Howard Zinn’s thesis in “Drawing the Color Line” is that the practice of slavery in the Americas and elsewhere was not of nature, as he states, “The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not “natural.”

Zinn explains the historical facts of how slavery began in America. While the slavetrade was first dominated by the Dutch, it was followed by the English domination and by 1800 almost fifteen million blacks had been brought to the Americas as slaves. He explains that it became almost impossible for the new settlers in America to use the Indians as slaves due to them being on their own land, they were hard to capture, and they outnumbered the English at first. Many settlers in the New World then turned to blacks for slavery because they needed labor and, since Indians and whites were too difficult to manage, blacks would be easiest. Also, the Africans were torn from their land and culture and forced into a place that was totally different then their own. While this slavery was also practiced in Africa, it was far less cruel than that of Americans due to their [the Americans] desire of limitless profit from the faster production of agriculture and the fact that the slaves were reduced to a status less than human by the notion that whites were better than blacks.

While I believe Zinn’s point that slavery was not “natural,” it is hard not to say that a lot of it had to do with the mere fact that blacks were of a different race. Was it really just a historical occurrence and one not based on the nature of one’s being? I understand that the whites, both the higher class and servants, were punished as well if they assisted in freeing any slaves or having any close ties to the blacks; however, it is clear that they did not receive the same cruel treatment as did the Africans. A sign of this was when Virginia’s ruling class offered white servants numerous benefits once their indentured time was up, including land and money, just to reiterate the fact that blacks were inferior to whites. The reason of enslaving blacks because they were easy to capture and that whites needed laborers turned into the mistreatment of the Africans merely due to their color and them being “inferior” to whites.

I found Zinn’s article interesting because it gave a unique perspective of slavery from a view that seemed to be unbiased. Zinn explained some reasons why the English eventually brought over slaves as well as how they were treated. He included the treatment of whites as well, based on their class as well as their wrongdoings. He made it seem as if the English did not know any better after some time, that it just became habit for them to be cruel to anyone not like them.