Discrimination

3 Pages 849 Words

Discrimination in America


Discrimination in America is often overlooked. In the poem “Today Was a Bad Day Like TB,” I realized that American Indians are being discriminated against and stereotyped as someone their not. This poem makes me think of all the ways in which we as a society discriminate against the American Indians. Every day I see something that in some way discriminates against the American Indian. A big problem is professional sports teams with their logos and mascots, but there are also other things like television that really stereotype the American Indians. Actually, I’m not even going to call them American Indians anymore since they were here before America. Chrystos, in his poem “Today Was a Bad Day Like TB,” makes fair accusations and feels like he is being extremely discriminated against. “Saw young blond hippie boy with a red stone pipe/ My eyes burned him up/ He smiled This is a Sioux pipe he said from his sports car/ Yes I hiss I’m wondering how you got it/ and the name is Lakota not Sioux/ I’ll tell you he said all friendly & liberal as only/ those with no pain can be.”(Chrystos, 2-8). The young hippie boy in the poem doesn’t mean to be disrespectful, but he is. The nerve of that hippie to try and tell Chrystos what something from Chrystos’ heritage is. People are just being too ignorant to realize that Indians in our society are being treated like shit.
In his poem, Chrystos is just asking for some respect for his race of people. He is disgusted that someone like the hippie and the man with a Haida design can be so ignorant to not even know that they are using and wearing sacred things. “Today was a day I wanted to beat up the smirking man wearing/ a pack with a Haida design from Moe’s bookstore/ Listen Moe’s How many Indians do you have working there?/ How much money are you sending the Haida people/ to use their sacred design?�...