As it would appear however, it is easier than one might think to fall victim to such an error of ways.
As William continues along his morning’s journey he is joined by a black cab driver named Fekadu. In the back of the cab William dialogues internally, reflecting on his many trips to the airport he concludes that about three quarters of all his trips through security he has been stopped for a ‘random’ security check (273). This clearly calls into question exactly how random such checkpoints are. William wishes to continue dwelling upon life while he is driven to the airport but Fekadu insists on engaging William in polite conversation. Throughout the course of the two men’s discussion it becomes apparent that racism and cultural stereotypes are hardly contained within the opinions of the white majority. Referring to shortly after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, William tells Fekadu “I was scared of little brown guys . . . I started looking around for big white guys because I figured they’d be undercover cops” (277). What the reader is exposed to within this statement is two-fold: a minority (aboriginal William) stereotyping a minority (little brown guys, known to refer to Arabic men) as well as a minority (again William) stereotyping a (or the rather) majority (big white guys). This stereotype of the typical large Caucasian male presents wonderful evidence to support the claim that stereotyping is inevitable. Too often it is that stereotyping is assumed to be negative and derogatory; positive, inflating assumptions of another’s character are just as common, if not more so, and are just as dangerous. Consider being a large white man, a pacifist and conservative Christian with a family: now imagine that while on a plane being hi-jacked that all the passengers hide behind you and push you towards the terrorist to stop him (or her). The other passengers’ stereotype of you as someone whom can and will protect them has not only been grossly misplaced, yet has also left you in a very dangerous situation.
Now in this short narrative by Sherman Alexie, there appears to have been captured an absolute array of stereotyping. Non-white people stereotyping white people, white people stereotyping non-white people, and non-white people stereotyping non-white people. It seems no ethnicity is safe from others’ judgments about them; nor is any ethnicity exempt from making judgments about others. It is simply unavoidable that the human brain will take sensory information (especially sight in these cases) and use that information to draw conclusions (assumptive conclusions) about what it is experiencing.
Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. “Flight Patterns.” Lisa Chalykoff et al. The Broadview Introduction to Literature. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2013. 265-282. Print.
No eds. State And County QuickFacts. The U.S. Census Bureau, 03/12/2014. Web. 22/01/2015. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
"bemused." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 22 Jan. 2015. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bemused>.
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