Giving Slavery a Bad Name

Right now, a battle is going on in the Swat Valley of Pakistan that has important ramifications for the rest of the world. Pakistan is a democratic country which contains within it a large Islamic fundamentalist faction. Both are struggling for control of the country, and as Pakistan now has a nuclear arsenal, the stakes are high not only within Pakistan, but for the rest of the world.

But Pakistan is not the only country to worry about. Very few commentators on US affairs spend much time analyzing the racist/fundamentalists in the USA, or wondering what is going on in between the former confederate slave states that support the Republican party, and the former free states of the union that support the Democratic Party. Is there a battle for control similar to Pakistan? Maybe not outright fighting yet, but politically, the US is boiling.

I am going to try to explain how the legacy of slavery still has an influence on policy in the USA. And why that is important to the fate of not only the USA but the rest of the world.

Slavery in the USA was violent and perverted. I know you might think violent slavery is redundant, but it is not. Racism existed before slavery in the USA, and slavery existed before the slave states of America. However, there was something about the southern USA that brought racism and slavery together and produced something that had not been seen before, and it's unfortunate that we don't really have a word for it.

The old definition of slavery is simply a person being forced to work without wages, and that person's labour can be bought or sold as economic conditions change. Although not necessarily part of the definition, physical coercion is often required. Hence the stereotypical galley slave and the guy with the whip walking up and down the gangplank making sure nobody is getting a free ride.

Slavery existed all over the world, often involving prisoners of war. The Bible accepts slavery as a fact of life. Almost every race on earth did some of it.

But there were some subtle and not so subtle changes that occurred in the southern USA where slavery mutated to a new and perverted level.

What were some of the mitigating factors of old style Biblical slavery? For one thing, there was a way out. Usually there was a time limit, or a generational limit. If you were a slave, you, or your children could be free one day. Although you had to work as a slave, you could go home and plant a vegetable garden. If you had life long slavery, you were still permitted to marry and have children and raise those children. You still had the possibility of human interaction where you could earn the respect of your master. Say, for example that a slave saved his master's life through some act of bravery. Although still a slave, you could see there might be some human gratitude and respect. These things are important. And if conditions became too unbearable you could run away or commit suicide or abort your babies.

What types of things happened in the Southern USA that turned nice Biblical slavery into sick and perverted slavery. Well there were a few simple things. First we need to remember that southern slavery evolved into a combination of racism and slavery. While it was theoretically possible for blacks to own whites, in practice this did not happen.

Here is one seemingly little thing. Slave owners in the south were required by law to punish their slaves for certain offences, and I don't mean a fine of a few dollars, which they didn't have anyway. Mandated punishments included mutilation and whipping. If you think about the ramifications of this for a few minutes, you will realize that no matter what kind of rapport might be built up on a human level between master and slave, it was utterly destroyed by this external requirement of brutality. Not only was mercy rare, it was not even permitted.

Here is another seemingly little thing, which was degrading both to the slave and the slave owner. The child of a female slave had to also be a slave. Two things here. First, it meant slavery was unending, even to the children of the children. But far worse, it allowed slave masters to breed with their female slaves without concern about illegitimate offspring. Rape was common. And contributing to the inhumanity, was that the slave master's own children were born into perpetual slavery.

The people in the southern USA justified their sick and twisted form of slavery by pointing to the Bible, and reminding people that the Bible condoned slavery. Yes, it did, you sick perverts, but not that kind of slavery.

Also, the slave states of the southern USA also pointed the finger at Africa, where they said the black people were involved in slavery themselves. Yes, they did have slavery, but not your kind of slavery.

Unfortunately there has never been a real distinction made between different types of slavery. And Douglas Blackmon argued that the "neoslavery" following the Civil War was even worse than the "slavery" before emancipation. And this carried on until the civil rights era, where northern liberals finally put an end to segregation in the south.

http://www.radioopensource.org/douglas-blackmon-neo-slavery-in-our-times/

What made this all the more devastating to the world was the context of this perversion of classic slavery took place in the first important democratic country of modern times, and was done on such a devastatingly large scale.

This problem has not gone away, we still have the United States of America approximately divided along slave states/free states lines, with the corresponding different world view with respect to violence and to people of other skin colour. One example of this is the controversy about torture, and treatment of prisoners. Also a major difference on the idea of war - JFK, a northern liberal, said "America will never start a war", but the conservative former slave owners add "unless we feel threatened". And at this point, everyone needs to understand there are two very different ideas of civilization still competing for control of a military machine that can lay waste to the rest of the world.