Dubord 1 Kierstin Dubord Mr.

Newman English 101: Rhetoric 5 November 2013 Hypocrisy During this time and culture, society expects one to act and live a certain way based on gender, cultural background, or simply just by the color of ones skin. Stereotyping is everywhere, its hard to get away from. Its just as easy to be the victim of it or the aggressor. A prime example of these stereotypes can be found in Sherman Alexie's short story Flight Patterns. The main character, William, is constantly being stereotyped for the color of his skin and the background of his culture. Even when others arent stereotyping William, he is stereotyping himself. But William isn't the only one to experience stereotyping in the story. William embodies the type of person he tries hard not to be; he spends his whole life being stereotyped, but in turn he stereotypes everyone else. One of the main ideas to the story is the presence of stereotypes. William is constantly stereotyped for the color of his skin. Since he is a frequent flyer after the 9/11 attacks in New York, people in airports are always scouting him out because he has brown skin. Alexie puts this into the story to show the struggles that Native Americans have trying to assimilate into white American culture. They are always thought to be somebody else, whether it be Muslim or Hispanic, it is hard for people to see that they are actually Native American. Because of this it is hard for Americans to be accepting of William if they already have this pre-conceived notion of who he is. Although it bothers William that people think poorly of him because of his skin color, he still in turn scanned the airports and airplanes for little brown guys (52). William was just as

Dubord 2 afraid as anybody else in the airport. He even admits to the taxi cab driver on the way to the airport, I was scared of little brown guysI started looking around for big white guys because I figured theyd be undercover cops, right? (58). William is the biggest of hypocrites. He felt uncomfortable around little brown guys, yet he was a little brown guy himself. This hypocrisy shown in the text highlights just how uncomfortable William is in the story. He uses stereotyping to make himself feel better about losing his culture in the American society. He has become just like the Americans in what they do. Not only does William stereotype little brown guys at the airport, he also stereotypes the taxi cab driver, Fekadu, who takes him to the airport. Upon first looking at Fekadu, William has already assumed where hes from based on his accent. It was obviously not American, William describes it as a colonial cocktail of American English, formal British, and French sibilants added to the base of what must have been North African (53). William was sure the taxi cab driver was not from America based on his accent, yet later on in the ride William racially profiles the man based off of American stereotypes. After Fekadu offers the information that hes from Ethiopia, William takes a closer look at him and notices a scar running down his face. He immediately thinks, A black man with a violent history (55), which is exactly the type of stereotyping people do to William, but that doesnt stop him from doing it to others. William feels as if people dont give him a chance because all they see is his brown skin and dark hair and dark eyes and they assume the worst based off of that. This is exactly what he does with Fekadu, except the only difference is that William isnt scared of Fekadu like others are scared of him. After stereotyping Fekadu the way he does, William quickly reprimands himself for thinking those thoughts, which he often does in the story. William feels guilty racially profiling Fekadu like that, but he still cant help himself from thinking it. The author is trying to show the

Dubord 3 readers that William knows this is immorally wrong, which is why he reprimands himself for thinking that about Fekadu, but William cant help it when everyone around him is stereotyping him to be something hes not. Living in a society that bases a lot of issues on profiling people, William has just become the same as his community.

Dubord 4 Work Cited Alexie, Sherman. "Flight Patterns." 2003. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. 9th ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005. 49-61. Print.