America Never Abolished Slavery

[damnedifIknow]

This past Black History Month, millions of students were told the story of how America abolished slavery 150 years ago with ratification of the 13th Amendment. The story draws an upward trajectory of racial equality in America from the abolition of slavery to Brown v. Board of Education to the Civil Rights Act to the election of President Obama.

The problem is the story isn't true. We never actually abolished slavery. The 13th Amendment states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

"...except as a punishment for crime..." This phrase gets ignored in America's telling of its slavery story. The 13th Amendment did not abolish slavery but rather moved it from the plantation to the prison. In 2015, the 2 million (largely Black) people incarcerated in America are legally considered slaves under the Constitution. As a result, they can and are forced to work for pennies an hour with the profits going to counties, states and private corporations including Target, Revlon and Whole Foods. In fact, there are more Black people enslaved today than in 1800."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-f-chan/america-never-abolished-slavery_b_6777420.html

[Oktober]

1. So every nation in the world with a prison and penal system practices slavery?

[damnedifIknow]

2. Why do we lead the world in prison population?

A question I'd love an answer to.

http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All

[Oktober]

4. Was that a yes?

[damnedifIknow]

5. Actually a no

If you look at the rankings of prison population you will find we not only lead but we blow most countries out of the water.

[Oktober]

7. So it's only slavery if you pass a certain number of inmates?

At which point does one pass over from penal to slavery? Does whoever is second on the list meet the same or is it just the United States in a crazy coincidence?

[ND-Dem]

8. De jure or de facto?

[Oktober]

11. In whichever context the OP meant....

[haele]

13. No, its because the U.S. prison system has a profit incentive to incarcerate.

Private prison companies and contracts where companies make hundreds of thousands a day by "hiring" non-violent prison labor at ten to twenty cents an hour - which gets turned into the prison commissary system to pay for their food and sundries while they're in. And they can claim to be providing products made in the US and American Jobs on the backs of prison labor.
Private prisons profit off taxpayer money for the amount of prisoners they keep, and their lobbyists are always pushing for harsher sentencing for what used to be minor crimes as being "hard on crime" to keep that prison population at a optimal level. Juvenile incarceration is also extremely profitable; they can pocket funds from HHR and DoE so long as they provide a minimum level of "care" and "education" for these children, and the work these kids might be required to do to pay off their debt to the prison company can be called "training wage", which nets even more funds.
Private prison companies are publically traded, making lots of money for investors and further incentivizing incarceration for profit.

No where is there any requirement for prison systems to account for any sort of escrow account for the work theses inmates do, nor is there any sort of standardized minimum wage required to be paid to these workers.
Frankly, the attitude in the US towards the incarcerated is "you got arrested, you're guilty, you're scum until you paid off your debt to society" no matter if you're guilty or innocent, or your crime was making a stupid mistake that most people do (but you got caught), or you're a psychopathic public enemy #1.

Very few U.S. prisons are invested in rehabilitation of minor crimes and petty criminals. They're more concerned about for-profit punishment, unlike most penal systems in other industrialized, progressive countries. For such a so-called "Christian" nation, we're f***n hypocritically judgmental and selfishly bloodthirsty.

Haele

[uponit7771]

17. YES, to some degree...

[BlueCaliDem]

3. ^^^This x 1000^^^

The 13th Amendment did not abolish slavery but rather moved it from the plantation to the prison.

Is it any wonder why Blacks and Latinos get convicted of crimes Whites never do? How much more proof do we need that slavery has not been abolished by the 13th Amendment??

[Manifestor_of_Light]

6. Yo! Exception to the thirteenth amendment!

One of your resident DU brilliant legal minds here.

Slavery enables the Prison-Industrial Complex.

[Nye Bevan]

9. There is no problem with the "except as a punishment" clause in the 13th Amendment.

Without this it would be impossible to force prison inmates to work.

The problem is with the racial bias in the criminal justice system and the ridiculous "war on drugs".

[uponit7771]

19. Yes there is if it's being abused... that's what we see today with war on drugs

[closeupready]

10. Disgraceful. But just another datapoint underscoring how corrupt our government has become.

How ugly does the graft, bribery, and influence-peddling have to get before Americans start demanding real political reforms?

[struggle4progress]

12. Slavery By Another Name

[damnedifIknow]

14. Money

Reform is at odds with the agenda of many powerful industries. It’s well-known that private prison companies draw their profits from mass incarceration, but they’re not the only ones. Here are nine industries that are profiting quite handsomely from the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration in the U.S."

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/22/9_surprising_industries_getting_filthy_rich_from_mass_incarceration_partner/

[ladjf]

15. While we are at it, let's not forget about the American workers

who are scraping around on starvation wages, trying to make ends meet and who can be fired at the whim of the employer. The are most definitely slaves.

[uponit7771]

16. ...thank you

[BubbaFett]

18. debt peonage and incarceration

have expanded slavery to ALL of us.