4 ms·

Not only that, but there are more than three times as many slaves TODAY as ever were in the transatlantic slave trade that is the only one the US knows exists.

hedora 5y ago
There are more slaves added each year in the US today than at the peak of transatlantic trade: https://www.britannica.com/summary/Transatlantic-Slave-Trade-Timeline https://www.britannica.com/summary/Transatlantic-Slave-Trade... Peak transatlantic: 78,000 new slaves per year. https://thecurrentmsu.com/2021/01/24/prison-labor-americas-secret-workforce/ https://thecurrentmsu.com/2021/01/24/prison-labor-americas-s... Current US forced prison labor population: 1-2.1 million.
- hedora 5y ago
  Wow, lots of replies are trying to downplay the existence ongoing human suffering. A few things to consider: - A disproportionate number of prisoners are African American, and that subset are mostly in prison for crimes that whites simply don't go to prison for (e.g., pot, or coke vs. crack). - US prisoners aren't given nutritionally adequate food for free. They have to buy that at inflated prices from the prison. Once they blow through any savings, their only option (other than malnutrition) is to work for wages that would be illegally low outside of prison. - As during the transatlantic trade, it is straightforward to buy your way out of forced prison labor. - A growing fraction of prisoners consider the current system to be eugenics as well as slavery. The prisons take the majority of men while they are at prime child rearing age. It's well known that any that do manage to have kids will probably be forced into a situation where they can't adequately care for those children (dad goes to prison for driving while black or whatever), making the next generation easy targets for the same scheme. (This is coming from current prisoners, not me.) The other pushback against my comment boils down to "it's legal, so we don't use that word". Similar arguments were made in defense of the transatlantic trade. For instance, black Africans were generally the ones selling slaves, and often used real or imagined criminal records as an excuse. Any objective comparison of the two systems would find that the transatlantic slave trade was roughly as immoral California's three strike law is in practice. You could argue the slave trade was worse because the kids were automatically slaves. In the current system, they're only probably going to prison, but the prisons also aren't paying to raise them. I suggest reading Things Fall Apart if you're unfamiliar with the African side of the slave trade.
- golergka 5y ago
  You may not like the US prison system, but calling it slavery is at the very least intellectually dishonest.
  - andylynch 5y ago
    Why? The Penal labor exemption is the one case where slavery or involuntary servitude is still permitted in the US constitution.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      That's not really correct from any reasonable interpretation.
      - andylynch 5y ago
        I may missing something but it seems plain enough in the thirteenth amendment? “ Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
        hedora 5y ago
        To this point, if US prison labor isn't "slavery" or "involuntary servitude", then removing the words between "except" and "shall" would be noncontroversial. Similarly, if there was political consensus that US companies shouldn't own or hire slaves overseas, then the bit starting with "within" would be easy to remove as well. None of this has had any chance of happening since the thirteenth amendment was passed (not even during BLM). It's pretty clear that a big chunk of the US's leaders are pro-slavery.
    - golergka 5y ago
      Because worrs carry not only direct meanings, but subjective connotations, and most people consider slavery an unjust subjugation of another human being, and think it is immoral by definition, in any circumstances. On the other hand, even most of the people who aren't fans of US prison system still consider the general idea of prison to be just, as the general idea of prison labour as a way to repay society.
- godelski 5y ago
  It's really undermining the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade by comparing it to prison. We wouldn't compare it to indentured servitude, which is much closer to the penal system (monetary debt vs social debt, but both are contacts even if not purely voluntary). The federal government also doesn't have complete ownership over prisoners. Yes, prisoners are mistreated, but what they face isn't at the level of those from the slave trade and so you're effectively diminishing those atrocities.
rnk 5y ago
That feels like a very misleading point. The world population is almost 8 billion, it was almost 1 billion in 1800 (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population), so we decreased slavery as a precentage of the world by a lot, yet the total number of slaves has increased. It's tragic that there is modern slavery, but it was horrible the us did it, it's horrible that people want to minimize and argue we weren't so bad for having it, that the founding father's of the us were mostly slave owners.
- knorker 5y ago
  > That feels like a very misleading point. The world population is almost 8 billion, it was almost 1 billion in 1800 [...] we decreased slavery as a precentage of the world by a lot I appreciate what you're saying, but my point is actually that the US view is that "slavery has been abolished for 150 years" makes for a very US-centric view of history. Which for a 250 year old country is laughably closed minded both backwards and forwards in time. The context of what I said is the parent comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31124042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31124042), specifically related to the US-centricism of the retold statement of "slavery was started by the United States". The story of the world is not that slavery was created for the process of building the US as a powerful nation, and then abolished and now only dealing with the fallout and reparations. But I've heard this understanding many times in the US, to the point where it seems like the mainstream understanding there.

