This article, and many of the comments here, hint at a deeper and more interesting phenomenon: the need to have things be either all good or all bad.  That is, either (A) western civilization is good, and the things it has done were good, and the things it values are good values, etc., or (B) it's bad, and the things it has done were bad, and the things it values are bad values, etc.<p>Once this dichotomy is accepted, <i>any</i> evidence of goodness is proof of A, and <i>any</i> evidence of badness is proof of B.  If A is accepted, then nothing can be bad, and if B is accepted, then nothing can be good.  You get one guy saying "Medicine good!" and another saying "Slavery bad!" and they shout at each other forever.<p>In fact, A and B are both all-or-nothing cognitive distortions.<p>It's quite possible for the Native Americans to have been savages, and the Europeans to have been savages (with better weapons), and for one group of awful people to have murdered another group of awful people.<p>Losing doesn't make someone good, and neither does winning.<p>Having nice things today doesn't mean that genocide 400 years ago was a good idea.<p>Being good doesn't mean we came from good people or entirely good traditions.  Neither does being bad.<p>Having some good traits doesn't mean we have nothing left to learn, or that we can't get better.  In fact, good people can even learn things from bad people, or good cultures can learn things from bad cultures.  Even if modern western culture is, on the net, much better for humans than aboriginal American culture, we can still probably learn a lot from it.<p>There's a lot of richness between these blacks and whites.  Perfection is not required for goodness.