At what point do you cross this line? v. keeping slaves in the modern US

It's totally fucked up, from my cushy little perspective in the SouthEastern United States. I'm thinking about restaveks and such. I had/have a friend that worked in human trafficking (working to trace and stop it - not participate in it...) and the stories she would tell are pretty heartbreaking.

 

They have a sense of entitlement that most people would not understand. They are entitled to the money they have, and fully believe that just by existing they are making the world a better place. They deserve the money and should not have to spend it on people who don't have any themselves. If these lower people were worthy, they would also be rich.... ( see sociapath, above )

 

Economic slavery is rampant throughout the world, largely fuelled by unchecked capitalism. The rationale that the slave wages and inhumane working conditions are better than what the victims would have were it not for the beneficence of their capitalist masters is a crock of bull. It is all about the exploiter keeping their money at the expense of a defenceless victim, whether it's a someone in a developed country exploiting an illegal/uneducated immigrant, or a multi-national corporation exploiting children in the third world.

The only good thing here is that there are laws to punish the exploiters here if they get caught.

 

It's pretty obvious:

America
Brown People Aren't Worth As Much​

 

I hate to say this, but I'm not even shocked by this story. It barely registers as "too bad" on my empathy radar (to create such a thing). When it comes to human trafficking, this lady wasn't even mistreated physcially. Sure, it kind of sucks that she was so underpaid, and she was definitely lied to, but no one raped her. No one beat her. No one killed her. No one locked her naked in a dark room and left her there for days on end.

Plan9, I have to pretty much completely reject your contribution to the thread. If you were right, we wouldn't see Eastern European sex slaves stationed around the country working as prostitutes. We wouldn't see Korean women routinely brought in as nannies, worked for a few years and then sold to brothels. We wouldn't see other immigrants bringing illegals over from neighboring countries to work as indentured servants and routinely beaten.

It's hard to enslave someone from the First World because they generally have more opportunities and are educated enough to know their rights. They're also less likely to put themselves in the situation as the employer/owner. The "brown people" you mention are simply more convenient but are no means the only victims of human trafficking. That they're more numerous around the world probably has something to do with it.

I'm interested in whether or not the George's are first generation immigrants from elsewhere. If they're not, it's kind of unusual for the US that they'd be involved.

 

The levels of slavery in the UK are far higher than most would expect. I mean I would've been shocked if only one person was kept as a slave but they number in the high thousands. It's shocking.

 

My guess is that most of those slave-keepers are first generation immigrants that weren't indoctrinated with the anti-slavery message early in life.

 

That's interesting jazz. I'd never thought of this phenomenon as related to cultural relativity within the domestic states. I can see how it might work - just never thought of it.

 

I don't get that kind of thinking, Lindy. It's similar to "she was asking to be raped by wearing that dress. Didn't she know that he'd react that way?"

She clearly didn't know her rights. She was brought into the country under false pretenses. I imagine that they had possession of her passport, not her, and that they told her that she'd be arrested and put in jail if the cops found out what was going on. There was probably also some sort of threat against her family back home as well.

Those are all typical behaviors for human traffickers - it's practially Human Trafficking 101.

So, yes, let's blame the victim.

 

<- CTIPs training compliance officer

/race jokes

 

I think I reject the sociopathy explanation offered by Baraka_Guru, people all over the world and throughout history have engaged in the practice and certainly not all of them were sociopaths. I suspect that a very large proportion of people are capable of treating another human being this way once they've completely bought into a hierarchical view of humanity - it's just that the relevant viewpoint required has been done away with throughout most of the first world.

 

I suppose if I had to pick a destination I'd say I'm going to a place where we discuss how/why people a quite a bit more capable of treating other people like shit than we would probably hope.

It's perhaps a bit about culture but mostly in the sense that there is plenty of hardware on the inside of your skull that when manipulated by culture can allow us to do things like this - or not depending on circumstance. It's not necessarily the result of a defect in the person in question (sociopathy) since some of us could have probably still gotten to where she did, even without the defect.

 

This sentence is ridiculous, infuriatingly ridiculous. There is no excuse, NOT ONE for rape. It is nobody but the perpetrator's responsibility to prevent a rape and any attempt to pin the blame anywhere else is deplorable.

 

Elizabeth Smart. Jaycee Dugard. Patty Hearst. Elizabeth Fritzel.

Tell it to them. Frankly, that you'd defend such a thing disgusts me. All the kids abused by Jerry Sandusky had to do was avoid him, right? Problem solved! Huzzah!

Jesus.

You clearly don't know the meaning of the term "human trafficking". It means all those engaged in the exploitation of individuals, regardless of border crossings. Actually, it has absolutely nothing to do with border crossings at all and can happen without anyone going anywhere but across the street. Or into the basement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking