It is impossible in six short pages to fully comprehend the attitudes that White Americans had to Native Indians and black Americans in the early centuries of our nation's founding. That was m not my intent. My goal rather, was to illustrate first that although we are often presented a dominant narrative as the narrative, the truth is that in surveying American attitudes towards American Indians and Blacks a single cohesive narrative does not exist. If such a narrative did exist the Native American Seminole tribe of Florida would not exist. The Seminoles were a tri-racial tribe composed of Creek Indians, remainders of smaller tribes, runaway slaves and whites who preferred to live in Indian society (Loewen). The First and Second Seminole wars (1816-18, 1835-42) in which the Seminoles fought against invading Whites who demanded that they surrender their African-American members, were fought not for economic value but to eliminate a refuge for runaway slaves (Loewen). That White Americans were willing to fight for, and be considered brethren to escaped black slaves and their descendents illustrates that the dominant narrative of contempt that Whites had for black was not the only one. Rather, my goal was to illustrate that this negative attitude towards blacks was neither natural, nor instinctual, nor dominant at first, but rather that it came from a cycle that historian Winthrop D. Jordan pointed out once in place was automatically self-reinforcing, and that to "understand where that attitude came from we must not look to black people, but rather at the Englishmen who enslaved them, since the black man was not fully a slave for the Englishmen until they enslaved him (Jordan)."
In illustrating these alternate narratives, my secondary goal was to also to show how perpetuating the meme of a single dominant narrative continues to perpetuate...
American Land President Bush's recent initiatives regarding the environment represent a significant change from the government environmental policies of the past century. Bush, who presents himself as a steward of the environment, believes that conservation and protection are best achieved through a partnership with industry. Instead of relying on strict government regulations, Bush believes that forests would be preserved and rivers would be cleaner if market forces are allowed to run
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Nature of American Revolution Over the period of time, there has been a continuous debate over the nature of American revolution. Historians and scholars of every time have seen the entire movement with their own perspectives and labelled it according to their own thinking. The revolution has been considered social, radical, conservative or simply an independence movement from British Rule due to discontent amongst the masses which was led by thirteen
American Ethnic Literature The Nature of American Ethnic Literature The literary tradition of the United States and the colonies that preceded them is one of the proudest in the world. Even though the United States is relatively young as countries go, literature was born in the states long before the Revolutionary War because many men and women came to America with the ability to add to the growing literary canon. However, most
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