August 30, 2023 • 44 mins
The conditions of slavery, the current state of modern slavery, and other things we need to talk about. Check out our conclusion to this dicussion.
Recommendations
Links:
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.
Recommendations
- Abraham: Schindler’s List (https://www.universalpictures.com/movies/schindlers-list)
- Shane: W.E.B. Du Bois’s work (https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois)
Links:
- https://youtu.be/Ajn9g5Gsv98
- https://restavekfreedom.org/2018/09/11/the-history-of-slavery/
- https://www.hull.ac.uk/work-with-us/more/media-centre/news/2020/sailors-were-appalled-by-conditions-on-slave-ships#:~:text=The%20terrible%20conditions%20for%20those,and%20poor%20ventilation%20below%20deck.
- https://freetheslaves.net/slavery-today-2/slavery-in-history/
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/19/magazine/history-slavery-smithsonian.html
- https://www.ushistory.org/us/22b.asp
- https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler
- https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery
- https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/slavery-in-history/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
You're listening to Why we Do whatwe Do? Welcome to Why we Do
what we Do. I am yourstill Sad host Abraham, Yeah, and
I'm your slowly becoming Anti Florida hostShane. Where it's called podcast. We
(00:25):
talk about the things that people do, and sometimes we really unpack the horrible
things that people have done and whythey did them. We are coming back
on our part two episode discussion aboutslavery, So if you missed the first
part of this, we really unpackthe history of slavery in part one.
It's probably important for part two,but we are talking about a different aspect
(00:45):
of it and the second discussion.We should be able to wrap up this
discussion in today's episode. I think, but hey, if you're joining us
for the first time, welcome,Yeah, We're glad you're here. If
this is the first time you're joiningus, then it's a heavy topic to
jump into, so true, hopefullyyou're here you're finding it informative. Yeah,
And as I said, go backand check out the first part probably
although you could probably get through thisand you'd still have what you need.
(01:08):
And if you're listening to this onthe day that it comes out, it
is August thirtieth, So happy Nationaltoasted marshmallow Day. Ah, yes,
it's too bad that. Well,the dandies are good, so that dandy
the vegan marshmallows, Right, thosearen't too bad. It's also International Whale
Shark Day, the Gentlest of Sharks. Indeed, it is Grief Awareness Day,
so know that some people have grief, yes, leading into that very
(01:30):
nicely. It's Frankenstein Day. Ohthat is good. So much of that
story has to deal with grief,but the grief of being alive as a
monster, so that's the whole thing. Right. Yeah. It is National
Slinky Day. Everyone loves a slinky, Yeah they do. I think I
don't know anybody who hates slinky's.I think people who hate slinky's probably dislike
fun. It's also National Beach Day, so go go hang out there if
(01:53):
you're near one. Yeah, andit is also Amaguenia Day. I think
I said that right. And thisis a type of African pastry. They
look sort of like Bigner donuts typeof things. Oh, I like that.
I'm a big fan of bignets,so I support that. Yeah.
It's actually described as a Johnny cakeor a Dutch oliable. I don't know
(02:14):
what that is or a sapolils.This is its own version, this fried
dough bread, and it's supposed tobe incredible and delicious and so celebrating August
thirtieth, which is the amaguen YaDay. I like it. I like
it all right. Where a podcastabout psychology, as I said when we
started sort version of that anyway,and if you like what you hear today,
you can support us by picking upsome merch join us on Patreon,
(02:37):
we can leave us a rating inreview, you can subscribe. You can
start a reparations project that will payback all the people who had suffered through
slavery, and we'll call it whywe do what we do reparations and we'd
be honored if you did that.That would be really great. I'll talk
about the other ways that you couldsupport us at the end of this topic.
But as I said, we're pickingup on our second part of this
discussion about slavery. I feel likeI'm missing some amble stuff we get into
(03:00):
before we started episode. We're readyto jump into this or am I missing
something? I think we usually sayIf you'd like to join us, join
us on Patreon. We say thatwe're an award nominated podcast. Oh yeah,
that's an important part. Yeah,that should be my opening line anymore.
Speaking of which, that's a reallygood prompt there. If you are
able to if you've voted for usin the first round, you should be
(03:22):
able to vote for us in thesecond round. There's two rounds of votes
for the People's Choice Podcast Awards.You can go to Podcast Awards dot com.
We are on the Skeptics Guide Scienceand Medicine category. We can vote
for us. We would be extremelyhonored if we want, and we're honestly
just extremely honored to have been nominatedat all. So thank you to the
academy that is the Podcast Awards Academy, and to everyone who voted for us.
(03:44):
And A Z are just incredibly gratefulto be here. And I think
the only other preamble for this episodewould be the content warning. Oh yes,
thank you. There's a trigger warningin here. We're talking about the
brutality and violence done to people.This includes things like rape and child abuse
and general mutilation and mistreatment. Soif that's something that you're unable to sit
(04:05):
through, there's really no way aroundit with this particular topic. So you
might want to sit this one out. However, I do encourage you to
listen through it, because I thinkthis is an important topic. If you
feel like you can handle it,and if you're in Florida, you really
should listen because you're not going tohear it anywhere else. Yep, those
are content warnings and recommendation to listenanyway if you can. But wanted to
make sure that that was out there. And I still feel like there's something
(04:27):
I'm missing, but it's fine.We just need to get started on this
topic anyway. Absolutely. So inthe last episode, we talked about definitions
of what slavery is. We talkedabout some of the history of slavery and
kind of where that took us,and really spend a lot of time talking
about specifically what slavery looked like withinthe colonial United States of America, So
looking at that time kind of howthe South benefited from it directly, how
(04:48):
the North benefited from it directly aswell, and how it created it kind
of like an economic system that reallybenefited everybody else but the enslaved people.
So today, hey, we aregoing to start diving into what the conditions
of slavery looked like in the UnitedStates, and kind of how that impacted
everybody that was living here at thetime, and how you kind of still
(05:11):
feel that ripple throughout today. Thatwas the exact preamble that I was missing.
Thank you, Okay, so Iknew we had one. Yeah,
all right, So let's get intothis. The conditions of slavery generally and
specifically slavery is brutal, coerced labor, and subjugating people by dehumanizing him.
That's almost its definition. It's gettingclosed. The institution itself cannot work unless
(05:33):
you see people as something other thanhuman. You can't make it work because
you see people as human otherwise,and then you can't really justify treating them
that way. So most people struggleto inflict that kind of harm on other
people when they see them as people, and they had to be then treated
as animals or worse for the slavesystem to exist. This is even true
(05:55):
in war, as some people havefound that many soldiers aim slightly above the
heads of their opponent to a voidkilling them, so they don't like to
hurt or harm people most of thetime. And also treating animals this way
isn't that easy to do either,But people do get used to it.
You see videos of people treating otherlike other living organisms pretty poorly all the
time, and so people do eventuallykind of habituate to that. Yeah,
(06:17):
but generally speaking, it's not somethingthat is easy for us to do.
And part of the reason that ina lot of pre industrialized cultures, animals,
even when they were killed for food, were treated with the respect and
honor. This what has turned intohow they are treated, regardless of how
you feel about things like meat consumption, is pretty shameful. I think that
(06:39):
most people would say so. Right. Getting back to slavery, though,
a day in the life of theslave was work, work, work,
just like Rihanna would say, almostalways from sun up to sundown, regardless
of the day of the week,and almost always without any sort of pay
or anything even remotely close to that. Right, The most they would typically
get would be maybe a place tostay, like sleep on the site that
(07:00):
they were working, and making surethey were fed, but that was treated
as kind of like shelter, likethey would for like maybe the people that
own the plantations in the spaces wouldtreat that the same as like having shelter
for animals and making sure that theanimals were fed, so they can continue
to do labor. They wouldn't treatthat. It's like kind of a human
dignity, right. There is atask system version of slavery common among rice
plantation slaves. This was that theyhad a certain amount of work that needed
(07:24):
to be completed, and once done, their work was done for the day.
So essentially you complete all your workfor the day, you can go
rest and relax whatever that looks likefor you in that space where there's probably
not as a lot of rest andrelaxation. Yeah, I mean, first
of all, they did their taskfor the day were usually pretty substantial,
so it's unlikely they were going tofinish without having done probably at least ten
(07:45):
hours of work anyway, and probablyalmost always more than that. And second,
the working conditions on these little riceplantations were reportedly just horrendous, awful
working conditions. So not only wereyou doing that almost all day and like,
yeah, you might be able toget done a little earlier, but
your working conditions were terrible. Othersystems of slavery that are more the ones
(08:07):
that people probably think about as beingrepresentative of what slavery was were often under
a driver which was often another slave. This person was meant to oversee the
productivity of the slaves and essentially maintainproductivity for all working hours. So that's
why they called them a driver,right. The labor was extremely physically demanding,
in backbreaking and took place usually indirect sunlight. And if you have
(08:31):
ever spent any time in the South, you know that it is incredibly hot
and human here, which makes iteven more difficult. I mean, just
this last week where I'm at,we have gotten heat warnings all week because
it's so hot. It's an oppressiveheat. So a lot of this work
was done in the sun. Inthe Enslaved folks had to keep up with
high rates of productivity, and itwas essentially demanded of them that the drivers
(08:54):
used torture or threat of torture suchas whipping, scarring, burning, or
branding to people on task to keeppeople working and working at a pretty fast
pace. Now, owners, driversand other people on the plantation saw and
treated slaves as property, as wealluded to, not as humans, not
even burial, I mean sometimes assort of like animals at best, but
(09:16):
generally as property. But another thingabout this is their treatment of slaves was
completely arbitrary, So they would regularlybeat a slave for no reason at all.
They could be starved, burned,raped, tortured, and killed,
and everyone around them saw that asthat owner's freedom to do to their property
as they would. And there's thatuse of the word freedom again to justify
cruelty to others. I think wetalked about this in our episodes discussing freedom
(09:39):
and what that meant. Yeah,one little girl actually related story that kind
of goes like this. So quotethe overseer went to my father one morning
and said, Bob, I'm goingto whip you this morning. Daddy said,
I ain't done nothing, and hesaid I know it. I'm going
to whip you to keep you fromdoing something. And he hid him with
that cow hide. You know,it would cut the blood out of you
(10:01):
with every lick if they hit youhard. End quote. So you see
these stories and these anecdotal these reportsof people's experiences where people will say,
like this is what happened. Theywould just hurt us for no reason.
