Mississippi Reinstating Slavery?
Are we that surprised?
Mississippi Reinstating Slavery?
Are we that surprised?
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. -13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Most people see this as the amendment that ended slavery in the U.S., but they likely overlook the part where it states “except as a punishment for a crime”.
When slavery was “abolished” in the U.S. it obviously pissed off the southern slave owners who had enjoyed the fruits of their slave’s labor for hundreds of years. You see any in the owner or investment class (parasites) will do whatever they can to get away with compensating their employees as little as possible, and if you can get away with paying absolutely nothing then the only question is whether you give them enough to keep them alive or if it’d be cheaper to replace them when they eventually die on you.
The parasite class has always behaved in this way, and if not held back by regulations and laws they’ll do it again.
So when the 13th amendment was passed rather than let things improve they found ways to still exploit people by passing laws that would mostly target black and brown folk.
Some examples include “Black Codes” which were laws passed in Southern states that included things like vagrancy laws that would criminalize unemployment or loitering and disproportionately were enforced against Black people.
Once arrested they then started something called “Convict Leasing”, which allowed the states to lease out prisoners to private companies for labor. Many African Americans would get arrested for some minor arbitrary infraction such as not having a job then once in prison get leased out, effectively re-enslaving them.
Then there were “Jim Crow Laws”, these laws enforced segregation and included criminalizing interracial relationships and harsher penalties for crimes committed by Black people.
Then of course was the “War on Drugs”, which is ongoing to this day.
Don’t forget that the U.S. has the largest prison population of any country on Earth, with even more people total than India or China who each have around four times the population of the U.S.