Chapter 2- Drawing the Colorline

Zinn the author of this story is trying to ask a question. He wants to know after all the skepticism that has been going on for hundreds of years between the different races, mainly whites and blacks; will there ever be a means of peace in America “the land of the free”?
Throughout this chapter Zinn shows how and where the racism began and how it has continued and progress over the years. The racism started because the Englishmen could not take the Indians as slaves because they Indians were on their home land and took extreme measures to escape all means of slavery by the white man. The Indians also outnumbered the whites and while whites had the superior fire power killing the Indians would only put them in a worse position because of how valuable the Indians knowledge was on the land and maintaining a stable way of life. On the other hand, African Americans that were brought over did not out number the whites and also were not on homeland, so therefore they did not have the strength and numbers to fight back against the whites. Slavery had already been accepted as a normal practice by the Europeans in the early 1600’s, so continuing to use African Americans as slaves in America was only tradition. One way to look at things is that some poor African Americans that were lower on the economy scale were already being used as slaves by their own people. Although, African Americans were already being used and captured as slaves they still didn’t give up hope the ran away and took other measures to avoid the tortures of being a slave.
The question I would raise would be did this image of slavery forever set the way we judge and look at people, especially different races. The answer that some people would have would be yes there is no change and there is never going to be. But, other Americans fought for the change of this historical vision. That is why we had a revolutionary war between the north and the south. All because of slavery and how the African Americans were being treated with inequality. In the world we live in today no one person could get away with having African Americans as slave labor. The world is changing ever so slowly and it’s moving in a better direction.
This reading was nothing new to me. I knew all about the slave trade and slave labor that went on in the early American History. We’ve heard numerous stories and were given multiple examples on the daily routines that went on the 1600s and so on. I believe that it should have been different with more equality but I already got my wish when the Civil War happened and the abolishment of slaves began.