Historical Slavery
Glenn Beck: Progressives Are Like Slave Owners
Published October 22, 2009 @ 07:47AM PT
I hate to write about Glenn Beck. You see, I usually prefer to pretend I live in a sane, sensible world where people like Glenn Beck are pitied and indulged, as opposed to aired on television. However, I just couldn't pass up to over-the-top comedic value in the latest phlegm nugget of wisdom he coughed up: progressives are like slave owners because they both want people to be dependent on them.
I shouldn't need to point out that Beck's theory follows the same thread of logic as assuming that a gun and a dishwasher can be used interchangeably because they are both things you load. Slave owners, historically and today, don't want people to be dependent on them. They want people to make them buckets and buckets of money. And slave owners don't ask people to make them buckets of money -- they force them to do it. Progressives don't want people to be dependent on them either. They want a healthy economy where people have the resources they need to be self-sufficient. Saying that progressives are like slave-owners is like saying pizza is like cuddling or the Black Sea is like Pride and Prejudice.
Beck's searing, if nonsensical, criticism of progressives stems from a story about several thousand people in Detroit who stood in line to receive stimulus checks which turned out to be rumor. Beck mocks them for their false hope in this recession, and then calls the progressives who would support them "slave owners." Most of the people who stood in those lines were African-American, and some of them descended from actual slaves. For many them, the legacy of slavery still affects their everyday life. So please, Beck, don't pull worthless analogies out of your butt and fling them, like a monkey with excess poo, over the airwaves. You're insulting people for whom the reality of slavery as a past and present phenomenon is real and painful. And you're surprising no one by continuing to be a dogmatic, myopic, jerk.
Oh, and be careful when you load your dishwasher tonight. You wouldn't want to get two such different things confused again.
Ten Times More Slaves Now Than At Peak of Trans-Atlantic Trade
Published October 12, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Yesterday, New York Times columnist and human trafficking activist Nicholas Kristof tweeted a statistic that stopped me cold. According to his new book, Half the Sky, there are currently 800,000 people trafficked each year. At the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, 80,000 people were sold each year. Why are there so many more slaves now that ever before if slavery is supposedly illegal?
There are a number of conditions that have exacerbated and increased human trafficking since slavery was abolished, including globalization, an increased wealth gap, population booms, and international conflicts. But despite all exacerbating or mitigating conditions, there is one central reason there are ten times more slaves today than at the height of the legal trade: today's slaves are cheaper. Slavery has always been a human rights violation motivated by economics. During the period of legal chattel slavery in the U.S., buying and owning a slave was a huge investment -- costing upwards of $30,000 in today's dollars. Because the human beings enslaved in the 19th century were legally property, slave owners had a stake in preventing them from being stolen, running away, or getting sick and dying. Make no mistake -- this care for slaves was not motivated by compassion for most, but rather by the same impulses that motivate someone to take care of an expensive car or computer.
Today's slaves, on the other hand, can be bought for as little as a few hundred dollars, often. Some traffickers even manage to acquire slaves for free, by forcing, threatening, or tricking them into servitude. For example, a man who brings his cousin to the U.S. from Sierra Leone to work as a domestic servant might invest $1500 in her airfare to the U.S., but will make that cost up easily by the work she is then forced to do. Because the slaves are cheaper, the profit margins are higher for the traffickers, and more criminal entrepreneurs are enticed into the industry, fueling the cycle.
So why are today's slaves cheaper? And more importantly, is there anything we can do to change the market? Today's slaves are cheaper for a number of the reasons mentioned above; today, there are more poor and vulnerable people in the world and exploiting them is easier. In economic terms, the demand for slaves has been steady, but the supply has increased and so the price has dropped. But we can change that by ending demand and making human trafficking a much more costly operation than it is right now. One way to do that is by going after traffickers and imposing strict penalties for those who get caught. Another way is to have no tolerance for companies that use slave labor in the manufacture of goods. Even if you're not a slave or a slave owner or seller, you can affect the market price of slavery by what you buy and what legislation you support.
