The US Slave Market

Slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1865 by the thirteenth amendment to the constitution. So why do I keep throwing around references to slave labor in the US?



Because it’s still alive and well.



Maybe we don’t own other human beings like we did a hundred and fifty years ago, but we still have marginalized citizens who are being exploited for the benefit of the mainstream. We can polish it up and call it by a different name, but it’s still the same old situation.



I see two distinct classes of slave labor in the United States today: illegal immigrants and prison labor.



Let’s look at the first, illegal immigration. That’s not slave labor you may say. They are not supposed to be here in the first place, and they get paid for their labor.



They’re not supposed to be here? Do you think Mexican citizens would travel here if they didn’t know they had jobs waiting for them? Jobs like framing houses, laying brick, gardening, and cleaning.



We use them for manual labor. But they get paid, right? Yea they get paid, but not that much. Employers have no obligation to pay a fair wage, provide a safe work environment, or offer benefits because these workers have no recourse.



Then we all get up on our high horses and preach against the US governments policies on illegal immigration. We lament the fact that these immigrants cannot even speak our language.



Hypocrisy!



You may not have a Mexican house cleaner or gardener, but I guarantee you the house you bought was built on the backs of illegal immigrants. You were blissfully unaware, but complicit because it keeps the price of homes down.



If you had American companies pouring the foundation, laying the brick, framing the houses, roofing the houses, and floating the stucco your house would cost substantially more than it does today.



It’s less expensive because we have marginalized people with fewer rights than an American to do the work. Sounds a lot like slavery.



Let’s move on to the second group, prison labor.



I walked through a park in Brunswick, Georgia a few weeks ago. The park was built in the 1800’s and had recently been restored to its original splendor. The person I was with commented on how much work must have gone into laying the brick walkways.



The walkways were laid with prison labor. I thought it was fitting that they used prison slave labor for the restoration since the original was built with African slave labor.



What’s the problem with making prisoners work? It’s a slippery, slippery slope, my friends. There are several problems with this.



The numbers are debatable, but somewhere between one quarter and one half of prison inmates are non-violent drug offenders. Who are the non-violent drug offenders?



They are the ones who see drug use all around them, and decide to capitalize on it. They are the industrious ones. They are the smart ones. If I grew up in the projects without the benefit of education and opportunity I have no doubt I would be in their camp.



Instead of educating and training these people we lock them up. Why not? They are the strongest and most ambitious of the lower class. We fear them. Education might allow them to become powerful in the mainstream. We need them on the fringes of society.



It gets worse. There are 264 private, for-profit prisons in the United States housing around one hundred thousand inmates.



Think about that for a minute. You have corporations that are traded on Wall Street that generate profits from literally enslaving people.



Not only do they earn income from State and Federal governments, but they also earn some extra cash from pimping their inmates out to lay brick walkways. You tell me that’s not slave labor.



We go about our lives and look the other way while hundreds of thousands of people are being openly exploited for greed. We stand on our soap boxes and talk about how they have no one to blame but themselves.



Times change and we find new words to describe the same situations. Slavery is alive and well in the United States of America.