Oh Crap, Am I Pro-slavery? And Why You Might Be, Too.

When I was a teenager, for reasons I didn’t grasp at the time, I became obsessed with researching U.S. slave insurrections and escapes. I read oral histories, narratives, and academic works, and made a timeline of what I learned. I read some about white abolitionists, about John Brown and the Quakers, and such, but mainly I read about slaves themselves who escaped, agitated, or organized rebellions.A couple of years later, I was living in the South for the first time. I was having lunch with co-workers, including four or five white native Southerners about my age, and four people of varying ages who had immigrated to the U.S. from far and wide.A man who was studying for his naturalization exam asked, “Who was the worst president?” Three of the native Southerners immediately answered, “Abraham Lincoln.” My jaw dropped open, and then I laughed — I couldn’t help it, I had never been exposed to anyone who thought of Lincoln as anything other than a noble hero.I was young and hadn’t often had the assumptions acquired from my West Coast education challenged. A discussion ensued about whether the Civil War was actually about slavery. This led me to study more about the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, though far more cursorily than I had delved into insurrections.What I concluded is that people with opposing viewpoints on the causes and moralities of the Civil War, and with opposing interpretations of Lincoln’s motives, will never come to any agreement.In the end, my own view was that Lincoln was neither saint nor devil; that whatever one might argue the causes for it were, the effect of the Civil War was an end to slavery, and for that reason at the very least, the Civil War was about slavery; that whatever his motives, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and for that he is a president worth celebrating.Exploring the wide range of opinions on the Civil War did make me examine my “knowledge” which helped me get started on a long, slow path of (much-needed) growth. It also made me think a lot about how people explain, justify, and separate from, crimes against humanity.This excusing and justifying came up again a few months later when I got into reading about our Founding Fathers in a more realistic light than my school textbooks had shed. When I began to learn about Jefferson’s conflicted feelings and actions regarding slavery, and about Washington bravely and brilliantly fighting against tyranny for “unalienable rights” while owning slaves, the information was most often presented as understandable in the context of the times.My young, strident, arrogant mind rejected that argument for the Founding Fathers and rejected it for the slave owners of the Civil War era or any other time period. Because some people knew better, even when it was the accepted norm in their society. Slaves certainly knew that slavery was wrong. And there are plenty of examples of people within the “norm” of white society who knew it was wrong and spoke and acted against it.Of course, everyone wants to think they would have been anti-slavery had they lived back then. All of my historical research culminated in the dearly held hope that I would have acted against slavery, that I would have been brave and righteous. I knew enough, though, to not be sure what I would have done.Twenty years later, my studies have taken many turns and twists and my time and attention have filled in with kids a husband, and the many concerns of grown-up living. And then yesterday, I found myself reading an article that referenced a reported 50 million slaves in the world today. That got my attention, and I began researching modern slavery. I found out, among many other things:There are more people in slavery today than at any time in human history: 50 million. (www.FreeTheSlaves.net)Products sold by companies that make little or no effort to ensure the basic rights of workers in the chain of production of their merchandise, including making no good faith effort to ensure that their company is at the very least not profiting from slave labor, include Skechers, Forever 21, Aeropostale, Faded Glory, Old Navy, and Disney Apparel. I have products from all of these companies in my home. And that’s just the apparel companies, never mind food, technology, housewares, etc.Approximately 33 slaves work for me… (http://slaveryfootprint.org)In 1850, the cost of a slave, adjusted for inflation, was $40,000. Today the price of a slave is around $30.I do not have to wonder how I would react if I lived in the time of slavery, I do live in the time of slavery. Not only have I been doing nothing resembling abolitionism, I have been supporting slavery economically.I have ignored the troubling voice in the back of my head that knows there’s no way t-shirts are this cheap without someone being exploited. A few years ago, my daughter did a project on child labor, including forced labor, and we explored the realities, the pros and cons of boycotting, and what the solutions might be. It’s not like I know nothing about this issue and was existing in ignorant bliss. I have read about child slavery in diamond mines, but I would never buy a diamond anyway. I have heard about child slavery in the mainstream sugar trade, but I don’t eat sugar, so gold star for me. That’s where my thought process stopped.Ok, so now I’m more educated, but what to do? How to be the anti-slavery activist I hoped I would have been had I lived 200 years ago? Boycotting companies that profit from slave labor is an easy out, a nice way we, the well-intentioned, feel we are making a stand and doing the right thing. Not that I‘m for casually continuing to support companies that turn a blind eye to human bondage, but boycotting alone is a little passive.Much more useful to those in servitude is advocating vigorously and incessantly for forced laborers to become properly paid employees, working in safe and reasonable conditions, who are fully at liberty to seek better work/education and to relocate at will.It’s fine to buy Fair Trade chocolate. It’s good to reward Green & Black for becoming a 100% Fair Trade chocolate company by buying their lovely Mint Chocolate bars…but it’s more important to agitate incessantly for Godiva, Ghiradelli, and others to take measures to ensure that their candies are not the product of child slave labor, which is alarmingly common in cocoa production. I think it takes more than adding one’s name to an online petion here and there, but rather dedicating ongoing time and efforts to writing letters and educating others. This is something that can be done without dedicating one’s entire life to the cause — not that that’s a bad idea but it’s not a conceivable course of action for everyone.I have the privilege of deciding how to feel about slavery, what to do about this new awareness of modern slavery, what perspective to have on it, and whether to expose my children to the knowledge of this atrocity. That privilege is an accident of birth.Mothers in China, for example, whose children are kidnapped and forced into labor, or worse, do not get to decide at their leisure whether to boycott their favorite candy, or turn a blind eye to the situation because it’s too hard to deal with, or step-up and figure out how to be anti-slavery. I’m deeply grateful that I have that privilege, and I don’t think wallowing in guilt or despair will be helpful to those who are so much less fortunate. But I sure as hell don’t want to be de facto pro-slavery either.Source - https://medium.com/educreation/oh-crap-am-i-pro-slavery-3406f4b4d72a?sk=b1575dfcfc0582c2c8e1f5f8ef576052