Slavery in the United States was a violent regime built on the systemic dehumanization of enslaved Black people. White slaveholders stripped Black people of their humanity to make the otherwise unquestionably horrific treatment of them socially acceptable. Given this, it is entirely unreasonable to expect the enslaved to have nevertheless respected the humanity of their […]
Tag: slavery
An Argument Against Reparations is An Argument Against Equality
The recent repeal of affirmative action has catalyzed national discussion about what policies most effectively advance racial equality for Black Americans. Affirmative action, while not reparations, was a social inclusion policy that sought to increase minority representation in universities where students of color may not have been accepted due to systemic discrimination. While affirmative action […]
Europe’s Reluctance to Address the Legacy of Slavery
The transatlantic slave trade and the exploitation of enslaved African laborers in the Americas stand as one of the darkest, most horrific pieces of the history of Western civilization. Without the motive, the means, the organization, and the dedication of European colonial powers in establishing and perpetuating this system of slavery, the modern world may […]
The Child Made Your Chocolate
Modern Slavery Individuals at the bottom in a supply chain are often separated from the product of their labor, and insufficiently acknowledged as individuals. Chocolate supply chains in particular can be obscured to the point of near invisibility when trying to understand where beans have been farmed, who has farmed them, and at what cost. […]
Modern Day Indentured Servitude
Lakshmi Senthilnathan has spent most of her adult life working in the country of Oman as the sole breadwinner of her family. While telling her story, she breezes past several accounts of physical and sexual abuse, claiming they are not out of the ordinary. Lakshmi persuades the interviewer that she was fortunate, for some of […]
How Reparations Can Address Educational Inequities for Black American Students
While the rhetoric of a post-racial society has diminished the urgent claims for reparations, a national conversation has resurfaced. Largely because of the Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “A Case for Reparations” and the push to pass H.R. 40 (a bill to create a committee to research the impact of reparations), reparations are being reintroduced as a method […]
Mauritania: A Place of Continuing Slavery
Moulkheir Mint Yarba tends goats in the Sahara Desert and works long hours in the sun for little to no pay. Yarba constantly fears the prospect of rape and on one day, upon returning home, she found that her master had left her young infant out in the sun to die. Following the death of […]