...I An Introduction to Slavery “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” - Article 4, Universal Declaration of Human Rights For most people slavery is an age old understanding of African people in shackles being captured and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, where they are sold at public auctions, however the reality is that slavery still thrives. Slavery was officially abolished during the age of enlightenment, further now it has been prohibited in all its forms in international human rights treaties, in international labour rights agreements and in almost every country worldwide. However it still persists as a grave violation of human rights in many countries. Defining Slavery It has been said that Slavery was the very first issue to draw international concern; however, there is no well-set definition of slavery which could lead us to say that over the years it has started to encompass various forms of exploitation in to the ambit of ‘slavery’. With the legal definition of slavery marginalised, people looked elsewhere to define slavery. A survey of the academic literature on modern forms of slavery would show that, it has turned to the work of Kevin Bales (one of the world's leading experts on modern slavery) and his social understanding of what constitutes slavery. For more than fifteen years, Kevin Bales has attempted to build discussions on modern forms of slavery and propose an agenda...
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...James C Vincent II World Literature From 1650 to present Mrs. Lovenstein December 7, 2012 Modern day slavery There is a big misconception that slavery has ended all together. But slavery has only grown since the 13th amendment was ratified in 1865. The life of a slave whether American or not is a rough life. Those who go through slavery develop what is called a true slave mentality. The slave mentality has nothing to do with being chained up or beaten. Instead it is more about the actual thought process that happens when someone is a slave. For example a regular individual takes responsibility for his or her self by creating a mental structure that would be convenient to the slave’s specific life but, slaves do not spare the energy or confidence to succeed. Although slavery is less recognizable it occurs four times as much as it did in the 1800s. Fredrick Douglass lived both free and a slave but his details of slave life are still relevant in today’s contemporary slavery. A few other types of modern day slavery that is still going on today is; debt bondage, sexual slavery, child labor and wage slavery. Slavery such as debt bondage and sexual slavery is cause by unfortunate families. Families that suffered in a huge debt and wasn’t able to pay it off in one generation had to carry the balance to the next generation and to the next until it is paid off. However debt bondage is when one person gives a loan to another person and in repayment the person receiving the loan...
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...pledge of their labor or services as repayment for a loan or other debt. The services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services duration may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation. The issue of bonded labor may receive marginal attention globally, but bonded labor is the most extensive form of slavery in the world today. There were approximately 18 to 20.5 million bonded laborers in the world at the end of 2011, almost 90% of whom were in South Asia. This means that approximately half of the slaves in the world are bonded laborers in South Asia, particularly in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and in America and Africa. In America In the Americas, peonage was extended to include criminal peonage, where prisoners sentenced to hard labor were 'farmed out' to private or governmental groups. Peonage is a type of involuntary servitude of laborers (peons) having little control over their employment conditions. Peonage existed historically during the colonial period, especially in Latin America. As the New Mexico laws supported peonage, the US Congress passed an anti-peonage law on March 2, 1867. The current version of this statute is codified at Chapter 21-I of 42 U.S.C. § 1994 and makes no specific mention of New Mexico. In Africa Africa has its own unique version of debt bondage. Afrocentric academics claim that this was a much milder form of debt bondage compared to that experienced elsewhere, since it would...
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...Slavery is dead, right? Today, approximately 21 million men, women, and children are in some form of slavery. Specifically 11.7 million are in debt bondage. Debt bondage occurs as part of a loan repayment. Often times, the person becomes tricked into working to pay off a fictitious debt for little to no pay. Debt bondage is happening all over the world, but more specifically in Africa, the Caribbean, and South-East Asia. This act of abuse goes against article four - freedom from slavery. Debt bonding is a violation of the victim’s human rights and we should work to end this modern day slavery. Many times people are promised passage to another country, and told they will be provide a job and money that could be sent back to their family. Upon...
