What is a friend?

"Regarding themselves as "friends" of the Indians, they believed that the reservations only served to segregate native peoples from white society and postpone their assimilation"(Takaki. 234). What i was confused about was how is it that reservations were used to segregate the Indians from the whites and i thought the purpose was to give them what they deserved? Even though the Native Americans deserve more than just land i thought the whites were looking out for them. My professor responded to me that they were calling them "friends" so there’s a difference. I can see both sides but at the same time what is a friend? A friend in my opinion is someone that won’t ever do what the white did to minorities in the past. How could friend even come out of their mouths when all they did was abuse the Native Americans physically and mentally? There also is a story in the book where the Indians would go to a meeting that was set up for their reservation. They were told to bring their bow and arrow and traditional costume. "He then retreated to the tepee and reemerged wearing "civilized" clothing, symbolizing a crossing from the primitive to the modern world"(Takaki. 235). How the whites would make them change to what they are doing is wrong. Why did they feel like their way was the right way? If only there was true freedom of speech back then.

"Black equates the meaning of bad"

How the whites gave the Irish names that were disrespectful and said they were similar to how blacks were. They felt that any other race that was not "white" was to be downgraded. At some point the whites were calling the Irish “Irish niggers" like it was an insult to be associated or compared to blacks. Many times the white would even try manipulating so they wouldn’t appear so bad after all and blame another race. The Irish were brawling against the blacks at some point. A question I ask myself is why they didn’t see that they have similarities and come together to fight for what was right. What i learned, but haven’t researched yet is that in the past the Europeans would go to Africa and took ideas and made it their own. Pretty much writing their own history and what we learn today can be somewhat false because who would of at the time been able to interfere? No one, and if you tried you were killed and never thought of ever again. When i actually think critically i come to the conclusion that America was founded on many different people's perspective. If you put the past to the present you can see why racial groups act the way they do. Even right or wrong African Americans or any other minority groups were taken advantage of physically and mentally for America to be what it is today. Now that we know what to do will Americans keep attributing or exclude?