[occultist_throw]

Ive always taken an unpopular view about slavery.

"We never quit doing slavery."

It is true the Constitution was amended after the Civil war to include banning of slavery in most circumstances. However, slavery is explicitly still allowed as a "punishment for a crime". Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave". After all, it only takes only 6-12 angry white men to find you guilty.

I would think one of the major points BLM should be making, is removal of slavery as a punishment. It has too many very degenerate ways it can fail - and in some ways I think were very intended. But I doubt in this political climate of this happening.

EDIT: Boy, I said it was an unpopular view. Wasn't expecting this much hatred and contention, along with this much -1's. I mean, it's not like the 13th amendment explicitly says.

[dang]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15542507 and marked it off-topic.

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines by posting generic commentary about the voting on your posts, how unpopular your opinions are, and whatnot? It's pontificatory, tedious, and off topic.

Also, if you're going to post on an ideologically inflammatory topic like slavery or race, make sure your comment is substantive enough not to be flamebait. An example of how to do this is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15543652. Your comment fell on the flamebait side. We don't need yet another flamewar! We need thoughtful discussion.

Worse, when you start posting comments that go Atwater, Erlichman, and Flint (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15543975), you're just going full generic, which is what makes flamewars burn hottest and be most tedious. Please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[gumby]

I was really surprised to see you start with this being an "unpopular view about slavery" but the voting has shown that I was naive. It's pretty uncontroversial to the majority of historians and sociologists that post-reconstruction institutions like sharecropping, Jim Crow, chain gangs, "farms" such as Angola and Parchman, and of course the widespread lynching, were all structural continuations in fact of the previous de jure social system.

I guess this topic is like climate change.

I have noticed a gross difference in how US history is taught today (to my son and my gf's sons) vs how it was when I attended a US high school. Much less depth, much more boosterism, no discussions of "how would you act if this old institution were still in place today".

[aaron-lebo]

I don't think it's really that controversial to suggest that Jim Crow, sharecropping, etc, were massive injustices that intentionally limited progress for decades. In the South in public schools (in some places), they do teach us about this. We got to read The Invisible Man in high school, which was incredibly subversive when it was written.

I only say this because your post implies that the only reason someone would disagree with them is ignorance or racism, but some of us just have an appreciation for honest views about history, as I'm sure you do.

[occultist_throw]

Thank you for acknowledging that. I tend to dig in to certain topics that I feel strongly in. I've had similar response before, on reddit and in real life. Both cases have been, what I could call, nasty responses to matter of factly stating what the 13'th amendment actually says.

Or one can look at plenty of longform articles about this very topic. Or countless books in this realm. Or if one doesn't believe the evidence, look no further than that 1 dot per person map, and finding prisons. They stick out.

But yeah, "climate change" rage inducing indeed. I mean, we have people denying simple (easily verifiable) claims with feelings and "simplistic" retorts.

[cletus]

Not sure why you're being downvoted (+1 from me) but this is essentially the basis of the Netflix documentary 13th [1]. The thesis is that slavery was replaced by excessive incarceration of African Americans, which were then used as cheap or free labour... much like slaves were.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)

[macrael]

And before that it was the thesis of the book The New Jim Crow. Arguing that the modern incarceration system came into being as a system of control to replace the Jim Crow laws that arose as a system of control to replace slavery.

The most 'aha' connection there was that a shocking percentage of black men have felony convictions of some sort or another, and we deny felons the right to vote in most states. Jim Crow indeed.

[KGIII]

> we deny felons the right to vote in most states.

Only while incarcerated.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-v...

[macrael]

I'm curious what "automatic restoration" means. I recall from The New Jim Crow that the process is onerous in many states, involving paperwork and bureaucracy that many don't end up taking the time to do. But maybe that's just in the nine non-automatic states.

Ah, and in the paragraph underneath that table:

Even in states where ex-offenders automatically regain the right to vote upon completion of their sentence, the process of re-registering to vote often is difficult. One reason is the complexity of the laws and processes surrounding disenfranchisement. In some cases, it is difficult to determine whose rights can be restored. This can vary in some states according to the date of the crime, the conviction, or the release from prison, or the nature of the crime. The complex restoration process also can be daunting. It often involves lengthy paperwork, burdensome documentation, and the involvement and coordination of several state agencies

This, again, is why Jim Crow is an apt comparison. It's a web of rules that all together add up to a system of control.