Yeah, not an uncommon story,Like things like that happen all the time.
So these slaveholders wouldn't think of theirslaves as humans. And to further
(10:22):
this, They would try to makeit so that the slaves themselves did not
think of themselves as humans. Theywould tell the slaves repeatedly the lies that
the slaveholders told themselves and hope thatthe slaves would internalize this message. Unfortunately,
and sadly, many of them didinternalize that message. They started to
think of themselves as being unworthy,that they were only good enough for slaves,
(10:43):
and that they weren't humans. Butmost of them did not. It's
textbook gaslighting. I mean, that'sreally what it is. They were gaslighting,
thinking of like this, this iswhat is good for you, right,
I am taking care of you.If you weren't here, it would
be so much worse for you.Blah blah blah blah. You hear that
kind of all the time, pardonmy language. Some tried or try to
argue that slavery wasn't so bad,and evidence of this is in the fact
(11:07):
that relatively few enslaved people tried torebel and fight against their oppressors. First,
that's a non sequitor. Even ifthey didn't try to fight back,
that doesn't imply that they were okaywith their conditions. That doesn't make any
sense. There are lots of reasonsnot to fight back, which leads to
the second. When rebellions did happen, the powers that be would often respond
by murdering dozens of other enslaved peopleassociated with those involved in the rebellion lives,
(11:30):
children, friends, other family,etc. And instill practices that were
far more brutal as a standard wasacross all of those enslave folks, So
thus rebelling would almost certainly have madelife worse for the families of those enslaved
peoples in the rebellion. And third, enslave people resisted their oppression in other
ways. They usually did it innon passive or non aggressive ways. Yes,
(11:52):
non violent is what I meant tosay, non violent ways. And
of course there were violent uprisings inthat sort of thing, but the most
of the time that didn't happen.But again, the important thing to understand
is like this idea that slavery wasn'tso bad is just completely assinine. It's
wrong, wrong, wrong, yeah, super wrong, and just it is
a total false lie of nonsense.Under no circumstances was it good for those
(12:16):
folks who were enslaved. But speakingof this way that they did resist enslave
people resisted their dehumanization in many ways. One way that most slaves resisted this
is that they did not stoop tothe level of their enslavers by treating them
with the kind of brutal cruelty withwhich they had been treated. They refused
to be the chattel that their captorsbelieved them to be, and they maintain
(12:37):
their humanity by acting like humans unliketheir masters, essentially meaning that they would
not allow themselves to become the peopleor become the objects that they were seen
as being. They rose above it, even though that often did not work
in their immediate favor. I thinkit's hard to imagine being in that position
(12:58):
and taking on the fact that you'relike, you know what, even though
I'm being abused and the conditions hereare horrible, I'm still going to be
the bigger person here. I can'timagine having the wherewithal to take something like
that on. That's incredible. Theamount of resilience and patients that takes and
still continues still continues in descendants offolks who have experienced this. I mean
(13:20):
it is incredible. Yeah, Imean that just makes them a thousand times
better, a million times better thanthe people who enslaved them could ever be.
Yeah. Of course, some enslavefolks resisted by engaging in very understandable
armed rebellions, during which they wouldcoalesce and use weapons to attack their oppressors.
These were rare, however, therewere a few. There were only
(13:41):
plots for a rebellion that did notactually happen, and some were questionable as
to whether the plot even happened,such as Denmark Vesey, who was a
former enslaved person who purchased his freedom. He was accused of plotting to destroy
Charleston, South Virginia, but histrial was extremely biased and unfair and may
have been orchestrated simply to justify executinghim and several other several of his associates,
(14:01):
which they did, you know.So it was basically he bought his
freedom and he was there, buthe was still put to death and oppressed
as a result of people disagreeing withhim because of the color of his skin
and who he was. Yep,exactly right. It occurs to me that
we've reached the point at which,although there is much more to unpack,
we should really take that ad break. Let the capitalists do what they do,
and we'll come right back. Okay, So we've been talking about a
(14:31):
little bit, a little bit oflike history here, but I think mostly
the conditions of slavery, what thatwas like. When recently talking about rebellion,
and there's another one to talk aboutbecause the most probably recognizable and significant
rebellion was led by the preacher NatTurner in eighteen thirty one. And in
this rebellion, a group of eightyslaves rated and killed the white residents of
several harms in Southampton, Virginia.Basically went house to house during the night,
(14:56):
killing people anyone that they could findin these sort of slave holding homes.
Most of the victims in this casewere women and children because the male
slave owners that were the actual ownersthere were at a religious revival getaway camp
in North Carolina. That's how theyended up shaking out with the people who
died. And again, this isnot a fairytale story. This is a
brutal story, and it's difficult tounpack sometimes. Yeah, so you would
(15:20):
think that with enslaved people constantly tryingto escape, purchase their freedom, or
leading or joining rebellions, you mighttake that as a sign that they don't
want to be enslaved, and thatmistreating enslaved people was terrible. But the
way the South responded was to makeslavery significantly worse. Virginia led several Southern
states in passing laws that made preachingamong slaves and enslave people, and teaching
(15:43):
enslaved people to read made it illegal, So people who were quote unquote property
were not allowed to be taught,not allowed to preach, and not allowed
to read. Yes, so we'vetalked about these ways that there's been some
amount of resisting. We had peoplewho have maintained their dignity with people who
have engaged in uprising and rebellion,but they also resisted oppression in more subtle
(16:04):
ways. So apparently some would theywould damage equipment, they would slow down
work or production, and they wouldpretend not to understand commands that were given
to them. And in this waythey would also sort of try and fight
back and resist in ways that werenot as overt. Right. They would
also resist dehumanization by their commitment tofamily, so they married, they had
(16:26):
children, and support each other ina two parent loving home as long as
they were able to. But theywere often separated so that happened quite a
bit. Yeah, One plantation ownerwrote into the rules of the plantation that
enslaved people were not able to marryoutside of the plantation for fear that they
would gain some sense of freedom orindependence. So you find that there were
these kind of arbitrary rules that wouldwork to keep these folks in an oppressed
(16:49):
state and keep them on the propertycontinuing to produce for those folks that were
directly benefiting from it. Well.And it speaks to the fact that they
knew, they could see from theoutset that like people wanted freedom and that
freedom was good, and they triedto find ways to have them not even
think that it was available to themor not see that as being a reality
(17:10):
or even existing if they possibly could. Like the smoke screen of like,
we're going to make it impossible forthem to be successful because they can't read,
they can't learn, they don't knowvery much, and that's the way
that we're going to maintain them asslaves. I think reveals the hand that
they know that this is bad whilethey're also trying to tell people that it's
good. Right, if it wasgood, then why are people trying to
(17:33):
escape it? And why are youpreventing them from learning? Like why wouldn't
they just want to stay there anyway? So I think it shows, albeit
kind of subtly, even when theyare sitting here saying that it's not that
bad, they very much understood howterrible it was, or at least they
had a sense of it right now. Most commonly when slaves did run away,
then they would run away from captivityand they'd escape to the northern quote
(17:56):
unquote free states or to Canada,which had abolished slavery decades before the United
States had, and so that washow they would sometimes get away, although
obviously the north was not always asafe place for them to be either,
Right, go Canada. At least, you know, at least they got
they got ahead of the game andgot rid of it, I know,
right. And another thing too tokind of and another thing because I feel
(18:18):
like that's what's going to keep happeninghere. Yeah. All those slavers use
the Bible to justify their slavery andensured that the enslaved people were familiar with
the passages that talked about people workinghappily in their bondage. The enslaved would
also read the Bible and focus onthe stories of exodus and stories about heroes
overcoming great odds, such as Danieland David. Preachers would cite the Bible
and ask that the lessons contained thereinbe impressed upon the heart of the air
(18:41):
pressors, such that the slaveholders wouldsee the error of their ways and grant
freedom to the enslaved peoples. Yes, So, if we haven't made it
abundantly clear by now, slavery wasunforgivably horrible, unforgivably horrible. Yes,
the new old argument now that slavesmay have benefited from their time as slaves.
(19:03):
That's a thing that part of thereason that we're talking about this today,
part of what we have already alludedto in portions of this discussion,
is that there's this now conversation happeningwhere in Florida people are being taught that
there may have been some benefit tobeing a slave. For those of you
who hear this and say, quote, they did do your homework, end
quote. If you're saying that tous and we're saying that they did not
(19:26):
benefit as slaves, first, you'rean apple. Second, there was some
evidence that some slaves were able touse some of their experience and subsequent employment.
But major caveats need to be unpackedto understand that at all. Right,
first, we have no reason tothink that they would have been unable
to get those jobs even without theirexperience. So there's nothing to say that
(19:48):
their experience working in an enslaved spacewas the thing that gave them the skill
to work that job. They probablycould have very likely would have gotten that
job without that experience to begin with. Also, they could have gotten that
and much better experience without ever havingto have been slaves. There's obviously training
and intern mentorships, like people gainjobs without having been slaves for you know,
(20:11):
all of human history, since we'veever had jobs. So that is
just a nonsense argument. That's howlearning works. Yes, Also, no
one would have voluntarily been an enslavedperson to gain these skills, these hypothetical
skills, these hypothesized skills they talkabout, Nobody would have done that voluntarily.
Also, having been a slave morelikely and more often stifled the development
(20:33):
of effective skill building. They likelywould have gotten much better training in other
situations. But just because they learnedsomething doesn't mean that they learned a good
you know, learned a good amountor a good way of doing things.
They just may have had something thatthey learned, one they learned under coercion,
and two many of those places madeit illegal for them to read,
so they had a hard time learningother things they could have learned, benefited
(20:56):
from, and had greater skills.So right, so it's stifled the developments.
