> 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 think what I find difficult is that I hear Americans claiming their freedom and country to be rightfully theirs, when it's a historical fact that all that was once taken from the natives.

I find it hard to put into words what I feel about this, so I'll recap a story from a friend of mine.

My friend was attending school at some university up in New York State discussing some sort of thing you discuss when you're a student in college. The conversation turned to racial relations and one student -- black -- told my white friend, "You owe me." The black man was owed apologies by the white man for years of injustice, for his ancestors being slaves, for all of that.

What happened, happened. There is no way to change that.

Here is what is important to understand. If, generations ago, a slave trader didn't come to Africa and forcibly break up tribes and transport them to America, the man's ancestors wouldn't have ever met, wouldn't have ever have had children, they wouldn't have had children, and so on and so on until this man was born in a nation where he could go to school, where he could be anything, anything he wanted to be. If his ancestors didn't have such a horrible thing happen to them, the current generation wouldn't have everything that it has today. Hell, the current generation wouldn't even exist.

Is there any way to undo what happened to that man's ancestors? No. If my ancestors owned that man's, should I be forced to give him money or make other forms of reparation? I did nothing to this man. If anything, it could be seen as my forefathers making it possible to allow this man to attend medical school, to allow him to have a career that could allow him to make a six-figure salary. If it weren't for my theoretical slave-owning great-great-grandfather, this man wouldn't even exist.

How do I deal with the fact that Europeans drove out people who were living here before they arrived? I realize it happened in the past and that there is nothing that can change that.

There's more, but that's basically it. What happened, happened. The important thing now is how we act.

-FP