Chapter 2: Drawing the Color Line
According to Howard Zinn’s assessment in Chapter 2, European powers and invaders required human capital to address the labor shortage. Therefore the subjugation of various people in the Americas was necessary to establish their vision of a new-world society. Enslaving blacks was easy, convenient, and the situation rife in Africa in terms of the black leaders casually ‘selling’ other humans. The ruthless practice, which came to be known as the ‘slave trade’ burgeoned and became a uniquely ‘peculiar’ and established institution. Zinn uses primary historical evidence to prove his point. Zinn records the words of one slave trader, “The state of slavery, among these wild barbarous people, as we esteem them, is much milder than in our colonies” (“Chapter Two Drawing the Color Line”). The comparison was drawn in discussing the people of Sierra Leone as distinguished from West Indian black-slave plantations in the Americas. Also, this chapter capitalizes on the matter that for the first time in human history slavery became permanently attached to ‘being black.’ Rhetoric permeated the historical conversation. Slavery’s proponents declared a monolithic pronouncement that all black people were inferior.
Many Americans are not aware that black scholar, W.E.B. DuBois declared that the great problem of the U.S. 20th century would be the ‘problem’ of the color line. Zinn argues “There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important” noting the severe antagonism that would develop between blacks and whites, as a result from slavery abuses. Chapter 2 is a virtual expression of how black slavery emerged to embrace and propagate a color hatred by white society, perpetuating a lie of servitude due to an innate inferiority. These initial standards in early America provide fodder for much historical argumentation, which Zinn rightfully acknowledges. Zinn agrees that the very first black slaves in Virginia were not ‘officially’ slaves – but rather servants. But Zinn explains that the blacks were treated differently from their white counterparts.
Chapter 2 essentially describes the seedlings and beginnings of slavery in America, and how it morphed into a legal institution. Zinn cites a journal from the ‘House of Burgesses of Virginia’ which describes early life in the 1619 Virginian settlement. Many had no food. Many lived in dirt-like cave holes, and the document states they were “driven through insufferable hunger to eat those things which nature most abhorred,” such as human flesh and human waste material (“Chapter Two Drawing the Color Line”). Zinn continues to try and visualize a history that is literally told from the peoples’ point of view. Zinn also discusses how in that early multi-cultural society everyone knew their place, and understood their expected roles. For example, Zinn notes that blacks, being “forcibly transported to Jamestown” and sold as inanimate objects made it very easy to enslave them. Zinn correctly assesses the worst plight of blacks. Their situation imposed a status of the lowest-of-the-low. The reason is because they had lost everything. Language was stripped from them. Culture was stripped from them. Families were separated forever, and of course – they now had no land.
Zinn explains that the Indians at least had the advantage of still remaining on their land. Zinn relates the disgraceful and horrendous plight of the black captives as “forced into a situation where the heritage of language, dress, custom, family relations, was bit by bit obliterated,” except for tiny remnants they could cling to (“Chapter Two Drawing the Color Line”). Zinn has simply, and skillfully, laid the foundation of how slavery placed a permanent blight of struggle upon the black peoples while simultaneously America would prosper. Zinn displays a refreshing honesty in review of the situation of forced labor, in which blacks receive no compensation for their labor. Such labor formed the U.S. economic foundation while stimulating hatred towards all things black, effectively demonizing everything associated with the color ‘black.’ Finally, Zinn emphasizes that the blacks fought vehemently against the perpetrators, every step along the way. Zinn observes slave resistance, with evidence from a scholar named Gerald Mullin: “these men became killers, arsonists, and insurrectionists” (“Chapter Two Drawing the Color Line”). In other words, although the black slaves could not win against the brutally organized situation of the white colonists, they viciously and energetically combatted against it with all their might.
Works Cited
“Chapter 2: Drawing the Color Line.” Historyisaweapon. History is a Weapon – A People’s
History of the United States by Howard Zinn, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
