Don't know where to stick it so posting it here :)

I've been reading up on American history, the time of the English colonists, and how we dealt with the Native Americans, and shortly after building settlements, African slaves.
Quite the appalling history. Of course I already knew and read about it many times before, but it remains a horrifying thing.

I understood that the Indians had a different status during the beginning of the colonists arriving, which is logical, but later they were treated as badly as the Africans.
I'm wondering, who's the worst of these days in general in the US, the African Americans or the Indians? Is there a vast difference in this in the north and south?

Do these 2 groups get along or discriminate each other too?

One more question: do Americans learn at school about this history, and if so, is it then the truth or a glorified version, based on "the whites having the right to do what they did" kind of basis?
Or is the emphasis on this history not there in education, and is it more on your war against Britain etc.?

How exactly are you measuring/defining "the worst?"

And is that question right? It "seems" to be asking "which group do you think is the worst these days, AA's or NA's?"
If you want to go by general stereotypes then I'd say "AA's are the 'worst' since they generally promote (based on media portrayal) a drug and gang culture whereas the NA's generally promote a gambling and reparations/revenge culture."


North, south, east, west, state by state, city by city.
Many vast differences in a lot of things.


IMO this is like asking "The girl scouts and the VFW, do these groups get along or discriminate against each other?"


Yes and no and it depends on what school you go to at what age and which teacher you get.


Yes and no and it depends on what school you go to at what age and which teacher you get.

Ah, I had forgotten about your schooling system with many variables. We have a national erm... program of sorts. Schools still have freedom as to how they teach these things from the program, but they do have to teach them.
You don't have that, I forgot, my bad.

With 'worst off' I mean with how they are treated and regarded by white people. And if it's as normal and easy for them to enroll in school, clubs, jobs for either Afr. Americans and Indians or is one group more easily accepted? I do know Indians can have their own schools etc. but I gather not all will live in reservations.

I suppose the Indian situation is different from the Afr. American one based on the fact that there aren't any in some southern states as they were deported/otherwise removed from those areas. But there will be black people there.
But I'm just curious, looking for some info, and since most here live over there... It's like a first hand account, although I do realize it will depend on the area and so on.

Oh, and the question of how they interact with one another is because they were treated differently at some point by white people so I wonder if there's residual (ill) feelings because of that. On the other hand side a number got involved in those days.

Race issues in the US are very complex with lots of personal opinions. I don't believe most of the discrimination we see today is strictly race based but on what other groups think of the value of the people that represent that race. This is usually based on their personal experiences with people of that race. Think of it as an evaluation of the characteristics of those individuals that represent that race to someone. Are they honest? Have a good work ethic? Not addicts? Not prone to violence? The same characteristics you judge people by who are around you. If your experiences are positive with that racial group, you tend not to discriminate; if those experiences are negative, you tend to consider all people of that group worthless. Large urban areas probably have much more discrimination than less populated areas of the country.

The U.S. is a huge and very diversified country. Yes racism exists. More so in some areas than others. Sexism, religionism, and many other isms, will also be found here, as they will in every other country including yours. And yes we do learn about slavery and what happened to the native Americans in school, although it is somewhat "candy coated" and not really dwelled on. But we are a country of laws and regulations. It's not the 1800's. We do not go around wearing cowboy hats and toting six shooters. At least most of us don't. And we don't lynch black folks for whistling at white girls anymore.

Hummm first of all guess you would have to speak with those that are Native American or black to see if they have ill feelings of how they were treated, for each was a totally different time in History..

Not sure if your aware of it but Whites were not the first ones to own Blacks it was actually a Black Man..

Anthony Johnson ( b. c. 1600 – d. 1670) was a black Angolan known for achieving freedom and wealth in the early 17th-century Colony of Virginia. He was one of the first African American property owners and had his right to legally own a slave recognized by the Virginia courts.

As far as Racism it has been in the US for century's... will it remain most likely, there normally is a bit of racism in all Countries.. Some areas are worse then others and Racism is not only towards Blacks/American Indian it is within all races~~

All I can say that was way before my time and no one I know has ever been a slave.. If they are still holding that against others then they are the ones that need to realize that is the past and it is time to put the past in the past.. And make racism a thing of the past instead of relying on it and blaming others for what happen within a time we had no control over.

But yes it is all taught within our schools what the History is of the USA...

Point of Information: The word slave comes from the name of the Slavic people of Europe.

"Slavs became slaves around the beginning of the ninth century when the Holy Roman Empire tried to stabilize a German-Slav frontier."
- The American Heritage Dictionary



Cowboy hats are still popular in Oklahoma and Texas.
The six-shooter has been replaced with the Beretta 92FS which holds 15 rounds.

