This article was "Drawing The Color Line", it was chapter 2. The article discussed the starting of racism. The fact that blacks were slaves did not fully disclose the idea of racism. Their were also white slaves, but the problem was that white slaves were given more pride by their owners than black slaves. The Europeans did desire to make the Indians their slaves but fortunately the Indians completely outnumbered the settlers and were much better at living off of the land the the Europeans. To attempt to enslave the Indians the Europeans would have in sued a massacre of their own people. Therefore the blacks were the obvious choice to make slaves. After the blacks were brought all the way from their homes and placed in the tight confines of the slave ships, which embodied spaces barely large enough for coffins and chaining the slaves together while forcing them to sit in slime and their own excrement for the entire journey, the slaves were psychologically and physically unable to resist. Many times the slaves would throw themselves overboard as to save themselves the ongoing torment of being captive on the ships any longer. Once the blacks arrived they were sometimes forced to walk hundreds of miles then caged to be picked from by the white masters. When the slaves were being punished the black slaves were often punished more so than the white. In some cases where the slaves would try to run away and caught the white slave got a somewhat bad punishment while the blacks were horribly mutilated and burned. This was the essence of racism, the unequal treatment of people, even slaves based on their color. The theory was that blacks were always lower than white no matter what class of citizen. Now there was slavery back in the native countries of the slaves which sometimes ended up being much more brutal than what the whites forced the slaves to do but that doesn't make it right. Since the slaves were gaining strength and knowledge they were starting to run away and gain assertiveness. Whites were getting nervous about the slaves causing an uproar and starting a revolt. The whites were not all very scared of this occurrence because the majority of blacks were still scared of their masters and the repercussions of what could happen if they were to leave which is most likely the reason that a huge overturn of government didn't happen.
1) When did slave owners start leinency toward white slaves?
2) Why didnt the slaves comprehend they were greater in numbers?
My reaction to reading this article was somewhat suprised because I never really thought of any slaves getting better treatment, I knew that blacks were treated cruely but I never really thought about how the white slaves were treated any better.