Problem:
As Takaki explains in Chapters 2 and 3, when Europeans first encountered Native Americans and Africans, they judged them according to their own standards of who or what was considered "civilized" or "savage." These judgments clearly affected their decisions to further their own mission of settlement and to turn to a system of racial slavery to make these settlements profitable. As the colonies united to shake off British control, these judgments also pitted African Americans and Native Americans for the most part against the colonists, and excluded from the idea of who would be considered an "American."
What characteristics of Native or African society did Europeans use to construct them as an "Other" quite different to themselves? How did they use these judgments to further their own mission of settlement or to establish a system of racial slavery in the colonies?
Why did Americans, who fought so fiercely for their own liberation, insist on the maintenance of racial slavery after the Revolution? How did African Americans and Native Americans try to use the Revolution to advance their own interests? How successful were they?