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Short Story The Only Traffic Signal In The Reservation Doesn T Flash Red Anymore

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Short Story: “The Only Traffic Signal in the reservation doesn’t flash red anymore”
Topic: The various ways that Native Americans have been oppressed.

Thesis: Native Americans are the most oppressed minority in the United States. They suffer from horrible living conditions, plagued by poverty, sickness, terrible housing, and alcohol/drugs. Furthermore, society continues to neglect and mistreat Native Americans, and thus they have no way of being able to live a successful life.
P#1 Living conditions Native Americans by far have to endure the worst living conditions in country. For example, on reservations tribal and Federal governments are the largest employers. The Native Americans only have jobs in the public sector which greatly hurts their economy. It hurts their economy because there are too little jobs in the reservations to spread around. An astonishing study shows that unemployment for adults can be as high as sixty percent on some reservations. Most families live off social security, veteran’s, or …show more content…
For example, unemployment rates of Native Americans are over 80% for the simple reason that businesses do not want to hire Native Americans due to stereotypes about their culture. Native Americans have been able to overcome many different obstacles, yet racism is the one obstacle they have not been able to overcome. In the short story “The Only Traffic Signal in the reservation doesn’t flash red anymore” written by Sherman Alexie the main character, Victor, struggles to overcome the challenges that constantly faced Native Americans. It is not the obvious obstacles such as “Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It’s the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn’t take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins” (Alexie 49). The issues caused by the ignorance and bigotry of the society causes Native Americans to have a lack of

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