7-27-20<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By suggesting that we revisit slavery, I do not mean to try it a second time. Of course not. I do mean the topic of slavery, a hot topic in America, as slavery and its legacy were the sparks that ignited the tinder of current, prolonged, anarchic, bloody riots throughout the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To revisit the facts, rather, about slavery requires a simultaneous confrontation with the implications and legacy of slavery, beyond facts, statistics, and numbers. Slavery over periods of history and various cultures; reflections of human nature; what it says about us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every era and every society in every land is stained with slavery of some sort. In ancient Egypt, the Jews were slaves for hundreds of years. In ancient China, entire ethnic groups were assumed to be inferior and therefore destined, or doomed, to slavery. In Central and South America slaves built mighty cities and temples. In Biblical times, slaves were written about matter-of-factly, just as they were considered in Athens and ancient Rome. The Irish of the 4th<\/sup> century served almost naturally as slaves to Romans in Britain. Europe itself went through periods of slavery, feudalism, serfdom \u2013 only vague distinctions to the lowly. Many Irish who emigrated to the United States traveled as indentured servants, their liberties restricted, and virtually owned by masters until they labored their way to \u201cfreedom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The word-association of slavery to most Americans refers to Africans. Sold and then transported, mostly as field laborers, frequently assigned new names, separated from families, and physically bound. These conditions attended many slaves in many cultures through history. The majority of Africans in the \u201cNew World\u201d were repopulated to the Caribbean and South American, actually only a percentage to North America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Colonists and settlers, and later planters, seldom enslaved Native Americans, but Africans were in bondage, and that is why, despite the universal, and shameful, practice of slavery, Americans of all colors today associate \u201cslavery\u201d with Africans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did all European-Americans congenitally regard Africans as sub-humans? It is not borne out by the facts. Abraham Lincoln was appalled to his core when he encountered a slave market, and said \u201cIf slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.\u201d The thrust of his career and life \u2013 and death \u2013 was to eradicate slavery. Slavery was a burning topic at the founding of the United States, and all but a few of the Framers knew that they were compromising with evil to let it continue for a time. In one way or another the sin of slavery was an issue at both the highest and most local levels of American society for two generations \u2013 little comfort to those who still suffered under the lash \u2013 until a war was fought to free slaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am something of a Civil War buff, and in my overflowing library I have a complete run of Harper\u2019s Weekly<\/em>, the landmark newspaper through which I get a sense of everyday realities and people\u2019s feelings. The \u201cRevisionist\u201d historians contend that the Civil War was an economic conflict; agrarian vs. industrial; state sovereignty vs. a national system. These facts are true but insignificant compared to the reason Northern soldiers fought. Over and over soldiers agreed that slavery needed to be abolished, and this view was held by farmers from prairies and fields, farmers who had never seen a man with black skin; and by thousands of recent immigrants from Europe, who swore opposition to slavery. They too suffered and died, for four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the same determination, of course, Southern soldiers died, sometimes to uphold slavery (although few of them owned slaves, or lived much better), sometimes for a fealty to their region\u2019s traditions. Again, however, most of the bondsmen toiled in servitude as the war ground on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Great Britain\u2019s end to slavery was attended by little acrimony. As in many other countries, the legacy of slavery\u2019s end was more benign than in America. Of course economic disparities endured with almost all freed slaves around the world in every situation; but the \u201cracial divide\u201d as well as economic and social stratification is more pronounced in the United States than almost anywhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The descendants of slaves as a lot surely are better off by many standards than 150 years ago, when emancipated. But in the 50 years since the monumental array of programs first known as the War on Poverty, the same can hardly be said. The legacy, in contemporaries\u2019 focus \u2013 not that of Booker T Washington or Martin Luther King \u2013 is disillusionment, bitterness, and resentment. At the moments its goals seem to range from reparations to impositions of new forms of segregation and preference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know these things if we have televisions or see newspapers, or leave our windows open a crack. It is a condition, not a theory, that presents itself as resentments find expression in fallen statues, looted stores, obscene graffiti, attacks on police, and, sometimes, murder. Long in the making, as I have limned, the angry violence has manifested itself, to the current degree, almost overnight\u2026 and will not recede overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My purpose in \u201crevisiting slavery\u201d is not to roll out a history lesson; and as I said not to entertain an idea to return to its evil horrors. Of course not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I implore you to realize that slavery has not disappeared from this earth. There are more slaves today, studies say, than at any time in history. There are white slaves (prostitutes), sex slaves, child slaves. Arabs are involved in trafficking Africans. I was involved 20 years ago with the work of International Justice Mission, which fought slavery, mostly of children, in India \u2013 everything from sex to cigarette manufacturing. Just this month, leaked drone videos of Uighurs in China \u2013 rounded up by the thousands to work in fields and factories \u2013 in bondage. Slaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, please consider the slave drivers, the masters, those who enable the system. It is you and me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you buy a range of products \u2013 we cannot hide behind ignorance \u2013 we often subsidize slave labor. What has made Walmart the biggest retailer in the country, and Apple the richest corporation, is products made cheaply in China and other Pacific and Latin countries; also along the Indian rim and in Africa. Shoes, shirts, electronics \u2013 you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think of complicated ear bugs or calculators that sell for two dollars, or ten dollars; think of the many components, the plastics and wires, the making of them, the packaging, the shipping to the US, the distribution from ports to warehouses, the stocking of store shelves \u2013 and everyone<\/em> making a profit along the way. You know that the women and children working 12-hour days back in those factories, \u201cearning\u201d perhaps 20 cents a day\u2026 are slaves by another name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are all complicit. Many people, confronted with these truths, hide behind excuses that \u201cthey probably are better off now than when\u2026\u201d No, that does not cut it. That is what Northern factory workers and purchasers of clothes said before the Civil War. \u201cOh, they are better off than in Africa.\u201d Slavery is slavery is still is slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n American workers lost jobs because of foreign competition, and went to the Walmarts across the landscape for cheap goods \u2013 made by the foreigners who took their jobs. Suicidal insanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am not<\/em> arguing for a kinder sympathy for those who once profited from blatant field-slavery. No; of course not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n