So much to unpack here. Sothe original argument that enslaved people benefited
from slavery, it implies that thereare benefits to slavery in general, besides
all the things that we just talkedabout. Any silver lining here is a
disgusting attempt to minimize suffering and victimization. If you try to defend slavery,
you like, there is no wayto defend it without outing yourself as a
(21:22):
as an inherent racist. Yeah,just because someone can find ways to make
use of their traumatic experiences does notjustify putting them through traumatic experiences. The
victim may subsequently choose to Like,let's say you have a victim of assault,
they may choose to subsequently get extremelyskilled in self defense. This does
(21:42):
not mean that assault then wasn't sobad. Like you wouldn't say that someone
who is a victim of sexual assaultthen like gained useful skills. They're like,
oh, well, at least nowyou're going to be more attentive to
strangers who are around you. Ithink that is an extremely offensive and inappropriate
position to take. They would havenever wanted to have been assaulted, even
(22:06):
if it meant that they got betterat attending to strangers, even if it
meant that they got better to selfdefense. That is an asinine, stupid
argument to make that nobody should bemaking. Like, just because there's some
ever silver lining to two, thatdoes not mean that being a victim was
ever an okay thing for that tohave happened. Yeah, right, Slavery
(22:26):
was not a job training exercise,and making an argument that there is silver
lining is not. It's so inappropriate. It's unfair to the folks that still
suffer from it, and it's aridiculous. It's a ridiculous thing. They
think of it like they should neverhave to need You should never have to
need a silver lining. Yeah,that's as simple as that, Like you
should never have to say that there'sa silver lining to this really bad thing,
(22:48):
because that bad thing shouldn't have happenedto begin with. Yeah, absolutely,
Okay, Well, it's a littleearly for a break, but I
think it would be a kind ofjarring segue to transition to our next topic.
Maybe not. I don't know.It's pretty on brandy, But let's
go ahead and let the advertisers dothe thing and we'll come back with something
about Nazis. All right, Sowe've been talking about about slavery, the
(23:18):
conditions of slavery, and the thingis like the practice of American slavery.
And I mean, there's other thingsto talk about slavery outside of the United
States in the past, now andinto the future, but one of the
interesting things is slavery and how itrelated to Nazi Germany and Hitler specifically.
So Adolf Hitler, for those ofyou who don't know, the leader of
(23:41):
the Nazi Party, was a hugefan of American racism. In his famous
book mindcomf Hitler celebrated and acknowledged America'sgreat success in isolating citizenship based on race
by quote excluding certain races from naturalizationend quote. Right. So, just
to be clear, Hitler found thingslike American slavery to be a good example
(24:03):
of how racism should be done.Yes, So just kind of keep that
in mind for those of you whoare defending slavery. Just know that he
thought that that was like a reallygood practice. Hitler also pointed to the
treatment of indigenous people of North Americaas a demonstration of for concentration camps,
writing quote, concentration camps were notinvented in Germany. It is the English
who are their inventors, using thisinstitution to gradually break the backs of other
(24:26):
nations end quote. So again hejust keeps going on. Basically, he
used America as an example for theThird Reich. Yeah, he loved what
America did. Hitler greatly admired theJim Crow laws of the South that further
treated people with dark skin as adisparate species, unworthy of the same rights
and liberties as the quote dominant raceend quote. He also further cited Jim
(24:48):
Crow laws and developing Nazi treatment ofJews, saying essentially, like, in
defense of this, everyone does thisalready, so it's okay for Germany to
do it too. Yeah. Yeah, Like that was Jim Crowe directly inspired
the ghettos. Yeah, I mean, there was probably other things that went
into it, but that was avariable that inspired the ghettos that he put
Jews into, Like America was amuse for the Holocaust. Yeah, it
(25:12):
was. American eugenists were also verypopular among the Nazis, who directly applied
the hypothesis of eugenics into their genocidalcampaign. So even then, eugenicists were
stoking fear and support of their claimsby arguing that if people do not control
the breeding of quote undesirables, thatminority groups would take over the white race
in America, which we still hearpeople say that today, which is absurd.
(25:34):
The great replacement theory is ridiculous.Yeah, California developed a sterilization program
in nineteen o nine that four sterilizationof people who were quote feeble minded or
often incarcerated people. This directly inspiredNazi four sterilization programs in correspondence with their
eugenics movement. Yeah, California wasnot always the blue state it is today.
They actually very much led the wayin some very oppressive policies for a
(25:56):
while. I think they also votedfor Nicky. So yeah, this is
a relatively recent developments that it becamea place of liberal ideas. Right anyway,
the American Immigration Act of nineteen twentyfour imposed quotas and bands on who
could migrate to the country and fromwhere. These laws focused specifically on Asian
countries and other countries with people ofother races that might try to come to
(26:19):
the US, and it also preventedalmost by design here, So this is
the American Immigration Act. This alsoprevented later many Jewish people from arriving to
the US during the Holocaust, includingAnne Frank and her family. So where
we could have been as safe havenfor people seeking asylum, we were not.
We were not. We were veryisolationists at the time. Yeah,
(26:41):
we definitely have tried to close ourborders to every single person, and it
became a real problem. I mean, it essentially forced us into the war
eventually. As much as we liketo champion the US being a part of
the Allied forces against Germany, thethings that we were doing directly helped and
benefited Hitler huh, Yeah, andgave him inspiration. Now, most horribly,
(27:03):
Nevada was the first US state touse a gas chemical to carry out
a death sentence of an incarcerated inmate. The chemical was Zyklon B, which
a chemist modified for use in thegas chambers in Auschwitz. So the US
was also directly responsible for the developmentof that particular method of death. Yep.
Oh, so that's what we're at. I guess so bad, Yeah,
(27:26):
okay now and into the future.So versions of slavery do still exist,
largely in the form of human trafficking, forced labor, human bondage,
sex trafficking, and involuntary prostitution,with as many as an estimated forty million
people who may be in some sortof bondage, although it has gotten increasingly
surreptitious and difficult to track, andthere are countries still that use slave labor,
(27:51):
for example, mining precious metals andearth minerals that are used in things
like batteries, So that is athing that also still goes on. You
know. I think this is oneof those things where as we evolve as
a species, we end up havingbetter descriptive language for things that occurring.
These things were happening before too,human trafficking, forced labor, human bondage,
like sex trafficking, in voluntary prostitution, This was happening before as well.
(28:15):
We just have better language for it. So like we're getting more specific
with these things, they've also gottensneakier about it, right, right,
And so one of the questions thatwe posit here is that we want to
kind of know what benefit that RohndaSantis thinks or would like to suppose these
enslaved people are getting from their captivity. I would love to know what he
thinks what these folks today are gainingfrom those experiences. Yeah, he sees
(28:37):
slavery is so good, So presumablyhe could find silver lining for the children
who would be in silk sex trafficked. So just as an implication of this,
I'm thinking that we could say thatRohn de Santis is generally in support
of the silver lining afforded by childsex trafficking. Yeah. I think that's
a pretty fair alignment with his views. It should be a little bit cautious
here because I believe that where thiscame out of was the board of people
(29:00):
that he put in position of power. That they're the ones who's who made
this change about slavery. So it'sRonda Santis is putting people in a position
who champion that sex slavery of childrenis a good thing. So Roda Santis
and friends is what you're saying,right, Yes and company? Yeah,
they work together? Fair Matt Gates, you know, yeah, well,
(29:21):
well we know he's a big fanof that. Yeah, yeah, so
I need a high a lawyer immediately. The Global Slavery Index has identified that
North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia,India, and Qatar have the highest concentrations
of modern slavery. In case you'rewondering where this is taking place, largely
(29:42):
today right their efforts to continue toend slavery. The website restavec Freedom offers
guidance as to how to recognize slaveryand what to do if you see it.
And here's a direct quote from theirsite quote. If a person cannot
leave their job, reports low wages, isn't properly cared, or never speaks
for themselves, they may be victimsof slavery. For children, look for
(30:03):
a lack of access to education,poor nutrition, shabby clothing, and a
lack of playtime. If you noticechildren's beds or clothing in factories or of
businesses where they don't belong, thisis an indicator of child slavery. If
you recognize any of these signs,call the National Human Trafficking hot Line at
one eight eight eight three seven threeseven eight eight eight to report it.
(30:25):
Yes, please do not let slaveryand trafficking go unreported. Yes, people
will try and do something about it. Yeah, it could be less so
in Florida, but generally speaking,yeah, yeah. As a general rule,
people aren't all terrible, so peoplewill try to do some work around
this. Yes, we do havesome interesting tidbits to unpack, which is
a couple of things that have happenedaround this. So there's the thing called
(30:48):
misgenation. This is a marriage betweentwo people of different ethnicities. It was
a term primarily used to deride sucha practice as inappropriate or even gross at
the time that it was largely usedin the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. Maryland
passed the very first anti miscegenation statutein sixteen sixty four, banning the marriage
between a black person and a whiteperson, and of course many states soon
(31:11):
followed suit afterward. But what's interestingis that although these have been repealed over
time, and I think many ofthe later added states never had laws like
that to begin with. The verylast state in the country to repeal their
ban on interracial marriage, which wasAlabama, and they did so in Can
you guess what year? I haveno idea. I think if you were
(31:32):
to guess, you might say likenineteen fifties, nineteen sixty It was the
year two thousand, two thousand,just twenty three years ago, as when
Alabama officially repealed their anti interracial marriageLike what the Galabama. Yeah, that
particular thing is a global phenomenon,Like that's not like unique to the United
States in terms of like right,Like, yeah, interracial marriage is I
(31:53):
mean, you listen to Trevor Noah'sentire life story and he was like his
little his book is called a crimebecause he was the result of a crime
in South Africa during apartheid. Solike, this is a thing that's occurring
everywhere. But man, the yeartwo thousand, right, and people were
probably mad about it. People arestill mad about it. I'm sure,
(32:14):
yeah, I bet you're probably right. They're probably going to say, like
how this is destroying the country andwe're heading the wrong direction, Like that's
a talking point. I'm sure ithappened, right, and maybe it is
happening right, is currently happening.I'm sure. Slavery was not considered globally
illegal until nineteen forty eight under theUnited Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which you know was probably spawned afterWorld War two and all the things that
(32:37):
came up. That was probably animportant discussion to have in that space.