[Clubber]

Depends on the state. I'm on one of the states in the "Restoration by Governor's Action or Court Action" category, and I can tell you thought it is possible, voting rates are rarely, if ever reinstated in my state.

[KGIII]

Oh, I'm familiar with that. It's just that most don't take away the right to vote permanently. They take it away until you're done serving your sentence and then it is automatically restored. (See the link.)

A couple of States even allow inmates to vote while incarcerated. In my now-home State, inmates are encouraged to vote and sometimes politicians will even go campaign inside the prison. That's pretty rare, but has happened.

So, it's a temporary loss in most cases. Notably, Maine allows inmates to vote and Maine is overwhelmingly white. Vermont is the same way. In my quest for more information, I found some commentary about that aspect.

[dragonwriter]

> Notably, Maine allows inmates to vote and Maine is overwhelmingly white. Vermont is the same way.

Being overwhelmingly white is probably part of the reason; if you don't have a visible black underclass to subjugate, you don't take steps to subjugate them. In discussing the thesis of felon disenfranchisement as part of “the New Jim Crow”, pointing out that states without a notable visible black population don't engage in disenfranchisement is in line with that thesis.

[aaron-lebo]

There's some truth to it but the original post is way too simplistic.

They are suggesting that prison, even today, is equivalent to slavery. There is injustice within the modern prison system, but prison is not slavery, at least in the right context it is a place for punishment and rehabilitation.

Sure prisons make a profit off their prisoners, but those profits are nothing like those obtained by slavery, it's an extreme exaggeration and the problem with the justice system isn't just race, if someone wants to suggest that.

removal of slavery as a punishment

What is actually being proposed here?

To say we "never quit doing slavery" is to ignore the massive improvements and lives dedicated to get rid of actual, you know, slavery.

[mikeash]

The Constitution explicitly permits slavery for criminals, and many prisons take advantage of this. How is that simplistic?

[aaron-lebo]

It is simplistic exactly because that is not equivalent to slavery circa 1860 which is what is suggested through "we never quit doing slavery".

[mikeash]

Slavery has changed but it hasn't ended. The post discusses the changes, so again, what's simplistic?

[swasheck]

So the post is missing nuance in favor of a "big picture" opinion. I still view it as a thoughtful take on the situation. Then again, I generally only downvote trolls and distractions, not thoughtful posts with which I disagree.

[dominotw]

> which were then used as cheap or free labour... much like slaves were.

Are prisons really profitable though? Do they produce anything of real value from this free labor ?

[gumby]

Prisons are hugely profitable (see the video elsewhere of the Louisiana sheriff) and the prison industrial complex throws off so much cash that its lobbying effort is one of the largest in California (and is why we still have, for example, the three strikes law)

[dominotw]

sorry I was referring to GP's comment about cheap labor, not the profitability of prison itself.

Are private companies generating significant profit off of cheap prison labor ? Am I buying something from a walmart shelve made from prison labor ?

[gumby]

> Am I buying something from a walmart shelve made from prison labor ?

Yep.

A quick google search with that very question finds lots of entries, many of course with an axe to grind. The Economist is rather dispassionate on the subject though: https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21718897-idaho-...

But if you interact with the government, go to McDonalds, etc you're using prison labor. Whole Foods too (http://theweek.com/articles/630907/corporate-america-secret-...)

I said "yep" because I figured you were asking a general question; in the specific case Walmart's position is that they don't use prison labor (but plenty of web sites will tell you it's not true. Here's Huffpo: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-norman/walmart-prison-labo...).

This link is pretty good but requires a bit more epistemological digging: https://www.cagedbirdmagazine.com/single-post/2017/03/28/50-...

[dominotw]

oh wow. I had no idea. Thank you for the information.

[drspacemonkey]

At WalMart, yes. Also JC Penny, Victoria's Secret, K-Mart, and Starbucks have all used prison labor. There's also prison call centers, such as those used by American Airlines and Avis.

