Zinn Chapter 2

1) The author is trying to convince the reader that the black Africans were treated differently because of their culture and that the white males were better because of they were in a better class.

2) The author argues how that the blacks were better slaves because they were both taken from their home lands and from the culture that they knew. He also talked about how the white slaves were treated better than the black slaves because of their skin color. The author argued that "the white and black slaves found themselves with common problems, common work, a common enemy in their master, they behaved toward each other as equals." The author argued about how the slaves would often try to escape from the plantations and depending on their culture they would either run away in groups or by themselves. The author also mentioned how when the African slaves were taught about discipline their masters talked about their blackness making them subordinate to the whites. After that the author talked about how the white servants also helped the black slaves during slave revolts. This caused a fear in the upper class whites that the discontented whites and the black slaves would join to overthrow them.

3) If the upper class were afraid of a revolt from the combination of discontented whites and black slaves, then why did they not find ways to keep the two groups separated from eachother, or ways to have the whites think that they were better than the slaves?
Why did the English use such harsh transportation conditions for transporting the slaves? Why did they not use nicer conditions so that they could have had more black slaves?

4) I think that this article tried to show the difference between the classes instead of the difference in skin color. This showed up strongly when the author started to talk about how the white upperclassmen were afraid that the black slaves and the discontented whites would work together and overthrow the current system. It seemed like the upperclassmen knew the difference between different class levels was stronger than the difference in color yet they did not try much to stop the lower class white and the black slaves from working together. It also seemed like they only tried to stop the blacks from revolting, and they only worried about the white servants when they were working with the black slaves. If the whites did not work with the blacks they were not viewed as threats, so they could have more easily revolted against the white upper class.