Now, maybe people have now heardof Juneteenth, as it is recently a
federal holiday in the United States.For those who are unfamiliar, the specific
day and reason for recognizing it comesfrom the fact that in Texas they decided
they just wouldn't tell the slaves theslavery had ended. They didn't have the
internet, they barely had phones,they probably didn't get national newspapers. So
(32:59):
there we're just gonna not say anythingand keep them as sleaves. So on
June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five,two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went to
effect, General Gordon Granger ordered thefinal enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas,
and the slaveholders were forced to lettheir slaves go. And even though
(33:20):
we can recognize that as being somethingthat is good for us to acknowledge,
celebrate, take some time and bringattention to the black community and this thing
that is important to them for veryunderstandable reasons. There are now even politicians
who are argued that we should getrid of Juneteenth. And but one of
the arguments that they make is thatit's too new. We can't recognize everything
and give holidays to everything, theysay, And I'm just like, what
(33:45):
the hell? First of all,like every holiday that we have was too
new at some point, right,and it is nevertheless state on the book.
And I think that having this oneholiday does not mean that we're on
the slippery slope to nobody working.Ever, that is a nonsense argument to
make. So anyway, useful toknow about Juneteenth, what it stands for,
what it means that people who arguethat we should get rid of it
(34:06):
are ignorant? Asked, Yes,agreed? All right, I think we're
ready for some take on points.Yeah, I mean I think the biggest
takeco on point here is the slaveryis and was and always will be a
disgusting, horrible, in human wayto treat another person as if somehow their
lives are worth less than the peoplesubjectating them. It was, it was
brutal. It is brutal too.I mean, let's be real, like
(34:27):
modern slavery is also brutal. It'salso cruel, it's traumatizing, and as
close as anything can be through evil. It is purely evil through and through.
There is no benefit to it,and it does not make any sense
that anybody would advocate for the needto use this unless you're just an evil
person. And I think, youknow, from we can take a sort
of scientific skeptical lens and say thatthere is no such thing as evil.
(34:51):
I'd be happy to have that argumentand that discussion. But I think that,
like I said, this is asclose as it gets to what we
would probably describe as being evil,and so that's obviously meaning that it's a
thing that we should stop and avoidand never do again ever to anybody.
Right. And I think another bigtank Cope point for me here is that
the slaves won their freedom because theyfought for it and all the ways,
(35:12):
and that they were able to,you know, but they should have never
had to fight for their freedom inthe first place. These are human beings
that were treated as something other thanhuman beings for a very long time,
and millions of people were treated thisway. It's just it's a horrible stain
I think on the entire human raceas a species historically, and hopefully one
that we can learn from and dobetter and never do again. Understanding that
(35:35):
is a thing that is still goingon, but is a thing that needs
to end, and it needs toend flat out, like there is no
justification for it as a horrible,terrible practice that should have never started in
the first place and definitely should discontinueimmediately and never can never happen again.
And you know, I don't know. This comes up sometimes where people are
like when certain industries get replaced,and they're like, oh, now those
(35:58):
people out of a job, AndI'm like, I do understand the necessity
of like having employment, making money, being able to support yourself, and
like that. If there is anecessary evil, then in some ways capitalism
is it. Although I think youcould also argue that is entirely unnecessary.
I shed no tears for the captorsof enslaved children who lose their job,
none whatsoever, Like there is noreason feel sorry for that. Yeah,
(36:22):
that's not a job that anyone shouldhave. Right, There's no justification in
maintaining an industry just because somebody mightlose their job if the industry goes away,
if the industry is a terrible onethat is hurting people, right,
not a thing that I think youcan justify, right, And I think
going back to kind of the essenceand the understanding of the why we started
the show, right, the whywe do what we do part of this
like why did people do this thing? And it ultimately came down to a
(36:45):
lot of profit. I mean peoplemade a lot of money and gained a
lot of resources and a lot ofwealth on the backs of the folks that
were enslaved. I mean that isreally a primary driver for a lot of
folks that were involved in this.Now, why did they go so far
as to horrifically abuse and treat folksthe way they did? And then that's
that's an entirely different conversation. Butwhen we start unpacking this and we start
(37:08):
looking at what was going on,what were the primary motivators and what's the
context? I mean, it reallycame down to gaining more resources as a
result of this particular industry. Yeah, exactly. Okay, Well, I
think that's what we have to sayabout slavery. Is there anything else you'd
like to add before we wrap upfor today, Shane, I would just
(37:29):
like to add that it's bad.It's just bad. I don't know why
we have to say that. Idon't know why. It's it's ridiculous that
we have to say it, butlike it is, bad. It's a
really bad thing. So the lastthing I would add is spend some time
reading about the effects of this,because we just talked about it up and
through up through you know, theemancipation and kind of like some of the
stuff that leads up to World WarTwo, but we have not talked about
(37:49):
the long lasting ramifications of this particulartime in history. And it's really important
to know that this is, youknow, while there is modern slavery,
everything that we've seen and everything we'vetalked about has rippled through our entire society
and continues to impact marginalized volts.Yes, yeah, And I think there
is a thing that I actually wantedto add in that I kind of forgot
(38:10):
about, which is that there isalso a version of slave labor that kind
of exists in how the prison systemoften treats prisoners, yes, and forcing
them to do labor for next tonothing or sometimes nothing. It looks sort
of like indentured servitude sometimes but lookslike slavery at other times. So I
think that there's another version of wherethis exists, and it's worth unpacking at
some point the prison system more generally, and why it's not appropriate to even
(38:32):
treat prisoners as slaves. I thinkthat does come back to at some level
that we need to be humans treatingother humans as humans, and understanding even
when we justify, for one reasonor another incarcerating someone and taking away their
general liberty and freedom, that westill shouldn't treat them in humanely. Right.
So that's I think a discussion fordown the road, but one that
I forgot that I wanted to includeas part of our talk today. Sure,
(38:55):
I think it's an important discussion.I agree we should have never had
to say that this is bad,but we find ourselves in that position now,
I guess. So, Yeah,thanks Ron. Yeah. Indeed,
also by the way, Ron,child sex slavery is bad, just in
case, just in case you weren'taware. Yeah, no silver linings there,
Okay, But I think that's whatwe have to say. We do
have some recommendations to give, whichis a part where we'd like to share
(39:17):
some recommendations that we have. Usuallyit's something that we've found joying, but
sometimes it's like an activity or athing that you do, and we'll talk
about that in a second. FirstI need to acknowledge that again, if
you'd like to support the show.You can join us on Patreon. If
you do that, you get accessto all these behind the scenes content,
bonus materials, and add free episodes. The people who have done that,
who would make this show possible,we are eternally grateful to, and that
(39:37):
includes Mike m Megan, Layla,Mike T, Justin Kim, Joshua,
Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brianand Ashley. Thank you all so much
for everything that you do. Also, thank you so much to my team.
Right now we have writting and factchecking from Shane and myself, audio
production and editing from Justin, andour social media coordinator is Emma Wilson.
(39:58):
Thank you all very much to myteam for you, guys is doing just
the amazing work that you do,allowing the show to continue on what it
is doing. Thanks for having us. Yeah, of course, thank you
everyone to listening. Thank you forrecording with me today. Shane, go
vote for us for Podcast Awards dotCom for our final round of votes.
We're hoping to clinch that win,but of course we're super stoked dig even
be considered for that, So thankyou for those who did vote. Thank
you if you do, go andvote anything else before we get to recommendations.
(40:22):
Nope, nothing else on my end, Lovely, let's do it recommendations.
Okay, I am recommend this istangential to slavery, but I'm gonna
go ahead and recommend this movie thatis very old now called Schindler's List from
director Steven Spielberg. If you haven'tseen it already, it is a heartbreaking
(40:45):
movie that has a lot of upsand downs. I think it's an extremely
well done movie. It is nota feel good movie, but it's an
extremely well done movie that's largely aboutthe Holocaust and people there and and specifically
one German person who tried to helpus man aid you people as he possibly
could, after initially doing a bunchof the wrong things and then he did
the right thing. But right.Yeah, so that's that's a movie.
(41:06):
It is a heavy watch, butit's a good watch. So I recommend
it. Yeah, it is agood one. It is a good one.
Over the last couple episodes, I'vebeen thinking about, you know,
this is such a big topic andit's really difficult to unpack, and I
and I thought it would be goodto give somebody of like some folks recommendations
to as a starting point. Forkind of improving processes around this or kind
of thoughts or actions around this.So my recommendation is the work of W.
(41:30):
E. B. Du Boys orsome people will say du Bois.
I've seen both of those and heardboth of those, But right now I'm
looking at the annunciation guy that saysd Boys, I would pronounce a du
Blas, but that's I'm not whoam I to say. So he was
a civil rights activist. He dida lot of really great work in the
United States around improving civil rights forblack folks. He's done a lot of
(41:53):
writings, and a lot of kindof anti racist writings are written, like
started and kind of referenced his workto begin with. He was one of
the founders of the NAACP, andhe probably deserves his own episode just because
of the amount of stuff that hehas done in the work that he's done
around that it's probably worth unpacking.But I strongly recommend that if you ever
(42:13):
get a chance, if you areinterested in doing more work around anti racist
work or just kind of understanding systemicracism and all that stuff, he is
a good place to start. Yeah, he is kind of like one of
the people that had a lot ofthe seminal works around kind of creating the
anti racist movement. So definitely don'tsleep on his work. He's done some
really powerful things. So that's justa starting place for you. That's great.
(42:36):
I've definitely read some snippets and excerpts. I've never read an entire piece
that he has written. I knowthat Ibram X Kendy, who wrote the
book on How to Be An AntiRacist, referenced a lot but also had
some criticisms of Dubois. Sure,yeah, which I think is fair and
legitimate. So I think we've recommendedHow to be an Anti Racist on this
podcast before, but that's what wecertainly had some absolutely fantastic book to go
check out. I think is agood pair to this book or not.
(42:59):
Obviously the you're not refly a specificbook, but I think if you read
some W. E. B.Du Bois, if you read some mm
x Kendy, I think you'll havea good, well rounded history sort of
anti racism and civil rights work.I'm glad that you said that, like
you like you know, putting somebodyup on a pedestal and kind of creating
a monolith out of a single person. For any sort of work around that
is really detrimental to your learning.So definitely pear that up and you really
(43:22):
like know that he created a lotof stuff, but also know that there
are some discussions around that, soyou have to see all the discussions around
the folks that are impacted by this. Yeah, great, love that.
Okay, so we ended with someheavier recommendations as well. But if you
would like to tell us anything thatwe got right, if you like to
provide some constructive and kind criticism,you can email us directly. We'd like
to hear if you'd like to tellus anything at all. I mean,
(43:43):
you can just tell us about whata great day you had today. You
can email us directly. Info atWWDWWD podcast dot com. You can reach
out to us on all the socialmedia platforms. As I said, leave
us are writing in review. Subscribeso you don't miss any future episodes.
