Drawing the Color Line

In Zinn Chapter 2: Drawing the Color Line, he concludes that racism is most important in our country, the United States, and the problem of the “color line is still with us” (23).

With the beginning of slavery a development of special racial feelings came about which went with the inferior position of blacks. “The combination of inferior status and derogatory thought we call racism” (23). Because Indians could not be forced into labor blacks became the alternate solution. The slave trade did exist at least fifty years prior to Columbus’ arrival to America, and slavery several centuries before that. Slavery was in Africa and this fact provided Europeans with a “justification” for their own slave trade. However, slaves in Africa had rights in which the slaves brought to America did not receive. Blacks were torn from their land and forced into labor. In America slaves were used for profit and treated as less than humans. Blacks in Africa were often the source of producing slaves from their home countries. Many slaves died before they made it to America. Harsh conditions existed daily for blacks coming to be slaves. “Preconceptions about blackness” were made from first encountering blacks, which were all negative and led to unequal treatment and mistreatment of blacks. Blacks did resist their enslavement. Africans were not an inferior culture, for there was privilege and a kind of feudalism like Europe, one based on agriculture (25). Slavery of blacks was viewed as “right” or “not wrong” and any slave that was caught running away could be punished in “any way seen as fit,” by law. Slave owners had a unique system of control to keep the power and wealth with them. “The system was psychological and physical at the same time” (29). Slaves were taught to “know their place” and they were also punished and taken away from their families. A constant fear due to slave rebellion led to even more harsh conditions for slaves. “Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies. That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order” (30). Therefore all white men were declared superior to any black man and the former discontented whites were given land and privileges in order to feel satisfied and content. All of these events were “historical, not ‘natural’” (30).

Why is the content of this chapter so important to the present? Zinn raises the questions: “How did it start?” How might it end?” and “Is it possible for whites and blacks to live together without hatred?” He asks these in his introductory paragraph referring to the problem of “the color line.” Zinn explains how “the color line” began or was drawn. We need to recognize the existence and know where it came from in order to try to end it. We also must know that we cannot make up for all the harsh treatment blacks endured, but we can try to avoid mistreatment now and in the future.

I can tell white persons get their laziness from their ancestors. Indians were too hard to force to labor for the white men so they found an easier group of people, blacks. I cannot believe that blacks in Africa actually caught other blacks to be sold and taken to America as slaves. The greed and wealth of the slave trade basically erased any morals that people originally had. An interesting and harsh real fact is that 40% of blacks died before making it to the slave ships, and another 20% died that went on the slave ships. Not only were slaves treated harshly, but there were millions more that died in the process of being forced into slavery.