This literally happened en masse after slavery was abolished in the South. They would just charge black people for minor offenses (e.g., “looking at a white woman”), jail them, and lease them to middle-class landowners who treated them worse than slaves. This country was built on slave labor and the legacy of slavery still continues to this day.
Yep, slavery was largely re-instituted (in a less dominant form) during the reconstruction era.
The US still has a significant portion of its economy based on slave-labor, including at least 54 state-run prison farms, and US-state-run companies like Federal Prison Industries which operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories, where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies. 1, 2, 3
The US also has the highest incarceration rates in the world, with states like Louisiana basically being slave states. Most individual US states outrank all other countries.
That last link…“freest country in the world” just means “most indoctrinated country in the world, and also slavers.”
and they teach us in school (ohio) that it’s totally great and makes sense that slavery is legal for prisoners. they make no mention of the record our. nation has for jailing people on bullshit charges.
The 13th amendment specifically allows slavery when incarcerated.
Doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole if you are pro-slavery
Legal ≠ Right.
I mean, yes. The constitution explicitly carves out one exception to the “no slavery” rule. People who proudly proclaim America was the “first country to abolish slavery” don’t even realize America didn’t abolish slavery. So even if they were right, they’d still be wrong.
Didn’t England do it first?
A number of other countries did it first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom
Either stay in your country or go through the proper channels. Or work as a field laborer for pennies on the dollar…sounds like there are a couple choices here, no one is forcing people to cross illegally. Edit I read no good, my b
Either stay in your country or go through the proper channels. Or work as a field laborer for pennies on the dollar…sounds like there are a couple choices here, no one is forcing people to cross illegally.
In your rush to dunk on folks who have made a difficult decision at a low point in their likely quite difficult lives, you failed to actually read what you replied to. But I’m guessing your response is now “they are criminals so they have no rights, and so who cares about their humanity.”
I did read it wrong 😂 my bad
It’s not OK to treat the undocumented like slaves either FWIW.
We treat our own people like slaves, what makes them so special?
You’re close to the point, just keep on down that path a little farther
That it’s ok to let prisoners work to pay for their own housing and food instead of the taxpayers?
That maybe we shouldn’t be treating anyone like that and that if we are going to have people work, yes even prisoners, should be paid a fair rate instead of pennies on the dollar.
Profits are being made off of prison labor! That can only mean the amount they produce is greater than what they receive from the state. So they’re not just working for food and housing - they’re working to make someone else richer.