[TheAdamAndChe]

It's being downvoted because it's pushing a false narrative that it's only black people that are being incarcerated, and they're being incarcerated explicitly for cheap labor. There are major issues with regards to race in America, but real life is more nuanced than "it's happening because racism."

[cavanasm]

Would "racism is a statistically significant contributing factor" be more palatable for you than "it's happening because racism"?

[TheAdamAndChe]

Yes, actually. A nuanced discussion on a nuanced issue is much preferable to ideological squabbles.

[chimeracoder]

> It's being downvoted because it's pushing a false narrative that it's only black people that are being incarcerated,

Nobody is saying "only" black people are being incarcerated. They're saying that incarceration is used as a tool to perpetuate many of the same outcomes as slavery. Which is trivially verifiable, if you look at the respective incarceration rates by race.

> they're being incarcerated explicitly for cheap labor

Virtually all prisoners are required to work for what amounts to as little as $.10/hour. $1/hour is considered an incredibly good wage for a prison job. Prisoners are, by design, excluded from minimum wage laws. This is not limited to private prisons; it includes inmates at state-run and federal prisons too.

In California, about a third of the people fighting the recent and ongoing wildfires are prisoners, generally making about $1/hour or less. The maximum they can make is $2.56. Again, this burden largely falls on black and other non-white people, because they're incarcerated at much higher rates and for much longer sentences for the same crimes.

[TheAdamAndChe]

> Which is trivially verifiable, if you look at the respective incarceration rates by race.

This assumes that incarceration rates should be equal for all races, which probably shouldn't be the case. There's a correlation between low socioeconomic status and incarceration. Black Americans tend to have a lower socioeconomic status. Murder rates are also much higher among blacks than other races in America.

> Prisoners are, by design, excluded from minimum wage laws.

Right. Prisoners are being exploited, but that's not why they're being imprisoned. They're being imprisoned because of drugs, violence, and thievery/burglary for the most part.

[BearGoesChirp]

>if you look at the respective incarceration rates by race.

Yet the theory breaks down once you look at a breakdown of race, gender, and SES.

[chimeracoder]

> Yet the theory breaks down once you look at a breakdown of race, gender, and SES.

There's plenty of research debunking this claim, which is a myth generally propagated by groups with explicit white supremacist agendas.

[occultist_throw]

Waitsec. So, because I didn't write a dissertation on this topic, nor did I write a longform article, it's invalid? Hardly.

It's not hard to look up that google maps census dot map. And then go find prisons in Google Maps and find it on the census map. Might be pretty surprising what you see... then again, might not.

Hint: https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/ Turn overlays. Go to Indianapolis, then look to the West side towards Avon and Danville. There's a dense green block (green dots = Black people) due south of Avon. Now, go look in Google Maps as to what's there.

Wash, rinse and repeat all across the US. You want evidence? There's pretty telling evidence right there.

Hell, I would go over the comment limit on even an abstract on this topic. We're talking 300+ years of history just in the US and colonies.

No, the real reason here why I'm being downvoted is because of a popularity contest. It certainly doesn't have to do with content, at least here. But some people are considered "unpopular". So we see rapid point swings and -1's. To me, its just some of the backward-ness how this community works. Every community has something like this. Grain/block of salt, and all.

[dEnigma]

Insulting the community won't help against the downvotes. The healthy path is to just ignore the votes and freely discuss your opinions, whether they resonate with other people or not.

By that I don't mean "ignore other people", only their effect on your comment score/karma. You should listen to their arguments nonetheless.

[occultist_throw]

> Insulting the community won't help against the downvotes. The healthy path is to just ignore the votes and freely discuss your opinions, whether they resonate with other people or not.

That's the problem with "Downvotes" in the way they're done here. Legitimate discourse, albeit unpopular will attract downvotes. And so will unrelated offtopic garbage (Spam, 1 word replies, crazy rantings ala TempleOS).

The end result to both "unpopular" material and "spam" is the same - hidden. Simply put, -1s = losing right to talk and be seen. So yeah, I am pretty disappointed in the community, and I have a justifiable right to be.