Thank you so much for listening.Is there anything else you need to add
before we wrap it up today?Shane El's on my end. All right,
then, this is Abraham and thisis a Shane and we are out.
(44:04):
See. Yup, you've been listeningto why we do what we do?
You can learn more about this andother episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast
dot com. Thanks for listening,and we hope you have an awesome day.
You're listening to Why we Do whatwe Do? Welcome to Why we Do
what we Do. I am yourstill Sad host Abraham, Yeah, and
I'm your slowly becoming Anti Florida hostShane. Where it's called podcast. We
(00:25):
talk about the things that people do, and sometimes we really unpack the horrible
things that people have done and whythey did them. We are coming back
on our part two episode discussion aboutslavery, So if you missed the first
part of this, we really unpackthe history of slavery in part one.
It's probably important for part two,but we are talking about a different aspect
(00:45):
of it and the second discussion.We should be able to wrap up this
discussion in today's episode. I think, but hey, if you're joining us
for the first time, welcome,Yeah, We're glad you're here. If
this is the first time you're joiningus, then it's a heavy topic to
jump into, so true, hopefullyyou're here you're finding it informative. Yeah,
And as I said, go backand check out the first part probably
although you could probably get through thisand you'd still have what you need.
(01:08):
And if you're listening to this onthe day that it comes out, it
is August thirtieth, So happy Nationaltoasted marshmallow Day. Ah, yes,
it's too bad that. Well,the dandies are good, so that dandy
the vegan marshmallows, Right, thosearen't too bad. It's also International Whale
Shark Day, the Gentlest of Sharks. Indeed, it is Grief Awareness Day,
so know that some people have grief, yes, leading into that very
(01:30):
nicely. It's Frankenstein Day. Ohthat is good. So much of that
story has to deal with grief,but the grief of being alive as a
monster, so that's the whole thing. Right. Yeah. It is National
Slinky Day. Everyone loves a slinky, Yeah they do. I think I
don't know anybody who hates slinky's.I think people who hate slinky's probably dislike
fun. It's also National Beach Day, so go go hang out there if
(01:53):
you're near one. Yeah, andit is also Amaguenia Day. I think
I said that right. And thisis a type of African pastry. They
look sort of like Bigner donuts typeof things. Oh, I like that.
I'm a big fan of bignets,so I support that. Yeah.
It's actually described as a Johnny cakeor a Dutch oliable. I don't know
(02:14):
what that is or a sapolils.This is its own version, this fried
dough bread, and it's supposed tobe incredible and delicious and so celebrating August
thirtieth, which is the amaguen YaDay. I like it. I like
it all right. Where a podcastabout psychology, as I said when we
started sort version of that anyway,and if you like what you hear today,
you can support us by picking upsome merch join us on Patreon,
(02:37):
we can leave us a rating inreview, you can subscribe. You can
start a reparations project that will payback all the people who had suffered through
slavery, and we'll call it whywe do what we do reparations and we'd
be honored if you did that.That would be really great. I'll talk
about the other ways that you couldsupport us at the end of this topic.
But as I said, we're pickingup on our second part of this
discussion about slavery. I feel likeI'm missing some amble stuff we get into
(03:00):
before we started episode. We're readyto jump into this or am I missing
something? I think we usually sayIf you'd like to join us, join
us on Patreon. We say thatwe're an award nominated podcast. Oh yeah,
that's an important part. Yeah,that should be my opening line anymore.
Speaking of which, that's a reallygood prompt there. If you are
able to if you've voted for usin the first round, you should be
(03:22):
able to vote for us in thesecond round. There's two rounds of votes
for the People's Choice Podcast Awards.You can go to Podcast Awards dot com.
We are on the Skeptics Guide Scienceand Medicine category. We can vote
for us. We would be extremelyhonored if we want, and we're honestly
just extremely honored to have been nominatedat all. So thank you to the
academy that is the Podcast Awards Academy, and to everyone who voted for us.
(03:44):
And A Z are just incredibly gratefulto be here. And I think
the only other preamble for this episodewould be the content warning. Oh yes,
thank you. There's a trigger warningin here. We're talking about the
brutality and violence done to people.This includes things like rape and child abuse
and general mutilation and mistreatment. Soif that's something that you're unable to sit
(04:05):
through, there's really no way aroundit with this particular topic. So you
might want to sit this one out. However, I do encourage you to
listen through it, because I thinkthis is an important topic. If you
feel like you can handle it,and if you're in Florida, you really
should listen because you're not going tohear it anywhere else. Yep, those
are content warnings and recommendation to listenanyway if you can. But wanted to
make sure that that was out there. And I still feel like there's something
(04:27):
I'm missing, but it's fine.We just need to get started on this
topic anyway. Absolutely. So inthe last episode, we talked about definitions
of what slavery is. We talkedabout some of the history of slavery and
kind of where that took us,and really spend a lot of time talking
about specifically what slavery looked like withinthe colonial United States of America, So
looking at that time kind of howthe South benefited from it directly, how
(04:48):
the North benefited from it directly aswell, and how it created it kind
of like an economic system that reallybenefited everybody else but the enslaved people.
So today, hey, we aregoing to start diving into what the conditions
of slavery looked like in the UnitedStates, and kind of how that impacted
everybody that was living here at thetime, and how you kind of still
(05:11):
feel that ripple throughout today. Thatwas the exact preamble that I was missing.
Thank you, Okay, so Iknew we had one. Yeah,
all right, So let's get intothis. The conditions of slavery generally and
specifically slavery is brutal, coerced labor, and subjugating people by dehumanizing him.
That's almost its definition. It's gettingclosed. The institution itself cannot work unless
(05:33):
you see people as something other thanhuman. You can't make it work because
you see people as human otherwise,and then you can't really justify treating them
that way. So most people struggleto inflict that kind of harm on other
people when they see them as people, and they had to be then treated
as animals or worse for the slavesystem to exist. This is even true
(05:55):
in war, as some people havefound that many soldiers aim slightly above the
heads of their opponent to a voidkilling them, so they don't like to
hurt or harm people most of thetime. And also treating animals this way
isn't that easy to do either,But people do get used to it.
You see videos of people treating otherlike other living organisms pretty poorly all the
time, and so people do eventuallykind of habituate to that. Yeah,
(06:17):
but generally speaking, it's not somethingthat is easy for us to do.
And part of the reason that ina lot of pre industrialized cultures, animals,
even when they were killed for food, were treated with the respect and
honor. This what has turned intohow they are treated, regardless of how
you feel about things like meat consumption, is pretty shameful. I think that
(06:39):
most people would say so. Right. Getting back to slavery, though,
a day in the life of theslave was work, work, work,
just like Rihanna would say, almostalways from sun up to sundown, regardless
of the day of the week,and almost always without any sort of pay
or anything even remotely close to that. Right, The most they would typically
get would be maybe a place tostay, like sleep on the site that
(07:00):
they were working, and making surethey were fed, but that was treated
as kind of like shelter, likethey would for like maybe the people that
own the plantations in the spaces wouldtreat that the same as like having shelter
for animals and making sure that theanimals were fed, so they can continue
to do labor. They wouldn't treatthat. It's like kind of a human
dignity, right. There is atask system version of slavery common among rice
plantation slaves. This was that theyhad a certain amount of work that needed
(07:24):
to be completed, and once done, their work was done for the day.
So essentially you complete all your workfor the day, you can go
rest and relax whatever that looks likefor you in that space where there's probably
not as a lot of rest andrelaxation. Yeah, I mean, first
of all, they did their taskfor the day were usually pretty substantial,
so it's unlikely they were going tofinish without having done probably at least ten
(07:45):
hours of work anyway, and probablyalmost always more than that. And second,
the working conditions on these little riceplantations were reportedly just horrendous, awful
working conditions. So not only wereyou doing that almost all day and like,
yeah, you might be able toget done a little earlier, but
your working conditions were terrible. Othersystems of slavery that are more the ones
(08:07):
that people probably think about as beingrepresentative of what slavery was were often under
a driver which was often another slave. This person was meant to oversee the
productivity of the slaves and essentially maintainproductivity for all working hours. So that's
why they called them a driver,right. The labor was extremely physically demanding,
in backbreaking and took place usually indirect sunlight. And if you have
(08:31):
ever spent any time in the South, you know that it is incredibly hot
and human here, which makes iteven more difficult. I mean, just
this last week where I'm at,we have gotten heat warnings all week because
it's so hot. It's an oppressiveheat. So a lot of this work
was done in the sun. Inthe Enslaved folks had to keep up with
high rates of productivity, and itwas essentially demanded of them that the drivers
(08:54):
used torture or threat of torture suchas whipping, scarring, burning, or
branding to people on task to keeppeople working and working at a pretty fast
pace. Now, owners, driversand other people on the plantation saw and
treated slaves as property, as wealluded to, not as humans, not
even burial, I mean sometimes assort of like animals at best, but
(09:16):
generally as property. But another thingabout this is their treatment of slaves was
completely arbitrary, So they would regularlybeat a slave for no reason at all.
They could be starved, burned,raped, tortured, and killed,
and everyone around them saw that asthat owner's freedom to do to their property
as they would. And there's thatuse of the word freedom again to justify
cruelty to others. I think wetalked about this in our episodes discussing freedom
(09:39):
and what that meant. Yeah,one little girl actually related story that kind
of goes like this. So quotethe overseer went to my father one morning
and said, Bob, I'm goingto whip you this morning. Daddy said,
I ain't done nothing, and hesaid I know it. I'm going
to whip you to keep you fromdoing something. And he hid him with
that cow hide. You know,it would cut the blood out of you
(10:01):
with every lick if they hit youhard. End quote. So you see
these stories and these anecdotal these reportsof people's experiences where people will say,
like this is what happened. Theywould just hurt us for no reason.
Yeah, not an uncommon story,Like things like that happen all the time.
