It's sad how little attention contemporary slavery gets versus historical examples of slavery. It would be great if Hollywood made a movie about this (or slavery in the middle east committed by Western allies).
You haven't had the misfortune of having to witness REAL slavery. Real slavery is going on a walk outside the embassy and seeing a 6 year old domestic girl given a LEGAL black eye by the fist of her mistress. And there is nothing you can do about it.
That's when I learned... if you can call the police or get the authorities to intervene... then it's not slavery.
Slavery has got to be the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. Worse than combat even. Because there is nothing you can do. It's just in your face. This was way back in the early 90's... and I still remember the girl look up at me afterwards... a few seconds went by... and a trickle of blood started to come from her nose.
Yeah...
I just went back to the embassy. Certain parts of Africa back then were just not tourist spots.
> "if you can call the police or get the authorities to intervene... then it's not slavery"
there are parts of the US where it's very difficult to get the police to intervene. I work (indirectly) with a group that helps women and children escape from forced polygamy in groups like the FLDS, AUB, Kingston, and similar; in quite a few areas the local police are "true believers" who won't investigate members of their own group, and in fact who will work to bring escapees back to a situation that is fairly described as "slavery".
Only point I wanted to make is that you still have the option of calling in the Feds. There are no Feds in certain places. Or the "Feds" are weak or corrupt. Maybe even both if you are unlucky enough. I'm talking about being in a situation where there is no way out not only for the abused... but even for those who might want to help. There is LITERALLY... no legal recourse. In your work... you have legal avenues outside of the local police. That's my point.
The problem is that embassies usually are protected spaces where the host country police cannot intervene, the embassy personnel is under diplomatic immunity and the "worst" punishment the host country can deliver is declaring the offender a "persona non grata", but this is a diplomatic affront of the highest severity itself.
No one risks international relationships for a child or a woman.
edit, as I see some downvoting: that last sentence was not meant like I'd support that system. It's just a description how the world works.
> That's when I learned... if you can call the police or get the authorities to intervene... then it's not slavery.
Did you read the article? These women are beaten and raped and the police are helping the business owner ensure that the women remain his legal property.
And you missed my point that you can still appeal to authorities.
As I said in another comment... you have the option to call in the Feds. I'm talking about people in situations where they have NO option to call in ANYONE. And not only them. Anyone who wanted to help them... maybe just because they witnessed it and they wanted to put an end to it... that would-be good Samaritan has no recourse either.
No Feds. Central governments could be weak, corrupt or both back then. (They still can come to think of it.)
No police. Many places HAD nonexistent police forces. Things have changed in some parts of Africa... but I don't know about everywhere.
No nothing. And it might not only be Africa. This may happen in parts of Asia or the MidEast region as well. I only WITNESSED it in Africa. There are a lot of people living some horrible lives out there. And they don't have police, or Feds or journalists to write about them.
> "Southern slave codes did make willful killing of a slave illegal in most cases.[8] For example, in 1791 the North Carolina legislature made the willful killing of a slave murder, unless done in resisting or under moderate correction.[8] Historian Lawrence M. Friedman wrote: "Ten Southern codes made it a crime to mistreat a slave. ... Under the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825 (art. 192), if a master was “convicted of cruel treatment,” the judge could order the sale of the mistreated slave, presumably to a better master."[9]"
In theory (and depending on the year and state), slaves in America could also appeal to authorities.
Whether or not such appeals would have been effective are another matter (although it should be noted that these laws were in fact OCCASIONALLY enforced, putting this slightly outside the realm of the purely theoretical (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_Uni...), but you seem to be discussing whether or not such appeals are theoretically allowed.
With that in mind, the shitty logic of this statement should be pretty clear to see:
> "That's when I learned... if you can call the police or get the authorities to intervene... then it's not slavery."
> For example, in 1791 the North Carolina legislature made the willful killing of a slave murder, unless done in resisting or under moderate correction.
My God, but those last three words are creepy. I mean, of course the whole enterprise of slavery is beyond creepy, so much so that it's almost too big to take in; but the idea of 'moderate correction' in the first place, and the shrugging acknowledgement that it might lead to killing, is just 'human-scale' enough for me to experience a truly visceral reaction to it. Ugh.
