"We Talk, You Listen"

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the issue of stereotyping of Native Americans in the entertainment world - mainly in Hollywood movies. It looks at how other minority group have also been treated - Hispanics and African Americans and compares these attitudes. It explains how dangerous these stereotypes are and how easily they enter the subconscious.

From the Paper:

"Stereotypes once dominated the public's perception of the Native American. Deloria gives examples of the portrayals of Native Americans in Westerns, World II films, and documentaries. Native Americans were once depicted as strange, having little or no speech, or living in unending poverty. In order to dissect Deloria's arguments into its basic parts, the Toulmin method will be used to see how the arguments are justified. Toulmin described six elements to forming an argument: claims, grounds, warrants, backing, qualifiers and rebuttals, the sequence of which is artificial (Toulmin 25). Thus the first claim that Deloria makes is that "Movie Indians" had completely blocked out the idea of realistic Native Americans. Since Western movies were very popular, they dominated the public's perception of Native Americans. To support the claim, Deloria's ground is that the actors, Jay Silverheels and Ed Ames, portrayed unrealistic Native American characters. The warrant is that stereotypes do not portray real representations of minorities. Since "warrants are not self-validating," further supporting considerations (backings) are used (Toulmin 58). The backing of Deloria's warrant is that the motion pictures portrayed stereotypes of minorities. The rebuttal is that unless the minority groups fight to discontinue the stereotyping, the media's version predominates. Deloria presented the examples of two minority groups that fought against stereotyping which resulted in more realistic portrayals of their race. He writes that Italians suppressed the mobster images in The Untouchables, and Blacks were able to have more realistic images of themselves by actors such as Cosby and Poitier (Deloria 33). The qualifier indicates the strength of the claim. The qualifier for this claim is "completely." Realistic Native Americans "have been completely covered up by movie Indians" (Deloria 33).'

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