It's a little depressing to think that though slavery has been illegal for years, there are now ten times as many slaves as there were when it was legal. But it's uplifting to know that you can do something about it. We can see the actual end of slavery in our lifetimes, as allusive as it's been all these years.
Photo credit: Bobster855
What Michelle Obama's Slave Ancestor Means for Modern-Day Abolitionists
Published October 09, 2009 @ 10:00AM PT
Her name was Melvinia. As a teen, she gave birth to a child fathered by a white man whose identity is unknown. In 1852, could this young girl, born into chattel slavery in the U.S. and valued at $475 at the age of six, ever contemplate that her great-great-great-granddaughter would be the First Lady of the United States? Probably not. But that is what happened. Ever since Michelle Obama moved into the White House, America has been fascinated with her ancestral ties to slavery. But what does Melvinia mean for modern-day abolitionists?
Melvinia's experience as a slave in 19th century America was not unique. She didn't seem to know who her parents were. As a child, she was transferred from her first owner's South Carolina estate to his son-in-law's Georgia home. The method of transfer? She was bequeathed in his will, right alongside tablecloths and cattle. As a teenager she was impregnated by an anonymous white man under anonymous circumstances. The nature of that particular union may have been lost to history, but the chances that the sex was less-than-consensual are pretty good. And it's not like she would have had a choice, either way. Yep, pretty typical 19th century slave experience.
But what does that mean for us today? With the exception of being legally owned and transferred via a will, Melvinia's experience would not be unusual if she were a modern-day slave. Torn from her home, forced to work under threat of violence, denied compensation, sexually assaulted -- these are all violations inflicted upon human trafficking victims in the United States and around the world in 2009. We'd like to think that with Michelle Obama as First Lady, we can forget Melvinia, or at least chalk her up to a sad quirk of history. But there are millions of Melvinias in the world today, and not all of them will be remembered because their descendants grew up to live on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Michelle Obama is a highly visible reminder not only of slavery as a historical reality, but also of the hope and possibility of rising out of the suffering and degradation that evil institution and subsequent oppressions created for African-Americans in the U.S. But she has a rare opportunity to also be a reminder that Melvinia is still with us. She is cleaning her master's house and picking her master's tomatoes and having sex with her master's customers. She is still a slave, though in an institution of slavery that has evolved and changed over the past 150 years. Melvinia may be the First Lady's past, but she is our present. And unless we take action now, she is our future.
Michelle Obama's triumph does not erase the reality of historical or modern-day slavery and the lives it destroys. But it is an indication of a society willing to address that reality and move toward a more equal and just future for all people -- a future without slaves or masters.
Photo credit: Rusty Darbonne
What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?
Published July 04, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
The Potomac River is a time machine. The city of Washington which surrounds it is a modern city, dripping with Starbucks cold, tall buildings, but the Potomac belongs to an earlier era. When you sit on its banks and watch the water ripple, it's impossible not to feel nostalgic patriotism. Close your eyes and you can see the boats carrying goods to trade and hear the musket fire of a distant revolution and feel connected to those people who died to make the country possible. The Potomac reminds me why I love America.
Yet every 4th of July, I am also reminded of what I don't love about America and what I'd like to change: that over 150 years after it was officially abolished, we still have slaves in America. In 1852, Fredrick Douglas issued his famous (if slightly depressing and anti-American at times) speech What To a Slave is the 4th of July. The following is an excerpt:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Perhaps today, one could argue, America is rivaled and surpassed in cruelty, in slavery, and in oppression. But the fact remains that America is better than slavery. It has been and will continue to be. But we must be the ones who make slavery history.
This 4th of July, you may be celebrating. Great. Have fun and be safe. But also consider taking a few moments to take action in the name of freedom and to help us achieve Mr. Douglas' dream and the dream of so many others: an America untainted by slavery.
This 4th of July, shouldn't we all be free?