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...Throughout history slavery has played a large role in many countries and how their societies functioned and how the people were provides for. The slave trade also helped to shape the United States into what it is today. Today, when people think of slavery they are mostly only aware of its piece in the United States. Before the United States was even discovered traders were trading human beings for little trinkets and spices. The beginning of slavery was similarly started everywhere that it was present and grew to the point where it began to take over whole countries. According to Don Nardo, the author of “The Atlantic Slave Trade,” slavery had been going on for over four centuries. Slave trading was started by the Portuguese because they were the first people to begin exploring the world. The explorers went to other places and found that these new places didn’t only trade objects, food, and livestock; they traded people too. During the Seventh and Eighth centuries slavery was very popular too as well as in ancient Greece. Since slavery had been going on for so long, many did not think anything of the real nature of the trade. Even though some people may have found slavery to wrong and unjust the...
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...“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” One hundred and fifty years after the prohibition of slavery was ratified and it seems like we’re back on the battle field fighting for justice. The thirteenth Amendment freed African Americans as slaves but did not extend the branch to convicts “except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted....” The re-enslavement of Blacks were justified to industrialist and former slave owners who believed that they could obtain mass profit by “seeking out” African Americans to pay back “debt” much like today...
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...How Can We Reduce Modern Day Slavery Modern day slavery is growing at a rapid pace.We think that there is nothing we could do to stop it.Nearly 150 years later the fight to end slavery is barely on the road to stopping.An estimated 29.8 million people live in modern day slavery today.About 60,000 victims of slavery are enslaved in the U.S.The population of female slavery victims are 55%.Approximately 78% of victims are enslaved for labor,22% of victims are enslaved and wanted and used for sex.There are different examples of modern day slavery here are a couple of examples sex trafficking,forced and bonded labor,child labor,and domestic servitude.Modern Day Slavery is a growing epidemic.But now it is our job to open our eyes and realize it.We are the only ones that can put a end to it.Slowly but strongly we can stop this growing epidemic. Didn’t slavery end over 150 years ago?That is what we all thought.Today modern slavery is actually a growing epidemic that is capturing more people by the second.The legal form of slavery that took place in 1865 was eliminated (“ModernDaySlavery”).Though that stopped back then slavery that did not end the practice of one person forcing others to work.Now new forms of slavery have been taken place worldwide.The defintion of slavery that is happening now is working commercially or privately against a persons will and for the profit of another.The essence of this act antedated the United States to pick up the practice of...
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...Human trafficking and slavery have existed before written biblical time. No one can pinpoint its true origins though. Human trafficking is defined around the world as the recruiting, transporting, retention against there will of persons through fraud, threats, deception, monetary or other beneficial gain, for the purpose of exploiting these persons. (United Nations ESCAP (UNESCAP), 2010) I will discuss some of the history of human trafficking and what it has developed into, and some ways in which it is combated. The act of trafficking in people has been carried out for thousands of years; little to no information is available about its true beginning (Free Legal Advice Help, 2007). Written history notes that when two tribes or nations went to war, the defeating army would capture and enslave the remaining men, women, and children of the defeated army as punishment for transgressions against the winning army. They would be forced to work under very harsh conditions, with little food or water, and shelter was arcane at best. If work was not performed to their masters’ expectations, they would be beaten, sold, or put to death. Women would be used as sex slaves or house servants. Another point of view is that human trafficking began in the 1700s when children were forced to work off their parents debts in factories, on farms, or in the coal mines. These children would be forced to continue to work even after the debt had been repaid and would continue up through adulthood. (Free...
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...In today’s world most people believe that slavery has ended, but really millions of people are still trapped in slavery. Slavery existed in America since the founding of this country, and it was legal and accepted until Abraham Lincoln announced the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery. In 2018, “Modern slavery has no legal definition but includes human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage and forced marriage”(Rossman). People are debating on whether or not the Thirteenth Amendment is still effective today. When analyzing the research of the Thirteenth Amendment one can determine why it was put into the Bill of Rights, the purpose of the amendment, and that the Thirteenth Amendment is definitely not effective in today’s America....
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...In Africa, Europe and the Middle East all had slavery going on and had similarities to the forms of slavery that was used on the slaves. These three areas were really important because that’s where it all started. Slavery began in 1492 in Africa because of the trade across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic sea which led to slaves into Italy, Spain, Southern France and Portugal. Then slavery in the middle east began right after and then soon came along slaves in America. All of these different countries had slavery, but how are they all the same? Chattel Slavery is one form of slavery which went into America from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Since the Africans were property, chattel was the only way Europeans could become richer than Africans...
