Racial Biases in a Gas Station Anonymous College

White people have oppressed Native American populations in America for centuries, and racial biases continue to affect Native Americans today. In the short story The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the Native American narrator encounters racist behavior from the cashier at the gas station he visits at three in the morning. Racism and the power hierarchy it imposes upon Native Americans are central themes in this story, which is represented by the interactions between the white graveyard-shift worker and the Native American narrator.

The white gas station clerk that sells the narrator a Creamsicle makes assumptions about him due to his race, which reveal the clerk’s racial biases against Native Americans. When the narrator first walks into the store, the cashier greets him and asks him, “How are you doing?” The narrator does not respond, instead he recounts, “I gave him a half-wave as I headed back to the freezer. He looked me over so he could describe me to the police later. I knew the look.” The narrator is so used to racist behavior that he has become accustomed to the way that people look at him when they are afraid of him or expecting criminal behavior from him. The cashier then asks, “Can I help you?” The...