Many people have prejudices about people that are not a part of the same minority as them. There are especially a lot of prejudices towards American Indians such as an association with drinking problems, poverty, incest, and many other social problems. These are some of the negative prejudices that people might have about American Indians, but you can also find positive prejudices such as their solidarity and their spirituality. In the short story Blankets, written by Sherman Alexie (2009), we meet the prejudices American Indians have towards each other. We also see examples of their solidarity, and how they help each other.
American Indians are part of a community where people help each other, no matter how little they have for themselves. An example of this is when the narrator’s father is cold, and the narrator automatically seeks another Indian. The other Indian says that he thinks it is racist that the narrator expects that just because he is Indian, he has a lot of blankets, which is ironic, because his next line is “But damn if we don’t have a room full of Pendleton blankets”.
The narrator seeks another Indian man because he thinks that he will help him, but also because he thinks that Indian Blankets are better than the ones the whites have. In the text we can see that the father agrees, because the narrator gets another hospital blanket for him, which does not seem to warm the father at all. There is a symbolism about this, because as soon as the father gets an Indian blanket, he gets warm and starts to sing. This shows us that they might be used to living in a reservation, only with Indian people and with Indian things, and because of that, the Indian blanket seems more familiar to the father.
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