Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are

[betenoire]

Trafficking of children and women does happen in the US today, no doubt.

But, you know. To compare actual legal slavery which did happen in the US (out in the open, legally, socially acceptable, ENCOURAGED, in gigantic numbers - if I remember correctly there were over 4 MILLION owned slaves in the US at the time slavery was abolished) to modern-day sex trafficking in the US (which is hidden, illegal, and there are several actual task forces in your country devoted to finding and freeing these women and children) is just kind of....wow.

I mean, the biggest evidence of change in human nature is the fact that what was considered normal and okay then is not considered normal and okay now. You can't deny that.

[The_Lady_Snow]

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by betenoire

Trafficking of children and women does happen in the US today, no doubt.

But, you know. To compare actual legal slavery which did happen in the US (out in the open, legally, socially acceptable, ENCOURAGED, in gigantic numbers - if I remember correctly there were over 4 MILLION owned slaves in the US at the time slavery was abolished) to modern-day sex trafficking in the US (which is hidden, illegal, and there are several actual task forces in your country devoted to finding and freeing these women and children) is just kind of....wow.

I mean, the biggest evidence of change in human nature is the fact that what was considered normal and okay then is not considered normal and okay now. You can't deny that.

I do agree that crucifying people along the freeway is frowned upon these days. Agree 100%.

However, there here and now is what matters. International slavery is a huge problem and one we try our best to sweep under the rug and ignore because in our eyes its not as bad as it used to be. In my book its worse. Why? We know better now.

We still are OK with war and torture and political killings and secret prisons and thats just the US government.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

Yes.

What is happening today.

Becasue what is happening right now is the only thing we can do anything about!

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

Are you intentionally misreading me?

The point is: there has been progress. What was once perfectly okay, legal, encouraged is now the sort of thing that your government spends hundreds of millions of dollars to try to stop. That's progress. That's evidence of a shift in what "normal" means. That's evidence that the people we were 200 years ago are not the people we are today.

The point is not: Brandy clearly thinks that sex trafficking is no big deal and that only one kind of slavery counts.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

Yes.

What is happening today.

Becasue what is happening right now is the only thing we can do anything about!

AND continued to get swept under the rug, not to mention sweat shops, farm work, sex rings, hotel workers, so on and so on mostly women being enslaved everyday.

I really don't see progress just because the Government has a special task force, I don't see this progress when I see Latinos picking lettuce for 125 bucks a day.

That's what I read that just because "America" has a law we're more civilized cause I don't see it this way as a woman who continues to see, help, and scream for those who haven't felt this change.

[Apocalipstic]

I think in some areas there has been progress in others not.

I will get it in my head that we value human life more than we did 100 years ago...and then I turn on the news.

[SoNotHer]

If you took all of the money spent on every sporting event across the world in one year, that number would be still subsumed by the amount of money spent on pornography. And yes, there is a correlation to pornography and trafficking.

I have worked in this issue trying to affect change, and what I have too often found is everything from ignorance to denial to laughter about the "world's oldest profession" and complacency and complicity from the street to the highest levels. And the beat goes on, and women, men and children are marketed and sold for sex. So I sit up and pay attention when someone actually writes passionately about this issue and posts statistics because that's all too rare. Human trafficking will not change until we all become passionately involved in ensuring justice and force that complacency and complicity out into the light.

And to the other point - people have a right to call themselves whatever they wish, and if a continent has the word "America" in its name, why wouldn't it take umbrage if another continent, or country, lays sole claim to the word?

Both seem pretty clear to me.