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...America’s infancy saw a great deal of issues regarding their government before they became the power they are today. Many of these issues were due to the American population's fear of returning to a monarchical system like they had before, but despised. These issues included slavery, foreign and domestic affairs, taxation, the rise of politically associated parties and the addition of new territories. Through this essay, I will give my analysis about the issues brought up in the Ellis book and my thoughts on how they shaped America's landscape. In the book Ellis brings up a couple of key domestic affairs, which include slavery, the debt crisis post war , taxation, the power of the state government versus the power of the federal government and the rise of...
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...Discrimination is the prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment towards others (Oxford, 1997). Prejudice and discrimination has been going on since the beginning of time. Prejudice and discrimination started years ago with slavery. Chattel, Child, Debt bondage, and Servile marriages are four types of slavery. Chattel slavery is when one person actually owns another person. Child slavery is when poor families actually send their children out into the streets to beg and steal to survive. Debt bondage slavery is when employers pay their workers such low wages that it is not enough to survive. And last servile marriages is where families will marry off their women against their wills for the pleasure and satisfaction of the man. (Macionis, 2010) When someone mentions prejudice and discrimination one tends to think whites verses blacks. Prejudice and discrimination can be towards another person because of their race, sex, color, or even religious belief. Some slavery families do not know anything else but slavery and they actually found a type of comfort with it. Because of previous generations participating in these traditions has become a family law or tradition. Many traditions have become a norm for families in slavery and are still important, especially in the South. This explains why southerners have had and still have a hard time changing their prejudice and discrimination views. Southerners worshiped their past, it became their present, and it has...
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...course these justifications were nonsense: There were important kingdoms and great civilisations in Africa at the same time as people in Britain were living in primitive iron-age huts. Moreover from Egypt came ideas about geometry, arithmetics and astronomy. The proofs of their skills are for example the pyramids which are also one of the seven wonders of the world. Different words have been used to describe black Americans. For a long time they were referred to as negroes and often the word ‘nigger’ was used to insult them. Many whites called them ‘coloured people’. Since the 1960’s the term ‘black’ has become normal, although some people prefer the term ‘Afro-American’ as a reminder of their original roots in Africa. THE BEGINNING OF SLAVERY IN THE US The history of blacks in North America began in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought the first Negro slaves to Virginia. The first imported Africans were brought as indentured servants, not slaves. They were required, as white indentured servants were, to serve seven years. Black people were forcibly taken from their native land. They never saw their families or their native land again. In their new surroundings they had to work for their ‘master’ and many of them were treated cruelly because they had no rights as slaves. Millions...
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...It is shocking that there are more slaves today than at any other time in history. That’s the reaction one gets after realizing that there are added slaves today, approximately 27 million, ( according to the U.S State Department) double the total number believed to have been taken from Africa at the helm of the trans-Atlantic trade. Many people still perceive slave trade as a thing of the past, but it exists within different forms on different continents, ranging from labor and sex trade to debt enslavement, where one is forced to work to offset small loans. From Niger within central Africa where females are bought and sold off as unauthorized wives thus exploited for sexual gratification, to quarry slave within northern India, and Ghana where...
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...African American to American Southerners to work as slave on their plantations. After hundreds of years of being owned by white Americans, the African American was finally given their freedom. Unfortunately, after being released from human slavery and bondage, African Americans had to endure many years of poor treatment and discrimination by members of the American public. After the legislation that was enacted forbidding and punishing discriminatory behavior in society, African Americans were finally able to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Although human equality is still a tremendous work in progress in our society today, after years of decrementing struggles and tribulations, the African American is finally treated like an equal citizen in society. The adverse reality that African Americans did not have the equal right and opportunity to live their lives as free men and women, has set a staggering mark in American history. African Americans were bought and sold like cattle and never looked at as humans but rather property. The laws were designed to benefit the White American and the slave owner and did not recognize the slave as a citizen. Although slavery was made illegal in the Northern regions in 1787, it was not until 1808 before slavery was outlawed and freedom was granted to African Americans throughout the United States. Even though African American freedom was finally established, the African American still faced maltreatment and injustice in society. Because of the...
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