DRAWING THE COLOR LINE

Zinn Chapter Two- Drawing the Color Line
In this chapter, Johnson begins by stating that “there is not a country in the world history in which racism has been more important for so long a time, as the United States. And the problem of the color line is still with us” (P23). For the rest of the chapter, Zinn tries to answer questions of how this racism and the color line all started and how it might end. He makes these questions more specific by asking whether it is possible for whites and blacks to live together without hatred.
To answer how it all started, Zinn looks and history and states that “if history can help answer these questions, then the beginning of slavery in North America- a continent where we can trace the coming of the first whites and first blacks- might supply at least a few clues” (23). He then directs us to the English colonies where we see the development of slavery into a regular institution and into the normal labor relation of blacks and whites. It is from this institution that a special racial feeling that accompanied the inferior position of blacks in America developed. Zinn states that “everything in the experience of the first white settlers acted as pressure for the enslavement of blacks” (23).
Then Zinn points out the desperation for labor by the Virginians to grow enough food to stay alive. They needed labor to grow enough corn and tobacco for export which they had learned how to grow from the Indians. The profit that came with export of tobacco made the English settlers even more eager to find labor so they could enjoy more profit. This is capitalism at play-wanting cheap labor in order to maximize profit. The settlers could not find this cheap source of labor among the Indians because the “Indians were tough, resourceful, defiant, and at home… as the transplanted Englishmen were not” (24). Zinn states that “blacks were the answer” (24) to the labor problem and “it was natural to consider imported blacks as slaves even if the institution of slavery would not be regularized and legalized for several decades” (24). He points out the start of regular trade in slaves to the time when Portuguese took ten African blacks to Lisbon.
One might wonder why enslavement of the blacks was successful and not with the Indians. Zinn states that the helplessness of the African blacks made enslavement easier. He also points out that the blacks in their enslavement had to be “torn from their land and culture” (25) unlike the Indians who were in their own land. Looking at whether the African culture was inferior and prone to destruction, Zinn points out that the African civilization was advanced in its own way as that of Europe. Certain African kingdoms like that of Timbuktu and Mali were already stable and organized at a time when European states were just beginning to develop into modern nations. Zinn cites instances that show that these African Kingdoms were built on laws based on communal living, an attribute which the slaves brought along with. Slavery also existed in Africa, but Zinn points out two elements of the American slavery that makes it more cruel in history: “the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave” (25-26). Different forms of cruelty were seen in especially how slaves were transported and the conditions under which they worked.
In resistance to this cruelty, imported black men and women occasionally organized insurrection but most often responded by running away, engaging in sabotage, and slowdowns. From time to time, whites were involved in the slave resistance. Zinn cites the formation of a conspiracy to rebel and gain freedom by collaborations of white servants and black slaves in Gloucester County, Virginia. These endeavors were betrayed and ended with executions. However, there was a difference in the punishment that would be given to blacks and whites for the same offence committed.
Zinn concludes this chapter by stating that through the above examples, “we see a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave traders and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration” (30). The elements of this web, Zinn states, “are historical, not natural”
The possibility to disentangle and dismantle this web, Zinn states that is under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction.
While reading this chapter, I was stunned at how cruel human beings can be against each other all for the sole purpose of gaining more status, and material possession. The number of blacks that died as they were being transported to the plantations really shocked me. I didn’t know they were that large-about fifty million. I was also surprised that some blacks and whites actually tried to come together to escape. I appreciate that Zinn points this out because most articles I have read do not.
The question I ask out of all this is: should whites be totally blamed for the enslavement of blacks? I somehow feel not all the blame should be labeled against whites because blacks themselves were also involved in the trade. Blacks sold their fellow blacks as slaves. Well, one might argue that this was perpetuated by whites. I totally agree with that, but believe that the trade would not have been easy for whites if the blacks did not facilitate it.