I agree that the situation you describe is slavery. But I think your definition of slavery is far too narrow. By your argument, a country in which slavery has been banned and law enforcement agents are enforcing this ban, by definition has no slavery.
Victims do not always have the option of appealing to authorities, even in countries like the United States. Victims can be threatened or restrained. And, like any other abusive relationship, that may not even occur to the victim as an option.
Slavery is defined as the treatment on human beings as property, in that people are bought and sold. Whether or not the country condones this practice is irrelevant.
The option of calling the Feds isn't that helpful to an immigrant worker with very little English whose last encounter with law enforcement was being returned to their farm in a squad car with accompanying warnings though. When most people's concerns about immigrants begins and ends with the question of "but they're not going to overstay their visa or take jobs away from local people are they?" and there aren't many people around anyway it's not like they're inundated with options. Journalists don't pop by every day.
I.e. "True slavery means that police/authorities won't intervene". It shows that you don't have a well-defined definition of slavery, or are using one that is too-constrained to the generally-accepted definition of slave/slavery. Here are a few:
[...]a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.
[...]a person who works very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation.
[...]a person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something.
You're citing the oxford dictionary. If you look at the example sentences, the latter two cases are figurative, not literal. Only the first definition refers to literal slavery.
However, I agree there's ambiguity. One of the additional example sentences of the first definition includes a case where the slavery was illegal.
If someone is held as a slave and effectively beyond the reach and help of the law, then it does them little good to know that their situation is technically not tolerated by society.
But citing the latter two definitions of slavery from Oxford is not a good way of making this point. Those definition are incorrect, when referring to literal slavery.
Probably what most people mean when they say slave is something like "a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them, or a person who is illegally held as such yet beyond the recourse of the law"
[Click on "more examples sentences" to see the broader meaning of the definitions cited]
I don't know if that was meant to be flip... but Africa has made a lot of progress since my first introduction to it. There are tour groups snow boarding in the Kalahari today. This would not have been imaginable in an era of famine, Apartheid, and genocides where a million could be killed with no one really raising an alarm about it.
That's not slavery, it's kidnapping, plain and simple. It's illegal and not condoned in any way by the U.S. government or society at large, so comparing it to slavery is a bit hyperbolic. But yes, it still sucks
Are you talking about people born into slavery? Like from slave parents. Because the transition from non slave to slave is some form of kidnapping/trafficking.
The conversion of something to property is almost always a theft of some sort.
There are people in the South Asian sub continent as well as SEAsia where families will sell other members into slavery for varying economic and social reasons. It involves no kidnapping.
Sometimes it's for very menial and manual labor (tea picking, for example, next time someone enjoys some Assam tea) or are later sold into human trafficking rings.
Being illegal or not condoned doesn't make it not slavery. These enterprises often operate in gray regions of the law and find ways to blur the lines between slavery and employment, so it's important not to throw away the label just because it's not officially condoned.
World rejoices as first-worlder solves slavery problem. Millions of slaves around the world now considered free under new definition
Humans held and treated like property will henceforth not be considered slaves if their country has laws against the practice. When asked how he came upon the genius solution to the century-old problem, marknutter nodded at the portrait of former President G.W. Bush hanging above his fireplace. "I was inspired by President Bush... I mean... enhanced interrogation... genius!"
I'm sorry I have a strong aversion to hyperbole, but if you're going to compare the situations outlined in the article to slavery you're going to have to lump a lot of other stuff into the slavery pile as well. It's important to preserve the weight of words lest you further increase people's apathy.
I agree with this 100%. There are a lot of previously useful words that mean almost nothing today. "Slavery" is one. "Rape" is another. I know people think they're doing good when they try to expand the definition like that, but all they're really doing is taking away our capacity to describe things accurately.
This seems like pure uncivil sarcasm, rather than anything constructive. If you think that marknutter's insistence on precise useage of words causes additional harm to those enslaved (by strict or loose definition), or prevents their liberation, then why not explain that rather than sneering at him?
