Then came the good ol� 13th Amendment. �Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their Jurisdiction.�
Wait just one second. Does this mean that slavery was never really �abolished�? To the legal layman here is an announcement: Slavery is in perfect present tense time legal and in existence in the U. S., as long as you are convicted of a crime. For the first time since the 1830�s there are more than 2.3 million men, women and children living their lives in a condition of state sponsored slavery or involuntary servitude.
The Civil War was fought for economic reasons surrounding the taxation of black slaves owned by southern planters who had amassed vast fortunes as well as an international trade advantage over their northern competitors. In 1857, Hinton Rowan Helper, authored, �The Impending Crisis�, which attacked the institution of slavery on moral grounds. He argued that slavery was a �disgrace to civilization� and pointed towards the sadistic, demonic behavior of the overseers and slave masters. The �peculiar� institution had been defended by the slave holders on a humanitarian exercise argument. The �Massahs� and �Miss Anns� were casted as great paternal caretakers of illiterate, subhuman, dark-skinned beast of burden they referred to as �NIGGERS�. (Later advanced to Negroes)
According to �Louisiana: A study in Diversity�, in 1860 50% of the people living in the state were slaves and 100% of those slaves were Black. It is also of interest to note that slave ownership in �the boot� was not the exclusive privilege of the whites, in New Orleans alone approximately 750 free persons of color, known as. Gens de couleur libres, owned slaves. Bring to mind the words of Public Enemy�s front man Chuck D, �Every brother ain�t a Brotha cause of color�.
It is now 2008 and we are all so �enlightened� and �conscious� that we know the arguments of the 19th century Southern Planters were wrong. The purposeful mis-education of the Black slave created an illusion of sub-human mentalities that the bad guys used to justify the slaves sentence of social death.
If the reader agrees in his heart and mind that slavery was morally and spiritually wrong, then why are you with all your �consciousness� not doing anything about it? Yesterday it was the so-called Negro, today it is anyone convicted of a crime. There are currently over 2.3 million slaves, incarcerated throughout America�s modern-day plantations, work farms, prisons and correctional facilities.
Those laborers of the 18th and 19th centuries toiled in their agricultural and industrial purgatories, slaving from �can�t see morin to can�t see nite�, for master�s enterprise. Those slaves were allotted no opportunity for self-improvement, education or social development.
The inmates of today toil in industrialized workshops, making everything form license plates to computer chips; these modern day indentured servants pick crops in the south, telemarket wares in Arizona and die fighting wildfires in California.
In the ol� days the majority of the people accepted the arguments of the slaveholders, who said that exploiting the uneducated, social misfit that they housed, fed and clothed was a humanitarian exercise. The majorities of the inmates in the 21st century Prison Industrial Complex are uneducated, social misfits, being housed, and fed by benevolent Governors and Wardens.
Why does the change in labels and titles for those who warehouse human beings and exploit their labor now make the practice morally correct? Why does the change in titles of those involved in this so-called humanitarian exercise make todays model and practice anything less than slavery?