Thanks for your feedback!
I know there's isms everywhere, but the situation in the US is unique in the world. Not only do you have the Indians -which would compare to Australia having the Aboriginals- but you also have the African Americans.
I don't think any other country in the world has that situation, and because of that I find it intriguing.
We do of course have coloured people here as well, but not from a slave situation, which makes it different.

There's no judgement in any of it, I taste this in the replies of most, there's just curiosity. I am always interested in a culture and its people, which includes America(ns).
After all, what happened in those early days weren't even the actions of Americans as America didn't exist yet. It were Europeans, which I am as well, and you are descends of, unless your not white of course.

Yes, I read that too, but I don't believe they were slaves, they were ..... servants. (cannot remember the word, hihi. I'd never heard of it. It meant something as 'apprenticeship' but then without much choice).
Slavery was not recognized yet at first and the first Africans that were brought to the Americas were freed after an X amount of years.
If memory serves, the people that man had working for him were also such servants, not slaves.
Which was interesting to read as I had not ever heard of that servant thing before.

And it's not about judging, I'm interested, that's all.

You need to study more. There was also slavery in South America and the Caribbean, which also has "native peoples" who were treated badly.
And the Dutch were heavily involved in the slave trade as were several other European countries.

If I was asking about slavery I would, but I already know that btw. But... I'm not asking about slavery... I'm asking about things in America in this day and age.

https://youtu.be/p4zR9r9olOg

Spend 6 mins on this

I wouldn't base any views on what you might get from the news from this country. Races are being politicized bigtime here.

I'd look at it from an employment status. Right now, our numbers show the lowest unemployment for minorities-ever. In my area, an employer had better pay their workers well. Or get ready to wave bye bye to them, because they will find better paying jobs.

The American indians in my area, I couldn't say anything one way or another about them- except that most are thriving due to the Gambling industry. We have lots of reservation casinos around. And I suspect that a good many blacks get along with the indians, because they gamble quite a bit.

And that's the extent of what I know about them.

Thanks, interesting info! Sounds like the economy is doing well in your area.
I didn't know many African Americans gambled quite the bit.

The main thing that is unfortunately true here, as regards education about the country's past, is that for the vast majority of Americans, it's never taught in any more depth than a cartoon story.

It isn't so much that it glosses over "bad things," as it glosses over EVERYTHING.

Most Americans do NOT know, for example, that the Puritans were NOT coming here for the sake of establishing religious freedom.

Or how there was a strong anti-war movement during EVERY war, even the "good" ones.

But again, it's not so much (anymore) that we teach our children lies, as that we teach them hundreds of years of history in the time it takes to read a chapter in a book, and no more. It HAS to be oversimplified, just to fit in the time allotted to it.

One problem we have all the time, especially in these days of internal rancor, is that lots of people grasp at relatively small true facts, to explain away very big problems or to excuse other very real facts that go the other way. That happens on all sides of the issues involved. It's based on the common misunderstanding (due to NO direct education in the country about how to reason logically) about what contradictory individual facts do and don't mean.

Lost of Americans think that if they can find a single instance where a GENERAL statement isn't true, that they've therefore proven that general statement entirely false. Which isn't correct, by the way. For example, the fact that most Africans who were brought into slavery in the US were NOT captured by American whites from the wilds of Africa (most were captured by other Africans), is sometimes emphasized to try to erase the fact that once here, they met a well established, government sponsored permanent third-class human status, especially in the slave states.

By the way, that label you were looking for, is "indentured servants." The people who were temporarily ALMOST enslaved to a single employer. As a child who knew what dentures were (from TV commercials) it was very confusing to read the word "indentured" I always immediately wondered if they were chained to the machines they used by their wired braces on their teeth or something.

As a side note, during the roughly two centuries of legal slavery in the British Empire, over a hundred thousand Irish men, women and children were shipped to the Carribean and South America as slaves. At one point 70% of the slaves in Venezuela were Irish. Some will try to tell you that these were indentured but indenture doesn't usually involve being burned alive for trying to escape or forced breeding.

Yes, I read that too, but I don't believe they were slaves, they were ..... servants. (cannot remember the word, hihi. I'd never heard of it. It meant something as 'apprenticeship' but then without much choice).


here i think you are referring to indentured servitude,
the very poor would sell service to pay for passage to the new world.
if it worked properly and wasn't abused they would learn a trade thru apprenticeship in the process

Yes, technically they might have been called "indentured" but as I said indenture, onerous as it might have been, didn't involve forced breeding ( eventually banned in the U.S.A because the hybrid vigour and intelligence of the offspring made the slave owners seem feeble and stupid by comparison or being burned alive for trying to escape. It's a little known part of history but even today there are Carribean Islanders with more of an Irish accent than I have.

The earliest written text, cuneiform, from Sumaria and Mesopotamia many thousands of years ago, has laws regarding the treatment of slaves, and their sale. After wars the losers and their families were slaves.
Humans are so nice.