Zinn Ch 2

Howard Zinn’s chapter “Drawing the Color Line” shows how racism began and how it became such a huge problem in America. When setting up civilization in America the settlers found the conditions harsh, and struggled greatly to farm crops needed to stay alive. Many of the settlers died and they decided help was needed. This help didn’t come voluntarily however and a race would be oppressed into slavery. Black slaves were captured in African and were shipped to America. These slave ships were covered with the blood of Africans and blacks were packed in to harsh conditions. Conditions that were so bad they left one out of every three Africans dead some of which chose suicide by drowning.
The troubles of this race would continue off the boats as they were forced to obey the rule of their white masters. Africans were treated terribly by the whites that wished to cement their superiority they needed to keep the blacks oppressed. This is where the racism we still see today stemmed from. Some slaves chose to fight back against the belief that blacks were inferior and not a true human being. Some slaves did this unnoticed by doing things like slowing down production while others fought with actual violence. Some Africans ran off together in groups and formed small villages in the wilderness while others ran off alone and tried to pass as free.
When this country was founded it was on the basis that hard work and freedom will result in success and it is on their own shoulders to work their way to the top. Yet when colonizing America settlers ran into troubles they captured others and forced them to do their work for the new colonists. The slavery of a race due to a difference in color is far for the ideas of freedom, and hard work aren’t suppose to consist of another working for you. The people responsible for the slavery of Africans are also responsible for the racism these people are subjected to hundreds of years later today. The treatment blacks received was no less than torture from the way they were shipped to America, the way they were treated in America, or the fact they were enslaved.
In the reading Zinn states some whites joined the black in uprisings but none were very successful and many were squashed by betrayal amongst the group. Maybe if more people stood up for what was right and saw these men as human beings not slaves then the racism we know today wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t have been subjected to hate groups like the KKK or segregation. Racism is a problem that should have been stopper a long time ago and this many years later still needs a solution.