Race and Ethnicity

Fair-skinned, nontanning individuals whou could utilize the weakest and briefest doses of sunlight, especially during the winter, to synthetize vitamin D were strongly favoured by natural selection.Cultural selection also played a role. It seems likely that whenever people had to decide which infants to nourish and which to neglect, the advantage would go to those with lighter skin, experience having shown that such individuals tended to grow up to be taller, stronger, and healthier than their darker siblings. Example: Vitamin D helps absorm calcium. Without it, there are deceises such as rickets caused by calcium deficiency (if diet failed too)

Human skin owns its colour to melanin, whose primary function is to protect the skin from being damaged by the sun's UV rays. The more melanin the skin gets, the darker the skin, and the lower the risk of cancer or sunburn. Hypervitaminosis D is a potentially fatal condition that result from the body producing too much vitamin D (melanin hinders vitamin D synthesis). In the tropics, dark skin colour helps protect the body against this condition. Another example: equatorial latitudes (vitamin D and calcium plenty from diet and sun, but skin cancer an issue, therefore darker skin)

Equatorial populations

Skin follows a strategy of changing colours with the seasons (lighter in the winter).

Fodd containing vitamin D and calcium, regional cloud cover during the winter, amount of clothing worn. Ex. Eskimos and diet rich in vitamin D and calcium from seal liver.

Society selects those cultural traits that will enhance the survival of particular civilization

The process by which nature 'selects' the best adapted varieties for survival. Ex Europe and fairly-skinned individuals

1. Race allows social inequality to be created and maintained 2. Slavery leads to racism (is it maybe opposite, it just makes it worse, though)

Chapter 2, "Drawing the Color Line" addresses the early enslavement of Africans and servitude of poor British people in the Thirteen Colonies (North A. at the end of 17th century, established by Great Britain). Zinn writes of the methods by which he says racism was artificially created in order to enforce the economic system. He argues that racism is not natural because there are recorded instances of camaraderie and cooperation between black slaves and white servants in escaping from and in opposing their subjugation.Chapter 2 opens in 1619, with the arrival of a slave ship in North America. Zinn sketches the colonists' need for labor, which was the immediate engine driving their willingness to hold slaves, and the larger European cultural attitudes that made slavery tenable (odbranjiv). He compares slavery in Europe and Africa, and he touches on the nature of African civilization. Zinn moves back and forth through time by documenting the massive importation of slaves ("10 to 15 million" imported by 1800 -first by Dutch) and analyzing what this enslavement meant. Zinn addresses the marked racial bias in the seventeenth century (evidenced by laws against black/white fraternization) and comments on the many ways blacks resisted slavery: everything from dodging work to outright rebellion. Finally, Zinn documents how period power elites assembled "an intricate and powerful system of control" that kept resistant slaves in their place and prevented poor white laborers from rebelling with them. - African civilization advanced (weaving, ceramics, sculpture, stable and organized kingdoms) - African feudalism different since the communal spirit and tribla life was an important part of it). -In Africa the idea of private property was a strange one, and thefts were punished with various degrees of servitude.

1.Defenders of slavery argued that slavery had existed throughout history and was the natural state of mankind. The Greeks had slaves, the Romans had slaves etc, even in Africa there was slavery (But, as Davidson points out, the "slaves" of Africa were more like the serfs of Europe, Serfs rented land from lords, but feudalism was a mutual obligation, not brutal ownership, in Africa slaves could marry and own property) 2. Slavery was, according to this argument, a good thing for the enslaved. John C. Calhoun said, "Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually." 3. redemption and salvation possible for their ancestor's sin (therefore black colour as collective punishment)

1. at the beginning starving settlers, desperate for labour, to grow corn for subsistence and to grow tobacco for export. 2. slave traders 3. most of all, slave planters and power ellite 4. tobacco, cottong etc industry (colonies in general)

Some historian believe so, they believe that the first black in Virginia were considered as servants, like the white indentured servants brought from Europe. But the strong probability is that, even if they were listed as such, they were viewed as being different from white servants, were treated differently, and in fact were slaves.

A labourer under contract to an employer for some period of time, usually 7 years, in exchange for food, travel and accomodations.

1. the quest for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture and 2. reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred (white master vs. black slave)

2 of every 5 blacks died during their march to the coast and later on during ship transport 1 out of 3