A black American writer, J. Saunders Redding, describes the arrival of a ship in North America in the year 1619: Sails furled, flag lowered on the rounded stern, rode the tide from the sea. It was a strange ship indeed, by all accounts, a scary ship, a mysterious ship. No one knows whether he was a trader, privateer or warship. Through its bulwarks black-mouthed cannons yawned. The flag it flew was Dutch; its crew is heterogeneous. Its port of call, an English settlement, Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia. She came, traded and shortly after left. Probably no ship in modern history has carried a more portentous cargo. His cargo? Twenty slaves. There is no country in world history where racism has been more prominent, for as long, as the United States. And the problem of the “color line,” as WEB Du Bois says, is still present. So it's more than a purely historical question to ask: how does it begin? – and an even more pressing question: how could it end? Or, to put it differently: Is it possible for blacks and whites to live together without hatred? If history can help answer these questions, then the beginnings of slavery in North America—a continent where we can trace the advent of the first whites and the first blacks—could provide at least some clues. Some historians think that those first blacks in Virginia were considered serfs, like the white indentured servants brought from Europe. But the strong probability is that, even if they were listed as "servants" (a category more familiar to the English), they were seen as different from white servants, were treated differently, and were indeed slaves. In any case, slavery quickly transformed into a regular institution, in that... middle of paper... better characteristics - a community spirit, more kindness in law and punishment - still existed. And since the lords did not have the weapons that European lords had, they could not demand obedience as easily. In his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson contrasts the law of the Congo in the early 16th century with the law of Portugal and England. In those European countries, where the idea of ​​private property was becoming powerful, theft was punished brutally. In England, as late as 1740, a child could be hanged for stealing a cotton rag. But in Congo community life persisted, the idea of ​​private property was strange, and theft was punished with fines or varying degrees of servitude. A Congolese leader, informed of Portuguese legal codes, once jokingly asked a Portuguese man: "What is the penalty in Portugal for those who put their feet on the ground?"?"