So these slaveholders wouldn't think of theirslaves as humans. And to further
(10:22):
this, They would try to makeit so that the slaves themselves did not
think of themselves as humans. Theywould tell the slaves repeatedly the lies that
the slaveholders told themselves and hope thatthe slaves would internalize this message. Unfortunately,
and sadly, many of them didinternalize that message. They started to
think of themselves as being unworthy,that they were only good enough for slaves,
(10:43):
and that they weren't humans. Butmost of them did not. It's
textbook gaslighting. I mean, that'sreally what it is. They were gaslighting,
thinking of like this, this iswhat is good for you, right,
I am taking care of you.If you weren't here, it would
be so much worse for you.Blah blah blah blah. You hear that
kind of all the time, pardonmy language. Some tried or try to
argue that slavery wasn't so bad,and evidence of this is in the fact
(11:07):
that relatively few enslaved people tried torebel and fight against their oppressors. First,
that's a non sequitor. Even ifthey didn't try to fight back,
that doesn't imply that they were okaywith their conditions. That doesn't make any
sense. There are lots of reasonsnot to fight back, which leads to
the second. When rebellions did happen, the powers that be would often respond
by murdering dozens of other enslaved peopleassociated with those involved in the rebellion lives,
(11:30):
children, friends, other family,etc. And instill practices that were
far more brutal as a standard wasacross all of those enslave folks, So
thus rebelling would almost certainly have madelife worse for the families of those enslaved
peoples in the rebellion. And third, enslave people resisted their oppression in other
ways. They usually did it innon passive or non aggressive ways. Yes,
(11:52):
non violent is what I meant tosay, non violent ways. And
of course there were violent uprisings inthat sort of thing, but the most
of the time that didn't happen.But again, the important thing to understand
is like this idea that slavery wasn'tso bad is just completely assinine. It's
wrong, wrong, wrong, yeah, super wrong, and just it is
a total false lie of nonsense.Under no circumstances was it good for those
(12:16):
folks who were enslaved. But speakingof this way that they did resist enslave
people resisted their dehumanization in many ways. One way that most slaves resisted this
is that they did not stoop tothe level of their enslavers by treating them
with the kind of brutal cruelty withwhich they had been treated. They refused
to be the chattel that their captorsbelieved them to be, and they maintain
(12:37):
their humanity by acting like humans unliketheir masters, essentially meaning that they would
not allow themselves to become the peopleor become the objects that they were seen
as being. They rose above it, even though that often did not work
in their immediate favor. I thinkit's hard to imagine being in that position
(12:58):
and taking on the fact that you'relike, you know what, even though
I'm being abused and the conditions hereare horrible, I'm still going to be
the bigger person here. I can'timagine having the wherewithal to take something like
that on. That's incredible. Theamount of resilience and patients that takes and
still continues still continues in descendants offolks who have experienced this. I mean
(13:20):
it is incredible. Yeah, Imean that just makes them a thousand times
better, a million times better thanthe people who enslaved them could ever be.
Yeah. Of course, some enslavefolks resisted by engaging in very understandable
armed rebellions, during which they wouldcoalesce and use weapons to attack their oppressors.
These were rare, however, therewere a few. There were only
(13:41):
plots for a rebellion that did notactually happen, and some were questionable as
to whether the plot even happened,such as Denmark Vesey, who was a
former enslaved person who purchased his freedom. He was accused of plotting to destroy
Charleston, South Virginia, but histrial was extremely biased and unfair and may
have been orchestrated simply to justify executinghim and several other several of his associates,
(14:01):
which they did, you know.So it was basically he bought his
freedom and he was there, buthe was still put to death and oppressed
as a result of people disagreeing withhim because of the color of his skin
and who he was. Yep,exactly right. It occurs to me that
we've reached the point at which,although there is much more to unpack,
we should really take that ad break. Let the capitalists do what they do,
and we'll come right back. Okay, So we've been talking about a
(14:31):
little bit, a little bit oflike history here, but I think mostly
the conditions of slavery, what thatwas like. When recently talking about rebellion,
and there's another one to talk aboutbecause the most probably recognizable and significant
rebellion was led by the preacher NatTurner in eighteen thirty one. And in
this rebellion, a group of eightyslaves rated and killed the white residents of
several harms in Southampton, Virginia.Basically went house to house during the night,
(14:56):
killing people anyone that they could findin these sort of slave holding homes.
Most of the victims in this casewere women and children because the male
slave owners that were the actual ownersthere were at a religious revival getaway camp
in North Carolina. That's how theyended up shaking out with the people who
died. And again, this isnot a fairytale story. This is a
brutal story, and it's difficult tounpack sometimes. Yeah, so you would
(15:20):
think that with enslaved people constantly tryingto escape, purchase their freedom, or
leading or joining rebellions, you mighttake that as a sign that they don't
want to be enslaved, and thatmistreating enslaved people was terrible. But the
way the South responded was to makeslavery significantly worse. Virginia led several Southern
states in passing laws that made preachingamong slaves and enslave people, and teaching
(15:43):
enslaved people to read made it illegal, So people who were quote unquote property
were not allowed to be taught,not allowed to preach, and not allowed
to read. Yes, so we'vetalked about these ways that there's been some
amount of resisting. We had peoplewho have maintained their dignity with people who
have engaged in uprising and rebellion,but they also resisted oppression in more subtle
(16:04):
ways. So apparently some would theywould damage equipment, they would slow down
work or production, and they wouldpretend not to understand commands that were given
to them. And in this waythey would also sort of try and fight
back and resist in ways that werenot as overt. Right. They would
also resist dehumanization by their commitment tofamily, so they married, they had
(16:26):
children, and support each other ina two parent loving home as long as
they were able to. But theywere often separated so that happened quite a
bit. Yeah, One plantation ownerwrote into the rules of the plantation that
enslaved people were not able to marryoutside of the plantation for fear that they
would gain some sense of freedom orindependence. So you find that there were
these kind of arbitrary rules that wouldwork to keep these folks in an oppressed
(16:49):
state and keep them on the propertycontinuing to produce for those folks that were
directly benefiting from it. Well.And it speaks to the fact that they
knew, they could see from theoutset that like people wanted freedom and that
freedom was good, and they triedto find ways to have them not even
think that it was available to themor not see that as being a reality
(17:10):
or even existing if they possibly could. Like the smoke screen of like,
we're going to make it impossible forthem to be successful because they can't read,
they can't learn, they don't knowvery much, and that's the way
that we're going to maintain them asslaves. I think reveals the hand that
they know that this is bad whilethey're also trying to tell people that it's
good. Right, if it wasgood, then why are people trying to
(17:33):
escape it? And why are youpreventing them from learning? Like why wouldn't
they just want to stay there anyway? So I think it shows, albeit
kind of subtly, even when theyare sitting here saying that it's not that
bad, they very much understood howterrible it was, or at least they
had a sense of it right now. Most commonly when slaves did run away,
then they would run away from captivityand they'd escape to the northern quote
(17:56):
unquote free states or to Canada,which had abolished slavery decades before the United
States had, and so that washow they would sometimes get away, although
obviously the north was not always asafe place for them to be either,
Right, go Canada. At least, you know, at least they got
they got ahead of the game andgot rid of it, I know,
right. And another thing too tokind of and another thing because I feel
(18:18):
like that's what's going to keep happeninghere. Yeah. All those slavers use
the Bible to justify their slavery andensured that the enslaved people were familiar with
the passages that talked about people workinghappily in their bondage. The enslaved would
also read the Bible and focus onthe stories of exodus and stories about heroes
overcoming great odds, such as Danieland David. Preachers would cite the Bible
and ask that the lessons contained thereinbe impressed upon the heart of the air
(18:41):
pressors, such that the slaveholders wouldsee the error of their ways and grant
freedom to the enslaved peoples. Yes, So, if we haven't made it
abundantly clear by now, slavery wasunforgivably horrible, unforgivably horrible. Yes,
the new old argument now that slavesmay have benefited from their time as slaves.
(19:03):
That's a thing that part of thereason that we're talking about this today,
part of what we have already alludedto in portions of this discussion,
is that there's this now conversation happeningwhere in Florida people are being taught that
there may have been some benefit tobeing a slave. For those of you
who hear this and say, quote, they did do your homework, end
quote. If you're saying that tous and we're saying that they did not
(19:26):
benefit as slaves, first, you'rean apple. Second, there was some
evidence that some slaves were able touse some of their experience and subsequent employment.
But major caveats need to be unpackedto understand that at all. Right,
first, we have no reason tothink that they would have been unable
to get those jobs even without theirexperience. So there's nothing to say that
(19:48):
their experience working in an enslaved spacewas the thing that gave them the skill
to work that job. They probablycould have very likely would have gotten that
job without that experience to begin with. Also, they could have gotten that
and much better experience without ever havingto have been slaves. There's obviously training
and intern mentorships, like people gainjobs without having been slaves for you know,
(20:11):
all of human history, since we'veever had jobs. So that is
just a nonsense argument. That's howlearning works. Yes, Also, no
one would have voluntarily been an enslavedperson to gain these skills, these hypothetical
skills, these hypothesized skills they talkabout, Nobody would have done that voluntarily.
Also, having been a slave morelikely and more often stifled the development
(20:33):
of effective skill building. They likelywould have gotten much better training in other
situations. But just because they learnedsomething doesn't mean that they learned a good
you know, learned a good amountor a good way of doing things.
They just may have had something thatthey learned, one they learned under coercion,
and two many of those places madeit illegal for them to read,
so they had a hard time learningother things they could have learned, benefited
(20:56):
from, and had greater skills.So right, so it's stifled the developments.
So much to unpack here. Sothe original argument that enslaved people benefited
from slavery, it implies that thereare benefits to slavery in general, besides
all the things that we just talkedabout. Any silver lining here is a
disgusting attempt to minimize suffering and victimization. If you try to defend slavery,
you like, there is no wayto defend it without outing yourself as a
(21:22):
as an inherent racist. Yeah,just because someone can find ways to make
use of their traumatic experiences does notjustify putting them through traumatic experiences. The
victim may subsequently choose to Like,let's say you have a victim of assault,
they may choose to subsequently get extremelyskilled in self defense. This does
(21:42):
not mean that assault then wasn't sobad. Like you wouldn't say that someone
who is a victim of sexual assaultthen like gained useful skills. They're like,
oh, well, at least nowyou're going to be more attentive to
strangers who are around you. Ithink that is an extremely offensive and inappropriate
position to take. They would havenever wanted to have been assaulted, even
(22:06):
if it meant that they got betterat attending to strangers, even if it
meant that they got better to selfdefense. That is an asinine, stupid
argument to make that nobody should bemaking. Like, just because there's some
ever silver lining to two, thatdoes not mean that being a victim was
ever an okay thing for that tohave happened. Yeah, right, Slavery
(22:26):
was not a job training exercise,and making an argument that there is silver
lining is not. It's so inappropriate. It's unfair to the folks that still
suffer from it, and it's aridiculous. It's a ridiculous thing. They
think of it like they should neverhave to need You should never have to
need a silver lining. Yeah,that's as simple as that, Like you
should never have to say that there'sa silver lining to this really bad thing,
(22:48):
because that bad thing shouldn't have happenedto begin with. Yeah, absolutely,
Okay, Well, it's a littleearly for a break, but I
think it would be a kind ofjarring segue to transition to our next topic.