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

an estimated 27 million people are enslaved globally, more than at any other time previously;
thousands annually trafficked in America in over 90 cities; around 17,000 by some estimates and up to 50,000 according to the CIA, either from abroad or affecting US citizens or residents as forced labor or sexual servitude;
the global market value is over $9.5 billion annually, according to Mark Taylor, senior coordinator for the State Department's Office to Monitor;
victims are often women and children;
the majority are in India and African countries;
slavery is illegal but happens "everywhere;"
slaves work in agriculture, homes, mines, restaurants, brothels, or wherever traffickers can employ them; they're cheap, plentiful, disposable, and replaceable;
"$90 is the average cost of a human slave around the world" compared to the 1850 $40,000 equivalent in today's dollars;
common terminology includes debt bondage, bonded labor, attached labor, restavec (or de facto bondage for Haitian children sent to households of strangers), forced labor, indentured servitude, and human trafficking;
explosive population growth, mostly to urban centers without safety net or job security protections, facilitates the practice; and
government corruption, lack of monitoring, and indifference does as well.

[The_Lady_Snow]

I may have fucked up by saying stuff cause I'm not as good with academic wording and I don't have your educations but I'm a Mexican woman living here in America as a non citizen, I have my past history on these issues to and continue to see my kin, people shit on and continue to be over worked under payed and sometimes killed. I'm ok with using my voice even if it's a voice from someone who didn't even finish highschool. Thanks for allowing me to participate.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

I may have fucked up by saying stuff cause I'm not as good with academic wording and I don't have your educations but I'm a Mexican woman living here in America as a non citizen, I have my past history on these issues to and continue to see my kin, people shit on and continue to be over worked under payed and sometimes killed. I'm ok with using my voice even if it's a voice from someone who didn't even finish highschool. Thanks for allowing me to participate.

This is not about who has the most education, its about fairness, love and respect of our fellow humans.

ps. you have not fucked up anything!

[Cin]

Originally Posted by betenoire

Are you intentionally misreading me?

I don’t think anyone is purposely misunderstanding what is said here anymore than anyone purposely misunderstood when it was being said that people in the U.S. should take the time to consider what it sounds like to other people from other countries who also live in America when we say things like “This is America love it or leave it” and instead understood what was being said, despite explanations to the contrary, that the United States should change its name, perhaps even use its longitude and latitude address.

[Apocalipstic]

I totally get that looking at things differently is difficult. Change is difficult.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

So one form of slavery out trumps the other? Really?

WOW they are selling GIRLS so men can dismember them for fun. You're right only one kind of slavery should count.

Wait, are people *really* going to put the *illegal* kidnapping of girls and the *illegal* selling of same in the same category as legalized slavery and then say that slavery is still LEGAL in the United States? Is that actually the argument you are making here, Snow? Because that sounds *precisely* what you are saying and I am absolutely stunned that any person intelligent or educated person--and I assume everyone here is both--actually thinks that legalized slavery and illegal sex trafficking are the same things. By this logic, the prisons are filled with people who should not be in prison because murder is still legal.

Here's the argument that is being made:

Me: Slavery is illegal throughout the Western world and also in most other nations (I think there's one or two laggards.

Others: Slavery is still practiced in the United State because sex trafficking happens *therefore* slavery is still legal in the United States.

Here's that logic applied to people in prison for murder:

Murder still happens. What happens is legal. THEREFORE, murder is still legal. By that argument--and not a single one of you can argue that this is not a logical consequence of your statements--we should free every single rapist and murderer held in prisons world wide because until rape doesn't happen, rape is legal. Until murder doesn't happen, murder is *legal*.

So let me challenge all of you arguing that slavery is still *legal* in the United States.

1) Find me a historically valid account of a slave ship captain being arrested for transporting slaves out of Africa. Not a slave ship captain who was arrested for some other crime, but for the actual act of taking captured slaves from Africa to America.

2) Find me a historically valid account of a slave taker who was charged with the crime of kidnapping for capturing blacks in Africa and selling them to the slave ship captain.

3) Find me a historically valid account of a slave owner who was prosecuted for EITHER murdering one of his own slaves OR for raping one of his own slaves.

4) Find me a state in the United States that still enforces slave return laws.

