> >How do Americans deal with the fact that their country and way of life is a result of driving out the ones who originally lived there?
>
> I look at it like this: You're not responsible for what your ancestors did. It's not your fault that your grandmother did something crazy. It would be stupid for someone to feel guilty because his grandfather killed someone. It's silly for white people to feel guilty because their ancestors kept other races as slaves. I'm not saying what the settlers of America did was OK, I'm saying that the reality is that they did it, and we have to make the best of it. America was not the land of the free in the beginning. It's improved dramatically, but we still have a long way to go.
> Something like that.
>
> -Bo

However, should the government be held responsible? Afterall, the government is unbroken since the time of slavery and injustice*, so is the governement at fault, or when those people ask for recompense, can the government look back and say: "It was a younger, irresponsible government. It is not our fault"?

samhael

*I am not just talking about slavery, which some may argue was broken by the Civil War and a break in Government then**. I am talking also about injustice that was done less than thirty years ago, in Martin Luther King Jr's time, and about the Woman on the Bus.
(I do not remember her name, but it was something we were taught of in 20th C. studies: About an African American Woman who refused to move to the back of the bus when white people got on, and hence was arrested, setting the scene for peaceful demonstration.)

**If I get American History wrong, then understand that I have never formally learnt this, only picked up bits and pieces here and there, mostly by osmosis.
--SD