What is Zinn's main argument in Chapter 2 of A People's History of the United States?

In
chapter 2 of , entitled "Drawing the Color Line,"argues that the
first black Americans, though technically considered servants, were likely treated like slaves
from the time they were first brought to Virginia in 1619. Zinn also asserts that the
circumstances in Jamestown agitated in the direction of the rapid institutionalization of racism
and race-based slavery. Food was scarce, but the white settlers were not inclined to work and
could not entirely enslave the local native population. They needed someone to farm corn for
their subsistence and to grow tobacco, which they had begun to plant in 1617, for export. The
black Africans had already been treated as slaves by the Spaniards and the Dutch for about one
hundred years, so there was a precedent for enslaving blacks. Furthermore, the English settlers
were in desperate straits and likely embarrassed at their inability to use their proclaimed
"cultural superiority" to their material...

href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/peoples-history-of-the-united-states">https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/peoples-history-o...