Both during the Revolutionary War and the New Age, playing Indian has enabled white Americans to forge a new identity that is neither white/European nor Indian. The creation of Indianness quite independent of native Indians' direct deposit both grants and deprives Indians of power. Deloria, in Playing Indian, questions the loose meanings of symbols that simultaneously preserve existent power structure and provide a possibility for egalitarianism. While playing a limited role in shaping the meaning of Indianness, Indians find the significance of their concerns and problems weakened by a broad arch of remote symbols. To gain attention and understanding from the wider society, socially different and mystified Indians reach out to white society through the same white Indianness that has resulted in the discrepancy. The similar paradox extends to the damages of Model Minority and Politics of Respectability brought to Asian Americans and African Americans respectively. As symbols and labels carry ambiguous meanings open to wide, individual interpretations, it is necessary and inevitable for each citizen to grapple with the significance/insignificance, powerfulness/powerlessness, and practicality/impracticality of meanings.