Drawing the Color Line

Zinn's article points out the great dilemma both whites and blacks faced back in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in America. Whites had a tough time when they settled in trying to convince Indians to do slave work because the whites depended on the Indians to tend the land and produce the food. They could not kill off thousands of Indians, if they did so the whites would have a hard time surviving themselves because they could not produce the food. The whites were not happy about this but they had a solution in order to solve the problem. The solution was African slaves and import them to America. The African slaves were very cheap and easy to direct. You could work them for as many hours as possible. If some died due to exhaustion or they disobeyed their master, some more African slaves were imported. In Virginia, from the year 1700 to 1763 slaves went from 6,000 which was one twelfth the population to 170,000 about half the population. All of this history explains alot when you talk about white and black relations in that time period.
American slavery was much more brutal than African slavery. They would degrade slaves to less than human status with the use of racial hatred. When African slaves were moved to America they found themselves helpless. On the way over they were kept in cages and before that they had to walk thousands of miles being shackled around the neck in order to make it to the coast to get on the boat. This method of using African slaves in America created great profit for the whites. They were able to get the Indians to help them tend and harvest the land. In addition, they used the massive amount of slaves to get all the labor work done. In doing so they were fed very well and survived many a years. This did come to pay a heavy price for the African slaves. Africa it is estimated lost fifty million beings due to the death of slavery by the year 1800.
Did the white settlers do the the right thing by enslaving black Africans in doing the dirty work for them instead of the Indians? The Africans were extremely beneficial to the economy for the white settlers. Was it right? Absolutely not. The slave trade might have been profitable them but it wasn't right. The white settlers used there lives and threw them away as if they were nothing just because of the color of their skin. I can't imagine the kind of pain and agony the African slaves went through. Knowing their lives were basically worthless and being used to make great profits for the settlers. The rules were quite different back them you had a master and a servant. You had to obey your master or you would be punished severely if not be hanged. The way the settlers treated the slaves was despicable. They knew they could perform these abuses because they knew the slaves would carry out any order they would say. All of this shows us why even in today's society the trust factor between whites and blacks is still not quite there yet. We have made great progress in relations between whites and blacks but we still have a ways to go.
This article helped me realize the kind of impact African slaves had on the economic impact of society during that time. Also it gave great details into the treatment of the slaves. The behavior of white settlers was horrible but they justified it though the profit they made. It is shameful they had to use those methods instead of resorting to different more humane ways of working with the Indians and the African slaves.