hedora 5y ago

There are more slaves added each year in the US today than at the peak of transatlantic trade: https://www.britannica.com/summary/Transatlantic-Slave-Trade-Timeline https://www.britannica.com/summary/Transatlantic-Slave-Trade... Peak transatlantic: 78,000 new slaves per year. https://thecurrentmsu.com/2021/01/24/prison-labor-americas-secret-workforce/ https://thecurrentmsu.com/2021/01/24/prison-labor-americas-s... Current US forced prison labor population: 1-2.1 million.

hedora 5y ago
Wow, lots of replies are trying to downplay the existence ongoing human suffering. A few things to consider: - A disproportionate number of prisoners are African American, and that subset are mostly in prison for crimes that whites simply don't go to prison for (e.g., pot, or coke vs. crack). - US prisoners aren't given nutritionally adequate food for free. They have to buy that at inflated prices from the prison. Once they blow through any savings, their only option (other than malnutrition) is to work for wages that would be illegally low outside of prison. - As during the transatlantic trade, it is straightforward to buy your way out of forced prison labor. - A growing fraction of prisoners consider the current system to be eugenics as well as slavery. The prisons take the majority of men while they are at prime child rearing age. It's well known that any that do manage to have kids will probably be forced into a situation where they can't adequately care for those children (dad goes to prison for driving while black or whatever), making the next generation easy targets for the same scheme. (This is coming from current prisoners, not me.) The other pushback against my comment boils down to "it's legal, so we don't use that word". Similar arguments were made in defense of the transatlantic trade. For instance, black Africans were generally the ones selling slaves, and often used real or imagined criminal records as an excuse. Any objective comparison of the two systems would find that the transatlantic slave trade was roughly as immoral California's three strike law is in practice. You could argue the slave trade was worse because the kids were automatically slaves. In the current system, they're only probably going to prison, but the prisons also aren't paying to raise them. I suggest reading Things Fall Apart if you're unfamiliar with the African side of the slave trade.
golergka 5y ago
You may not like the US prison system, but calling it slavery is at the very least intellectually dishonest.
- andylynch 5y ago
  Why? The Penal labor exemption is the one case where slavery or involuntary servitude is still permitted in the US constitution.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    That's not really correct from any reasonable interpretation.
    - andylynch 5y ago
      I may missing something but it seems plain enough in the thirteenth amendment? “ Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
      - hedora 5y ago
        To this point, if US prison labor isn't "slavery" or "involuntary servitude", then removing the words between "except" and "shall" would be noncontroversial. Similarly, if there was political consensus that US companies shouldn't own or hire slaves overseas, then the bit starting with "within" would be easy to remove as well. None of this has had any chance of happening since the thirteenth amendment was passed (not even during BLM). It's pretty clear that a big chunk of the US's leaders are pro-slavery.
  - golergka 5y ago
    Because worrs carry not only direct meanings, but subjective connotations, and most people consider slavery an unjust subjugation of another human being, and think it is immoral by definition, in any circumstances. On the other hand, even most of the people who aren't fans of US prison system still consider the general idea of prison to be just, as the general idea of prison labour as a way to repay society.
godelski 5y ago
It's really undermining the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade by comparing it to prison. We wouldn't compare it to indentured servitude, which is much closer to the penal system (monetary debt vs social debt, but both are contacts even if not purely voluntary). The federal government also doesn't have complete ownership over prisoners. Yes, prisoners are mistreated, but what they face isn't at the level of those from the slave trade and so you're effectively diminishing those atrocities.

rnk 5y ago

That feels like a very misleading point. The world population is almost 8 billion, it was almost 1 billion in 1800 (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population), so we decreased slavery as a precentage of the world by a lot, yet the total number of slaves has increased. It's tragic that there is modern slavery, but it was horrible the us did it, it's horrible that people want to minimize and argue we weren't so bad for having it, that the founding father's of the us were mostly slave owners.

knorker 5y ago
> That feels like a very misleading point. The world population is almost 8 billion, it was almost 1 billion in 1800 [...] we decreased slavery as a precentage of the world by a lot I appreciate what you're saying, but my point is actually that the US view is that "slavery has been abolished for 150 years" makes for a very US-centric view of history. Which for a 250 year old country is laughably closed minded both backwards and forwards in time. The context of what I said is the parent comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31124042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31124042), specifically related to the US-centricism of the retold statement of "slavery was started by the United States". The story of the world is not that slavery was created for the process of building the US as a powerful nation, and then abolished and now only dealing with the fallout and reparations. But I've heard this understanding many times in the US, to the point where it seems like the mainstream understanding there.