5) Find me a state in the United States where blacks can be summarily executed for learning to read or teaching others to do the same. Please provide the last known date, after 1865, that a black person was legally executed for the 'crime' of learning to read.

6) Find me a state in the United States where it is *legal* to own a person such that if that person is a woman, and that woman has a child, the person who owns the woman also *automatically* owns the child. Here, ownership means "that which you can dispose of as you please". If I wanted to, I could take a sledgehammer to my Audi and destroy it and as long as I did it on my property and disposed of the waste properly, there's not a damn thing anyone could *legally* do to stop me. IF slavery is still legal in the United States then one of you should be able to provide me with an example, within the living memory of at least one person on this board (so, within, say, 60 - 70 years) where someone was born in this nation, the child was immediately sold--at a profit--to another person and became that person's property such that they could *sell* that person to another human being. The example needs to be such that if our hypothetical person were to run away, they would have committed a crime. If someone aided them in running away they would have committed a tort OR a crime or both. Bonus points if you can, in your example, provide the trial transcripts of the fugitive slave.

Once again, the statement I made was NOT that there was no sexual slavery in the United States or any other nation. I said that throughout the world slavery is now illegal. It is most definitely illegal in the United States. A couple of people have now stated that slavery is still legal in the United States because of the presence of sexual slavery. The burden of proof is now squarely on your heads to provide a specific example where legalized, chattel slavery is being practiced in the United States and backed up by the force of the state.

If you cannot provide those examples (and I'm this side of certain you can't) please explain the logic where the presence of sexual slavery in the United States means that slavery is legal and explain why people here are not screaming to have *actual* murderers and rapists released since the logic being deployed leads to the conclusion that murder and rape are also legal and should not be punished since their practice means they are legal. Thank you.


Cheers
Aj

[SoNotHer]

We all have different paths, and we all have different voices. And if your voice or any other voice wasn't welcome here, then the thread should not be called "Justice as fairness: we can do better than we are."

You have a right to speak, and I appreciate what you have written.

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

I may have fucked up by saying stuff cause I'm not as good with academic wording and I don't have your educations but I'm a Mexican woman living here in America as a non citizen, I have my past history on these issues to and continue to see my kin, people shit on and continue to be over worked under payed and sometimes killed. I'm ok with using my voice even if it's a voice from someone who didn't even finish highschool. Thanks for allowing me to participate.

[Apocalipstic]

Did Snow say Slavery was legal in the US?

If the point is we can do better, then let's.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Aj I'm pretty sure that's not what *I* said, I should have pointed out more clearly that slavery exists, illegal but you sure the hell wouldn't know it from the numbers, the women and kids left behind.. (SuperBowl Sunday a fine example)



If you're idea of this new world is going to work we gotta look at allllll the ugly I think that may be where I went wrong.

*shrugs*

[weatherboi]

I was under the impression She was arguing that it exsists...not that it is legal. I have read no where that She stated it was legal slavery.

Human trafficking is considered a modern day 21st century form of slavery...what is wrong with stating that opinion??

I don't think anybody here is negating that illegal slavery is different from 21st century slavery...what i see is people trying to make light this present days form of slavery.

I will say it seems to me that people do value other peoples pasts and histories in some sort of hierarchy form and fashion. This comes off as valuing one kind of slavery/oppression over the other.

[Julie]

In history, there is *perhaps* not a single civilization which did not experience some type of slavery.
Even European Christians experienced slavery by Muslim Masters and during the Roman Empire - Or so, that is what history (tainted or not) tell us.

I come from a long history of slavery. My people have been enslaved for close to 6,000 years and most recently ending when Hitler lost his reign. Does this make me the oldest descendant of slaves? Perhaps -- BUT, we certainly do not know this to be true. We do not know the history of the other lands during this time and certainly not thousands of years before.

