Black And White Servants example essay topic

The Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn is a book about American history. It covers the period with the start of the country with Columbus and ends with the beginning of Clintons presidency. The book provides a lot of information about peculiar events and personalities which played key role in the history of our country. Drawing the Color Line is the second chapter in the book by Howard Zinn. In this chapter the author analyzes the importance of racism and the origins of racism in the United States.

According to Zinn, racism has been of a great importance for a long time in our country and sometimes it had played key role in the creation of attitudes, which have influenced the history. The problem of the color line even exists today. This color line was drawn in the XVII century, when first black slaves were brought to Virginia. Today many historians believe that the first Africans who came to North America in 1619 had an equal status with white servants.

Howard Zinn provides evidence in his book that it was actually true. White and black servants had a lot in common. Moreover, black and white servants worked and often lived together, which resulted into creation of friendships and families. Such alliances between servants of different origins sometimes became against the interests of ruling elite; therefore, the laws that would separate servants were created. These laws discouraged interaction between people from different societies and backgrounds, which resulted into division of working class. Such a situation was beneficial for elite, because it allowed it to exploit servants.

However, it has negatively affected next generations. The color line has been drawn and the feelings of superiority and resentment started to exist between the groups. Historians believe that African servants in Virginian were considered as servants (just like write servants who came from Europe), but not as slaves. Nevertheless, even though they were considered to be servants, Africans were viewed as being different from whites.

This created an unequal treatment, which eventually caused Africans to be slaves. Along with it developed that special racial feeling sometimes it could be hatred, or contempt, or pity, or patronization, which together accompanied the inferior position of Africans in America for the next 350 years that combination of inferior status and derogatory is called racism. The Virginians needed desperately labor, because in the beginning of XVII century they grew and exported tobacco to Europe. Since growing tobacco was very profitable, the Virginians wanted to produce as much of it as possible. However, where would they find labor? White servants had not yet been brought over in sufficient quantity.

It would not be profitable to pay people for working in agriculture. Moreover, white servants did not come out of slavery they were coming to America to start new life. The Virginians could not force Indians to work for them since Indians were very tough, defiant and actually they were at home in the woods of Virginia. African slaves appeared to be the best way to meet the demand in labor. Soon it became natural to consider imported blacks as slaves despite the fact that the institution of slavery would not be regularized and legalized for several decades. Blacks were also helpless, which made their enslavement much easier.

The whites lived in their own European culture, while the blacks had been torn from their land and culture, and were forced to live in the atmosphere where the heritage of language, dress, family relations, was bit by bit wiped out except for odd cases when blacks could hold on to by sheer persistence. Howard Zinn in his book views socialism as a solution to all problems including racism. It seems as if through the entire book, the years had changed, those in power had changed, but the conditions have not yet. The oppression still existed and the color line was still visible despite the years of changes. The chapter Drawing a Color Line in the book The Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn, is very informative and definitely enlightening. The history part is the main concern of the book, which means that the book is educational.

It provides an explanation to many problems that we are facing today.