A Beneficial Segregation

Forrest Carter's fictional autobiography, The Education of Little Tree, indirectly promotes the institution of segregation, by proposing that such a separation would be beneficial to the state of Native Americans. The author targets white Americans, who are most susceptible to believing and accepting his work as being factual, because he recognizes that this audience is the most oblivious to the true nature of Native Americans. Carter's depiction of this Cherokee family confirms the biases of his audience. Furthermore, he makes it seem that these Native Americans are not only incapable of assimilating into the dominant, white culture, but are unwilling to do so. Though Carter portrays the Indians as ignorant "noble savages", he also attributes an aggressive, if not violent nature that threatens whites who come into contact with the Cherokee family. One comes to the conclusion at the end of the novel that it is better for there to exist two separate societies for the safety of the Cherokee heritage and for the physical safety of a misunderstanding white society.

In order for Carter to be able to convince a certain group, he had to target an audience which either already shared his beliefs or was ignorant of Cherokee culture. This can be inferred from several characteristics of the novel. The dialect characterizes the typical Southern accent. The text is lush with idioms could be easily recognized by a Southerner. A Southerner would share the same biases as the author when it comes to Native Americans.

Carter's depiction of Granpa shows the author's belief that Indians are very ignorant. "To Granpa, whether sheriff, state or federal revenue agent, or politician of any stripe, he called them 'the law,' meaning powerful monsters who had no regard for how folks had to live and get by" (Carter, 16). Granpa doesn't differentiate between the different levels of government and harbors an indiscriminate disdain for all facets of the institution. The reason for this most likely stems not from taxes but his inability to understand government. "Granpa laid his death at the door of the politicians, who, he said, were responsible for just about all the killings in history if you could check up on it" (Carter, 16). Granpa's beliefs make absolutely no sense. It comes out of his own resistance to a society he simply can't understand. To his intended audience, Granpa's resistance would show an inability to assimilate.

The novel also shows the incompetence of its main character, Little Tree. At the beginning of the novel, Little Tree boards a bus and sees a woman wearing make up. He describes here as being "unnatural black all around her eyes and her mouth was all red all over from blood"