Zitkala's Story Reminded Me of Journal

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And just as similarly, Indian scholars and individuals of merit were replaced in their various positions by White individuals who, ineffective though they may be, had to feed their fair wives. This injustice and arrogance, Zitkala saw, were deeply entrenched characteristics of the White race.

They passed through the Indian schools marveling at the fact that Indian children could actually absorb knowledge:

Many specimens of civilized peoples visited the Indian school. The city folks with canes and eyeglasses, the countrymen with sunburnt cheeks and clumsy feet, ... Both sorts of these Christian palefaces were alike astounded at seeing the children of savage warriors so docile and industrious. (web)

And their response, as Zitkala saw it, was their self-congratulatory attitude that it was they who had persuaded and enabled the Indian to learn, as well as that it was their philanthropy that had accorded a primitive race something of the progress of Western civilization.

Complacency and feelings of superiority have always got the so-called White, Western-race into trouble from their occupation in Middle Eastern countries to invading communist regions, such as Vietnam, whom they felt assured would willingly kow-tow to their ideology and instantly absorb Western values and opinions.

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The problem is that these attitudes are not so much deliberate and intentional as more psychological and, oftentimes, unconscious, implanted there by both socialization and by our limited experience with the world.

The problem, too, is that both 'sides', Western and native Indian, have their perspectives constrained by their particular experiences and enculturation. Zitkala sees a supremacist White individual, just as the white individual sees a primitive Indian. Yet, both are incorrect. Humanity is a wide, heterogeneous race. Some individuals judge and behave in ways that Zitkala describes and some do not; and, likewise, the White person may tend to categorize Indians (or other races, for that matter) forgetting that all people are different and distinct.

Reference

Zitkala-Sa.(1990) An Indian Teacher Among Indians. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=ZitTeac.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all.....

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