Maybe not. I don't know.It's pretty on brandy, But let's
go ahead and let the advertisers dothe thing and we'll come back with something
about Nazis. All right, Sowe've been talking about about slavery, the
(23:18):
conditions of slavery, and the thingis like the practice of American slavery.
And I mean, there's other thingsto talk about slavery outside of the United
States in the past, now andinto the future, but one of the
interesting things is slavery and how itrelated to Nazi Germany and Hitler specifically.
So Adolf Hitler, for those ofyou who don't know, the leader of
(23:41):
the Nazi Party, was a hugefan of American racism. In his famous
book mindcomf Hitler celebrated and acknowledged America'sgreat success in isolating citizenship based on race
by quote excluding certain races from naturalizationend quote. Right. So, just
to be clear, Hitler found thingslike American slavery to be a good example
(24:03):
of how racism should be done.Yes, So just kind of keep that
in mind for those of you whoare defending slavery. Just know that he
thought that that was like a reallygood practice. Hitler also pointed to the
treatment of indigenous people of North Americaas a demonstration of for concentration camps,
writing quote, concentration camps were notinvented in Germany. It is the English
who are their inventors, using thisinstitution to gradually break the backs of other
(24:26):
nations end quote. So again hejust keeps going on. Basically, he
used America as an example for theThird Reich. Yeah, he loved what
America did. Hitler greatly admired theJim Crow laws of the South that further
treated people with dark skin as adisparate species, unworthy of the same rights
and liberties as the quote dominant raceend quote. He also further cited Jim
(24:48):
Crow laws and developing Nazi treatment ofJews, saying essentially, like, in
defense of this, everyone does thisalready, so it's okay for Germany to
do it too. Yeah. Yeah, Like that was Jim Crowe directly inspired
the ghettos. Yeah, I mean, there was probably other things that went
into it, but that was avariable that inspired the ghettos that he put
Jews into, Like America was amuse for the Holocaust. Yeah, it
(25:12):
was. American eugenists were also verypopular among the Nazis, who directly applied
the hypothesis of eugenics into their genocidalcampaign. So even then, eugenicists were
stoking fear and support of their claimsby arguing that if people do not control
the breeding of quote undesirables, thatminority groups would take over the white race
in America, which we still hearpeople say that today, which is absurd.
(25:34):
The great replacement theory is ridiculous.Yeah, California developed a sterilization program
in nineteen o nine that four sterilizationof people who were quote feeble minded or
often incarcerated people. This directly inspiredNazi four sterilization programs in correspondence with their
eugenics movement. Yeah, California wasnot always the blue state it is today.
They actually very much led the wayin some very oppressive policies for a
(25:56):
while. I think they also votedfor Nicky. So yeah, this is
a relatively recent developments that it becamea place of liberal ideas. Right anyway,
the American Immigration Act of nineteen twentyfour imposed quotas and bands on who
could migrate to the country and fromwhere. These laws focused specifically on Asian
countries and other countries with people ofother races that might try to come to
(26:19):
the US, and it also preventedalmost by design here, So this is
the American Immigration Act. This alsoprevented later many Jewish people from arriving to
the US during the Holocaust, includingAnne Frank and her family. So where
we could have been as safe havenfor people seeking asylum, we were not.
We were not. We were veryisolationists at the time. Yeah,
(26:41):
we definitely have tried to close ourborders to every single person, and it
became a real problem. I mean, it essentially forced us into the war
eventually. As much as we liketo champion the US being a part of
the Allied forces against Germany, thethings that we were doing directly helped and
benefited Hitler huh, Yeah, andgave him inspiration. Now, most horribly,
(27:03):
Nevada was the first US state touse a gas chemical to carry out
a death sentence of an incarcerated inmate. The chemical was Zyklon B, which
a chemist modified for use in thegas chambers in Auschwitz. So the US
was also directly responsible for the developmentof that particular method of death. Yep.
Oh, so that's what we're at. I guess so bad, Yeah,
(27:26):
okay now and into the future.So versions of slavery do still exist,
largely in the form of human trafficking, forced labor, human bondage,
sex trafficking, and involuntary prostitution,with as many as an estimated forty million
people who may be in some sortof bondage, although it has gotten increasingly
surreptitious and difficult to track, andthere are countries still that use slave labor,
(27:51):
for example, mining precious metals andearth minerals that are used in things
like batteries, So that is athing that also still goes on. You
know. I think this is oneof those things where as we evolve as
a species, we end up havingbetter descriptive language for things that occurring.
These things were happening before too,human trafficking, forced labor, human bondage,
like sex trafficking, in voluntary prostitution, This was happening before as well.
(28:15):
We just have better language for it. So like we're getting more specific
with these things, they've also gottensneakier about it, right, right,
And so one of the questions thatwe posit here is that we want to
kind of know what benefit that RohndaSantis thinks or would like to suppose these
enslaved people are getting from their captivity. I would love to know what he
thinks what these folks today are gainingfrom those experiences. Yeah, he sees
(28:37):
slavery is so good, So presumablyhe could find silver lining for the children
who would be in silk sex trafficked. So just as an implication of this,
I'm thinking that we could say thatRohn de Santis is generally in support
of the silver lining afforded by childsex trafficking. Yeah. I think that's
a pretty fair alignment with his views. It should be a little bit cautious
here because I believe that where thiscame out of was the board of people
(29:00):
that he put in position of power. That they're the ones who's who made
this change about slavery. So it'sRonda Santis is putting people in a position
who champion that sex slavery of childrenis a good thing. So Roda Santis
and friends is what you're saying,right, Yes and company? Yeah,
they work together? Fair Matt Gates, you know, yeah, well,
(29:21):
well we know he's a big fanof that. Yeah, yeah, so
I need a high a lawyer immediately. The Global Slavery Index has identified that
North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia,India, and Qatar have the highest concentrations
of modern slavery. In case you'rewondering where this is taking place, largely
(29:42):
today right their efforts to continue toend slavery. The website restavec Freedom offers
guidance as to how to recognize slaveryand what to do if you see it.
And here's a direct quote from theirsite quote. If a person cannot
leave their job, reports low wages, isn't properly cared, or never speaks
for themselves, they may be victimsof slavery. For children, look for
(30:03):
a lack of access to education,poor nutrition, shabby clothing, and a
lack of playtime. If you noticechildren's beds or clothing in factories or of
businesses where they don't belong, thisis an indicator of child slavery. If
you recognize any of these signs,call the National Human Trafficking hot Line at
one eight eight eight three seven threeseven eight eight eight to report it.
(30:25):
Yes, please do not let slaveryand trafficking go unreported. Yes, people
will try and do something about it. Yeah, it could be less so
in Florida, but generally speaking,yeah, yeah. As a general rule,
people aren't all terrible, so peoplewill try to do some work around
this. Yes, we do havesome interesting tidbits to unpack, which is
a couple of things that have happenedaround this. So there's the thing called
(30:48):
misgenation. This is a marriage betweentwo people of different ethnicities. It was
a term primarily used to deride sucha practice as inappropriate or even gross at
the time that it was largely usedin the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. Maryland
passed the very first anti miscegenation statutein sixteen sixty four, banning the marriage
between a black person and a whiteperson, and of course many states soon
(31:11):
followed suit afterward. But what's interestingis that although these have been repealed over
time, and I think many ofthe later added states never had laws like
that to begin with. The verylast state in the country to repeal their
ban on interracial marriage, which wasAlabama, and they did so in Can
you guess what year? I haveno idea. I think if you were
(31:32):
to guess, you might say likenineteen fifties, nineteen sixty It was the
year two thousand, two thousand,just twenty three years ago, as when
Alabama officially repealed their anti interracial marriageLike what the Galabama. Yeah, that
particular thing is a global phenomenon,Like that's not like unique to the United
States in terms of like right,Like, yeah, interracial marriage is I
(31:53):
mean, you listen to Trevor Noah'sentire life story and he was like his
little his book is called a crimebecause he was the result of a crime
in South Africa during apartheid. Solike, this is a thing that's occurring
everywhere. But man, the yeartwo thousand, right, and people were
probably mad about it. People arestill mad about it. I'm sure,
(32:14):
yeah, I bet you're probably right. They're probably going to say, like
how this is destroying the country andwe're heading the wrong direction, Like that's
a talking point. I'm sure ithappened, right, and maybe it is
happening right, is currently happening.I'm sure. Slavery was not considered globally
illegal until nineteen forty eight under theUnited Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which you know was probably spawned afterWorld War two and all the things that
(32:37):
came up. That was probably animportant discussion to have in that space.
Now, maybe people have now heardof Juneteenth, as it is recently a
federal holiday in the United States.For those who are unfamiliar, the specific
day and reason for recognizing it comesfrom the fact that in Texas they decided
they just wouldn't tell the slaves theslavery had ended. They didn't have the
internet, they barely had phones,they probably didn't get national newspapers. So
(32:59):
there we're just gonna not say anythingand keep them as sleaves. So on
June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five,two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went to
effect, General Gordon Granger ordered thefinal enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas,
and the slaveholders were forced to lettheir slaves go. And even though
(33:20):
we can recognize that as being somethingthat is good for us to acknowledge,
celebrate, take some time and bringattention to the black community and this thing
that is important to them for veryunderstandable reasons. There are now even politicians
who are argued that we should getrid of Juneteenth. And but one of
the arguments that they make is thatit's too new. We can't recognize everything
and give holidays to everything, theysay, And I'm just like, what
(33:45):
the hell? First of all,like every holiday that we have was too
new at some point, right,and it is nevertheless state on the book.
