Zinn Chapter 2

In chapter two of Zinn, “Drawing the Color Line,” he tries to explain to the reader how and why exactly racism began in the United States. He says that racism wasn’t something that came naturally, yet a choice made by a group of people. One idea Zinn seemed to express was that racism wasn’t around until slavery, and that before then it didn’t really exist.

Zinn, being a very opinionated man, started the chapter with his opinion that the U.S has made racism more of a problem than any other country has. In the attempt to show how racism started, Zinn points his finger to slavery. English settlers, were lazy, and decided that they could have somebody do the hard labor for them rather than them do it themselves. To do this, they tried to enslave those who were readily available, the Native Americans, and they ended up being too hard to control. The Native Americans knew the area much better than the settlers and were able to escape into the wilderness never to be found again. Because of this, they then turned to the alternative. They began to enslave the Africans, whom were seen as hard workers, and strong. The English saw this as a possible better alternative, because the Africans had no knowledge of the land and therefore were less able to escape and hide. Also now that they were in America, they had to adjust to new “culture” and learn a new language to survive. This is something that they could not do by themselves, thus they had to depend on the English to survive.
Slavery in Africa, according to Zinn, was much different than that in the Americas. In Africa, the slaves were treated merely as “surfs”. Still seen as people and beings with rights, the slavery was not nearly as cruel. Where, in America, the slaves were seen as a lesser people who had lesser rights than the whites who were also enslaved. These blacks were given harsher punishments and were shown almost no respect at all. As uprisings of blacks against their treatments began, some of the whites began to get involved as well. As this was seen as a threat to the whites, the state of Virginia passes laws that gave rights to whites that were not given to blacks. Thus making the even the poor whites feel more superior to the black men. In conclusion, Zinn listed a few things that he believed were the keys to racism in the Americas. Things such as: superior status of even the poor whites over the black men, the unfair treatments and punishments given to black men, and never to forget the money and will for the planters and slave owners to earn money at all costs.

How do these key ideas that Zinn named relate to why it may still be around today? I think that the ideas only fit in some people. Only people who are still agreeing with the ideas let them stay around. But to controdict myself, it may be around in everyone in the will to make money. Money has always been a large part of our country, and many may still do anything just to make a little money. Maybe no longer in the idea of selling slaves and making people work for free, but in the idea that many may be paid less than fair, just for someone “superior” to make a little money.

Most of what Zinn had spoken of in this chapter had been previously obtained information. His information was presented maybe a little more clearly, or maybe even a little more biased than what I had known before, but was still made known to the reader. I’ve known that these things had occurred in our history, but it still bothers me to think that people were treated so unfairly, and cruel to the point that the effects of it are still around today.