Absolutely True Diary Essay

We live in a society today who uses our weaknesses as a weapon to oppress us into conforming to what our society generally wants: to benefit ourselves from someone else’s loss. From the ability to hold power are others oppressed and treated with unjust, and at the same time, from the lack of information supplied are others being oppressed. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” revealed several things from the realities of the Native American reservations, to the distortions of what media and stories impose on our views towards race and Native Americans, as well as the information that we are being misinformed about. It shows how much we have fallen to our oppressors.

All throughout the “Absolutely True Diary,” Arnold Spirt Junior,

In our sociohierchial nation where we place emphasis on categorizing people by broad groups such as “Blacks,” “Whites,” “Latino/Hispanics” and so on, do we neglect that hidden under those generalized categories are many people from different cultures and ethnicities. Sadly illustrated in the book is when Ted, the billionaire, assumes that the dancer outfit he had held on for years, with its intricate designs, appeared to belong to the Spokane Tribe. However, he assumed and grouped those qualities under one category in which he neglected that Native Americans were made up of several different tribes that each had their own identity in their looks, and culture-wear. Ted took for granted that these designs were not all the same thing and in fact, could have expressed a different culture such as the Sioux, or Oglala. The Absolutely True Diary informs us that there are vast differences and several divisions of ethnicities within each of our categorized races today. It shows us that “black” means an array of cultures, tribes, and ethnicities, such as how black could mean Nigerian, Congolese, or from the Hutu and Tutsi tribe, just as how Indians could have been Spokane, Sioux, Oglala, Lakotah, and many