And I think that having this oneholiday does not mean that we're on
the slippery slope to nobody working.Ever, that is a nonsense argument to
make. So anyway, useful toknow about Juneteenth, what it stands for,
what it means that people who arguethat we should get rid of it
(34:06):
are ignorant? Asked, Yes,agreed? All right, I think we're
ready for some take on points.Yeah, I mean I think the biggest
takeco on point here is the slaveryis and was and always will be a
disgusting, horrible, in human wayto treat another person as if somehow their
lives are worth less than the peoplesubjectating them. It was, it was
brutal. It is brutal too.I mean, let's be real, like
(34:27):
modern slavery is also brutal. It'salso cruel, it's traumatizing, and as
close as anything can be through evil. It is purely evil through and through.
There is no benefit to it,and it does not make any sense
that anybody would advocate for the needto use this unless you're just an evil
person. And I think, youknow, from we can take a sort
of scientific skeptical lens and say thatthere is no such thing as evil.
(34:51):
I'd be happy to have that argumentand that discussion. But I think that,
like I said, this is asclose as it gets to what we
would probably describe as being evil,and so that's obviously meaning that it's a
thing that we should stop and avoidand never do again ever to anybody.
Right. And I think another bigtank Cope point for me here is that
the slaves won their freedom because theyfought for it and all the ways,
(35:12):
and that they were able to,you know, but they should have never
had to fight for their freedom inthe first place. These are human beings
that were treated as something other thanhuman beings for a very long time,
and millions of people were treated thisway. It's just it's a horrible stain
I think on the entire human raceas a species historically, and hopefully one
that we can learn from and dobetter and never do again. Understanding that
(35:35):
is a thing that is still goingon, but is a thing that needs
to end, and it needs toend flat out, like there is no
justification for it as a horrible,terrible practice that should have never started in
the first place and definitely should discontinueimmediately and never can never happen again.
And you know, I don't know. This comes up sometimes where people are
like when certain industries get replaced,and they're like, oh, now those
(35:58):
people out of a job, AndI'm like, I do understand the necessity
of like having employment, making money, being able to support yourself, and
like that. If there is anecessary evil, then in some ways capitalism
is it. Although I think youcould also argue that is entirely unnecessary.
I shed no tears for the captorsof enslaved children who lose their job,
none whatsoever, Like there is noreason feel sorry for that. Yeah,
(36:22):
that's not a job that anyone shouldhave. Right, There's no justification in
maintaining an industry just because somebody mightlose their job if the industry goes away,
if the industry is a terrible onethat is hurting people, right,
not a thing that I think youcan justify, right, And I think
going back to kind of the essenceand the understanding of the why we started
the show, right, the whywe do what we do part of this
like why did people do this thing? And it ultimately came down to a
(36:45):
lot of profit. I mean peoplemade a lot of money and gained a
lot of resources and a lot ofwealth on the backs of the folks that
were enslaved. I mean that isreally a primary driver for a lot of
folks that were involved in this.Now, why did they go so far
as to horrifically abuse and treat folksthe way they did? And then that's
that's an entirely different conversation. Butwhen we start unpacking this and we start
(37:08):
looking at what was going on,what were the primary motivators and what's the
context? I mean, it reallycame down to gaining more resources as a
result of this particular industry. Yeah, exactly. Okay, Well, I
think that's what we have to sayabout slavery. Is there anything else you'd
like to add before we wrap upfor today, Shane, I would just
(37:29):
like to add that it's bad.It's just bad. I don't know why
we have to say that. Idon't know why. It's it's ridiculous that
we have to say it, butlike it is, bad. It's a
really bad thing. So the lastthing I would add is spend some time
reading about the effects of this,because we just talked about it up and
through up through you know, theemancipation and kind of like some of the
stuff that leads up to World WarTwo, but we have not talked about
(37:49):
the long lasting ramifications of this particulartime in history. And it's really important
to know that this is, youknow, while there is modern slavery,
everything that we've seen and everything we'vetalked about has rippled through our entire society
and continues to impact marginalized volts.Yes, yeah, And I think there
is a thing that I actually wantedto add in that I kind of forgot
(38:10):
about, which is that there isalso a version of slave labor that kind
of exists in how the prison systemoften treats prisoners, yes, and forcing
them to do labor for next tonothing or sometimes nothing. It looks sort
of like indentured servitude sometimes but lookslike slavery at other times. So I
think that there's another version of wherethis exists, and it's worth unpacking at
some point the prison system more generally, and why it's not appropriate to even
(38:32):
treat prisoners as slaves. I thinkthat does come back to at some level
that we need to be humans treatingother humans as humans, and understanding even
when we justify, for one reasonor another incarcerating someone and taking away their
general liberty and freedom, that westill shouldn't treat them in humanely. Right.
So that's I think a discussion fordown the road, but one that
I forgot that I wanted to includeas part of our talk today. Sure,
(38:55):
I think it's an important discussion.I agree we should have never had
to say that this is bad,but we find ourselves in that position now,
I guess. So, Yeah,thanks Ron. Yeah. Indeed,
also by the way, Ron,child sex slavery is bad, just in
case, just in case you weren'taware. Yeah, no silver linings there,
Okay, But I think that's whatwe have to say. We do
have some recommendations to give, whichis a part where we'd like to share
(39:17):
some recommendations that we have. Usuallyit's something that we've found joying, but
sometimes it's like an activity or athing that you do, and we'll talk
about that in a second. FirstI need to acknowledge that again, if
you'd like to support the show.You can join us on Patreon. If
you do that, you get accessto all these behind the scenes content,
bonus materials, and add free episodes. The people who have done that,
who would make this show possible,we are eternally grateful to, and that
(39:37):
includes Mike m Megan, Layla,Mike T, Justin Kim, Joshua,
Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brianand Ashley. Thank you all so much
for everything that you do. Also, thank you so much to my team.
Right now we have writting and factchecking from Shane and myself, audio
production and editing from Justin, andour social media coordinator is Emma Wilson.
(39:58):
Thank you all very much to myteam for you, guys is doing just
the amazing work that you do,allowing the show to continue on what it
is doing. Thanks for having us. Yeah, of course, thank you
everyone to listening. Thank you forrecording with me today. Shane, go
vote for us for Podcast Awards dotCom for our final round of votes.
We're hoping to clinch that win,but of course we're super stoked dig even
be considered for that, So thankyou for those who did vote. Thank
you if you do, go andvote anything else before we get to recommendations.
(40:22):
Nope, nothing else on my end, Lovely, let's do it recommendations.
Okay, I am recommend this istangential to slavery, but I'm gonna
go ahead and recommend this movie thatis very old now called Schindler's List from
director Steven Spielberg. If you haven'tseen it already, it is a heartbreaking
(40:45):
movie that has a lot of upsand downs. I think it's an extremely
well done movie. It is nota feel good movie, but it's an
extremely well done movie that's largely aboutthe Holocaust and people there and and specifically
one German person who tried to helpus man aid you people as he possibly
could, after initially doing a bunchof the wrong things and then he did
the right thing. But right.Yeah, so that's that's a movie.
(41:06):
It is a heavy watch, butit's a good watch. So I recommend
it. Yeah, it is agood one. It is a good one.
Over the last couple episodes, I'vebeen thinking about, you know,
this is such a big topic andit's really difficult to unpack, and I
and I thought it would be goodto give somebody of like some folks recommendations
to as a starting point. Forkind of improving processes around this or kind
of thoughts or actions around this.So my recommendation is the work of W.
(41:30):
E. B. Du Boys orsome people will say du Bois.
I've seen both of those and heardboth of those, But right now I'm
looking at the annunciation guy that saysd Boys, I would pronounce a du
Blas, but that's I'm not whoam I to say. So he was
a civil rights activist. He dida lot of really great work in the
United States around improving civil rights forblack folks. He's done a lot of
(41:53):
writings, and a lot of kindof anti racist writings are written, like
started and kind of referenced his workto begin with. He was one of
the founders of the NAACP, andhe probably deserves his own episode just because
of the amount of stuff that hehas done in the work that he's done
around that it's probably worth unpacking.But I strongly recommend that if you ever
(42:13):
get a chance, if you areinterested in doing more work around anti racist
work or just kind of understanding systemicracism and all that stuff, he is
a good place to start. Yeah, he is kind of like one of
the people that had a lot ofthe seminal works around kind of creating the
anti racist movement. So definitely don'tsleep on his work. He's done some
really powerful things. So that's justa starting place for you. That's great.
(42:36):
I've definitely read some snippets and excerpts. I've never read an entire piece
that he has written. I knowthat Ibram X Kendy, who wrote the
book on How to Be An AntiRacist, referenced a lot but also had
some criticisms of Dubois. Sure,yeah, which I think is fair and
legitimate. So I think we've recommendedHow to be an Anti Racist on this
podcast before, but that's what wecertainly had some absolutely fantastic book to go
check out. I think is agood pair to this book or not.
(42:59):
Obviously the you're not refly a specificbook, but I think if you read
some W. E. B.Du Bois, if you read some mm
x Kendy, I think you'll havea good, well rounded history sort of
anti racism and civil rights work.I'm glad that you said that, like
you like you know, putting somebodyup on a pedestal and kind of creating
a monolith out of a single person. For any sort of work around that
is really detrimental to your learning.So definitely pear that up and you really
(43:22):
like know that he created a lotof stuff, but also know that there
are some discussions around that, soyou have to see all the discussions around
the folks that are impacted by this. Yeah, great, love that.
Okay, so we ended with someheavier recommendations as well. But if you
would like to tell us anything thatwe got right, if you like to
provide some constructive and kind criticism,you can email us directly. We'd like
to hear if you'd like to tellus anything at all. I mean,
(43:43):
you can just tell us about whata great day you had today. You
can email us directly. Info atWWDWWD podcast dot com. You can reach
out to us on all the socialmedia platforms. As I said, leave
us are writing in review. Subscribeso you don't miss any future episodes.
Thank you so much for listening.Is there anything else you need to add
before we wrap it up today?Shane El's on my end. All right,
then, this is Abraham and thisis a Shane and we are out.
(44:04):
See. Yup, you've been listeningto why we do what we do?
You can learn more about this andother episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast
dot com. Thanks for listening,and we hope you have an awesome day.
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