[grzm]

I think there's space on HN for what one might consider unpopular views when they're presented in a more diplomatic way. Starting off with a chip on one's shoulder ("I've always taken an unpopular view about slavery") isn't a great way to start out. If you're looking for productive discussion, I can think of better ways to go about it. If you think something you want to share might be unpopular, why not take some effort to couch it in terms you think might have a better chance of being listened to?

The HN community is what it is. It has certain norms and behaviors. By participating, you're part of it. If it doesn't operate in a way you prefer and you'd like to continue to contribute, be the change you want. Behave in the ways you want. I encourage you to do so! That said, if you want to be confrontational and argumentative rather than looking for points of agreement and teasing out more nuanced differences, I think you're likely to continue to see pushback on HN. In some sense, such behavior can be as corrosive as spam.

[dEnigma]

I agree; there definitely should be a discussion about the whole system. Personally I would favour a system with a report option for comments that violate community guidelines or even laws, and a comment score that doesn't affect the visibility of your comment (at least not in an absolute hidden/visible way)

[bottles11]

Video of a Louisiana sheriff complaining that releasing prisoners means he loses free labor. It's from this month, and Louisiana has some of the highest incarceration rates in the country

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pupvjr3dQmI

[RingwormOne]

Slavery has had significant long term effects on the black community. That can't be denied. Disproportionate poverty in the black community is directly tied to slavery.

However I disagree that slavery - as the term is usually meant to mean - still exists in the form of incarceration.

We as a society have decided that certain things are illegal. The black community, because of poverty (so because of slavery), disproportionately breaks those laws and so there is disproportionate incarceration.

Slavery is the root cause of this disproportionate incarceration, but we should not blame the fact that we have a system which punishes criminals, or equate the enforcement of laws with slavery.

Instead we should be trying to eliminate outdated laws - the illegality of marijuana for instance - and also reducing crime in the black community.

[ffxtian]

> However I disagree that slavery still exists in the form of incarceration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...

[RingwormOne]

Yes, making a criminal - who has committed a crime, been convicted and sentenced to jail time - do work is not equivalent - morally or otherwise - to racialized slavery.

[occultist_throw]

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

--Lee Atwater, 54th Chairman of the Republican National Committee (Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-inf...)

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

-- John Ehrlichman, Nixon domestic policy chief (Source: http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richa...)

What if the policies can be shown that a distinct criminalization was made to expressly target a specific demographic? Or what if we can show that health and infant mortality trends mirrors that of the 18060's map of slave county census? We have more than a smoking gun - we have the blood spatter and the bullet, and the gun in the person's hands still smoking. 150 years later, and it's still going strong.

BTW, how's that water upgrade going on in Flint, MI? I'll give you a hint: they're a bunch of black people who live there. It's already out of the news.

[Clubber]

>--Lee Atwater, 54th Chairman of the Republican National Committee

I highly recommend you listen to that entire interview to understand why it's important. He said it while he was a campaign strategist for Reagan and was talking about historical campaign strategies of the 50s and 60s.

[bjl]

The 13th Amendment explicitly legalises slavery as the punishment for a crime, and its used all the time.

[RingwormOne]

And when we talk about slavery it's usually in the sense of racialized, bondage-from-birth slavery rather than penal labor.

The two are very different, and using the word 'slavery' to refer to both conflates meaning and disguises the important differences between the two.

[lliamander]

I think the term you may be looking for is "Noncentral Fallacy"

http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst...

[RingwormOne]

Exactly. Thank you

[bjl]

Penal labor is coerced, unpaid labor which is by definition slavery.

What you're referring to is chattel slavery.

[goliatone]

I agree with the sentiment behind your comment, however I would also consider how the legal system seems to work. If you can’t afford a lawyer then the likelihood of “breaking the law” seems to be higher than otherwise. Also, slavery had plenty of detractors and apologists had arguments in favor of slavery. Some of those arguments were pretty rational sounding (pretty wrong to)

[RingwormOne]

Sure, but that's why it's important to ensure competent public defenders are available to all people accused of a crime. I'd be very interested to hear suggestions on how we can improve the public defender system.

Your second point may be true, but that's the case for almost everything. Doesn't mean that everything is right or wrong. We need to judge things on a case by case basis.

[PatientTrades]

> because of poverty (so because of slavery), disproportionately breaks those laws.