What about the enslavement of the Maya and Inca tribes (and the other indigenous tribes of nations)? How do we look through time and not imagine the civilizations being built hundreds and thousands of years ago - even notably in Egypt? Do we dare say, these great structures were built by the hands of willing men and women? I would be foolish to think not.

And today, while The United States and many other countries are fighting the war on Human Trafficking - this is still happening today. Not only in the USA, but in a bountiful of other nations. Women and Children are sold as sex slaves, workers and traffickers of drugs. Not by their own choice - but by the hand of masters who enslave and own them. Legal or NOT - you cannot dissect the word "Slavery," and make it work for one people and not another.

In some form or another - Most of us did not originate from the America's - Some of us were forced here as slaves and some of us came to escape slavery in our homelands. There are VERY FEW pure white people on this land, except perhaps the White Christian Europeans who landed here, only to take the land from the Indigenous people of this land.

I am Julie and I am the direct descendant of a very strong people. My people have survived thousands of years of slavery and slaughter - As have many of the people here. African and Latin Descent and Many others -- Even as stated above, those European White Christians, who later enslaved many of us.

Can we be ANGRY at the United States for even allowing the African slave trade? Damn right. It shames me beyond belief that this country in which I was born was so self-righteous and entitled. I am sure those in other countries feel the same shame as I do.

Julie

[Apocalipstic]

Snow, you have not gone wrong. What you are saying is true and you have incredible insight on this subject.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

Yeah and this. Slavery alive and rampant. When and where will it end. The world is NOT a better place now, there are no "good old days" when the world was safe.

Ummm, so may I ask why it is I am not enslaved since only the last few generations of my family have been free? I'm rather mystified by this. YOUR words are that the world is NOT a better place. I agree that there are no good old days when the world was safe. THESE are the good old days and I'm absolutely shocked that so many intelligent people draw no distinction between legal, sanctioned, open behavior and illegal, prohibited, hidden behavior.

So according to you, Snow, and Miss Tick the fact that slavery happens *anywhere* means that slavery is *legal* in the United States and Western Europe. Because that is the point of contention. I did not say that slavery was gone from the face of the Earth. I said that slavery was *illegal* in almost every single country. At least four people on this thread have now made this connection and not one of you have, as yet, offered an explanation for how you get to that conclusion. Again, if I had said that slavery was everywhere gone from the United States you could take me to task for not seeing sexual slavery but I didn't say that. I went back and checked to make certain I didn't say that and I didn't. I was talking about legality. So now, since we are having an argument that slavery anywhere means slavery is legal *everywhere* (or if not everywhere at least in the United States) then I think the burden of proof is on those of you making this argument to demonstrate that slavery is LEGAL--the key phrase here is LEGAL.

Again, the chain of logic looks like this:

Slavery is still practiced in the world-->The United States had slavery--->THEREFORE slavery is legal in the United States-->THEREFORE the United States still has slaves being held legally.

The substrate logic is this:

If X happens then X is legal and socially sanctioned. Because if that's not the argument being made then this whole thing is some kind of very strange derail. Since your logic is sexual slavery is still taking place, therefore chattel slavery is still legal in the United States you *must* be using the construction "that which is done is legal, regardless of what the law might say". So, since slavery is legal in the USA because sexual slavery happens *anywhere*, then murder must *also* be legal in the United States. So explain to me why you are not advocating for all convicted murderers and rapists to go free since the mere fact that someone goes out and murders means that it is both *legal* and *socially sanctioned*. If it applies to slavery (and if it doesn't what are you arguing) then it must also apply to rape, theft and murder. Since it manifestly does not, why the one and not the others?

As a rule, liberal democracies do not put people in prison for actions that are legal. If liberal democracies are putting murderers in prison but murder is illegal because people commit murder, then murder is not a *crime* and since we do not put people in prison if they have not been convicted of a *crime* every single murderer is being held illegally because their actions were neither illegal or socially proscribed.

Cheers
Aj