"Drawing the Color Line" Zinn Chapter 2

In this chapter Zinn starts out questioning how racism started and if it is possible for blacks and whites to live together without hatred. Black slaves became the answer for the Virginians that couldn’t force Indians to work for them. If all the slaves were black it made it impossible for them to escape and disappear into the crowd. Zinn argues that African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the cruelest form of slavery in history. Those two elements were the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture and the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred. Zinn also talks about how there was only one fear greater than black rebellion in the new American colonies and that was that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow existing order.

I think Zinn makes it pretty clear in his article that there is no way to live without racism and hatred. I would have to disagree with this because I think if we teach our children that everyone is equal and its wrong to hate people based on how they are different from ourselves then eventually we could all live together in perfect harmony. There may always be hating for other reasons but I truly believe we could eliminate hate on the basis of race.

This article didn’t really have too much of an effect on me. I basically just felt like it was a deep history lesson that most of the time gets left out of books. I also felt it was giving excuses for those that enslaved African Americans and traded them. Saying they were starving and needed food and help on their farms and plantation but I think that’s just an excuse because they could of hired help or at least been more civil with those they had working for them. They didn’t have to treat them like they were property to be beaten and punished if they didn’t do exactly as they were told. They could of let them live and eat freely in payment for them helping out on their farms and plantations. They didn’t have to beat them and treat them as less than humans.