Not correct. Blacks don't disproportionally break laws. The problem is that non-violent crimes in America are disproportionally enforced. Several Thousand, probably close to a million cases of illegal white collar crime go unenforced every year. Stuff like insider trading, corruption, fraud, laundering, etc. Crimes that white people are more likely to break simply are not regularly enforced. Non-violent crimes like drug possession in Black urban areas are highly enforced, while whites in suburb areas use drugs at the same rate, are not enforced. There is a bias in the enforcement laws

[RingwormOne]

Don't the statistics show that violent crime is much higher among blacks than other racial groups?

I'd be interested to see statistics on white collar crime, but I know that there are significant resources put towards catching and sentencing white collar criminals.

[omegaworks]

>The black community, because of poverty (so because of slavery), disproportionately breaks those laws

This is so simplistic that it borders on a racist falsehood. Increased police presence, inadequate legal representation, racially motivated jury-selection and expansions of prosecutorial power are huge factors.

Educate yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66F3WU2CKk

http://newjimcrow.com/

[RingwormOne]

I'm not sure why you would call that statement racist.

Poverty tends to beget crime, this is very hard to deny. Because the black community - as a result of the slavery of its ancestors in this country - suffers disproportionately high rates of poverty, it also suffers from disproportionately high rates of crime.

[grzm]

> "This is so simplistic"

> "Educate yourself."

The topic at hand is highly contentious. Regardless of how wrong you think the other party may be, it behooves us to strive to be even more civil in our discourse in such circumstances.

[BearGoesChirp]

>Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave".

Except data shows this isn't the case. A closer match is male = criminal, criminal = slave. The legal system is far harsher on a white male than a black female. And even closer is poor = criminal, criminal = slave.

The legal system discriminates first on SES, then on gender, and finally on race. So what reasoning is behind there being a disproportionate focus on race over SES and gender?

[slamdance]

so we end the war on drugs and outlaw private prisons. Do you really believe this will satisfy BLM? Do you really believe this will solve the problems in the inner cities? Chicago? Baltimore? St. Louis? There are a LOT of fingers pointing for political reasons, yet some topics and ideas are deemed "off-limits".

[lfam]

Please, feel free to share your "off-limits" ideas, so that we can judge them in the light of day.

[slamdance]

How about anything regarding "black-on-black" crime? YOu hear about "serial killer" in Tampa after 3 shootings, but nothing about Chicago or Baltimore or Cleveland, etc... WHERE IS BLM THERE? Granted, some cops are assholes. there is no doubt about that. some shouldn't be cops. But as a black man, you're 11 times more likely to be killed by another black man than you are by a cop [1]. Inconvenient facts Or that police officers are almost 20 TIMES more likely to be killed by a black man [2]. Now - Think about the population ratios and what that entails.

How about the ENTIRE "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" movement was based on a known LIE. That didn't stop BLM, though, did it?

How about being "unarmed" does not mean "docile" or "not dangerous"?

How about statistics that that BLM and the regressive left don't like to hear? like how the Welfare system is a GENERATIONAL crutch that drags society and their individual communities down [3-7], but what do people vote for? MORE WELFARE, and anyone who votes against less welfare (or anything that doesn't "redistribute" or otherwise steal money) is obviously racist. Its things like THIS that gave you Trump. Identity politics is what gave you Trump. Yet very few in this country want to take responsibility for their actions or their current situation. It's always someone else's fault, and someone else's job to fix it. Stop wallowing in the past. Today and every tomorrow is a blank sheet. It isn't "my" fault that some people can't see or don't take advantage of their opportunities. But what do I know? You've probably already labeled me a "racist", not knowing my race, not knowing my background or circumstances.

[1] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/c... [2] http://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-kno... [3] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/more-welfare-mo... [4] https://www.brookings.edu/research/work-and-marriage-the-way... [5] http://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/povert... [6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/22/the-e... [7] http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/opinion/spalding-welfare-state...

one more for good measure: http://nypost.com/2017/09/26/all-that-kneeling-ignores-the-r...

[dang]

This sort of stock ideological rant is just what HN isn't for. Please don't post like this!

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[Avshalom]

I mean, it'd be a good start.