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Because if you weren’t born white, you were forced to see differences; or if you weren’t born what they called normal, or if you got injured, then you were left to explore the world of the different.
“Those who can’t learn to appreciate the world’s differences won’t make it. They’ll die.”
Mosca doesn’t understand why white people become uneasy when they see cripples or brain damage; their fear is irrational. They believe another person’s bad luck is contagious no matter how many times they are given scientific facts.
The tribal people here were all very aware that the whites put great store in names. But once the whites had a name for a thing, they seemed unable ever again to recognize the thing itself.
But he had also heard what the great man had said before his death. Guns and knives would not resolve the struggle. He had reminded the people of the prophecies different tribes had. In each version one fact was clear: the world that the whites brought with them would not last. It would be swept away in a giant gust of wind. All they had to do was to wait. It would be only a matter of time.
The ancestors had called Europeans “the orphan people” and had noted that as with orphans taken in by selfish or coldhearted clanspeople, few Europeans had remained whole. They failed to recognize the earth was their mother. Europeans were like their first parents, Adam and Eve, wandering aimlessly because the insane God who had sired them had abandoned them.
