I am reading a
difficult book right now, so I will read a section, and then read in a
different book, and working my way through gradually.
The book, Slavery
By Another Name by Douglas Blackmon, is difficult for a few reasons. It is
both verbally sophisticated and information dense, so there's that, but it is
also difficult emotionally.
It tells about the
re-enslavement of African Americans after the Civil War. People would swear out
false charges, then pay the arrest and court fees, and have an indentured
servant against whom you could easily bring charges when they were getting
close to the end of their term. Getting sent to work on a farm was bad; getting
sent to the mines was generally worse.
So, there is
ugliness there, and it is discouraging that at just halfway through the book
there are federal investigations and trials happening in 1903, but based on the
introduction the practice isn't really going to stop until 1940.
(And, with
privatized prisons getting occupancy guarantees, it seems to have just assumed
a new form: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/09/19/are-governments-incentivizing-longer-prison-terms/)
One thing that
struck me was an increase in the death rates by year for one of the mines. It
could be that as the operation grew, there were more people at risk of death,
or that people had been there longer. After all, just because some people
survived their first and second year does not mean that no damage was done.
My first thought,
though, was that maybe the people in charge became more comfortable with the
disposability of their victims. Do they really need that much food? Can't we
drive them a little harder?
I will finish the
book, probably later this week, and then I have a couple of other books to read
before I start writing on that. The connected issue, and I have been thinking
about it a lot lately, is how we get to where we can treat people like garbage.
This is where I am
going to kick myself for not making it to see The Act of Killing, which
interviews former Indonesian death squad leaders, but I kind of already know.
When you consider someone inferior, it is easy to treat them badly. When you
treat someone badly, it is easy to think less of them. The hate loop feeds on
itself.
There were
different factors at play of course. Money was a huge one. If I may reference
Sinclair again, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when
his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Increase that income,
and the comprehension gap gets even wider.
And there were
profit opportunities for a lot of people here. Before the war a slave cost
hundreds of dollars. Under the new system, you could get a good one for about
$70. I know that a focus on monetary gain corrupts people and hardens them.
There are no surprises there.
I get mad at people
who profit from the inequality built into the system, and the more gleeful they
are about it, the madder I get. What really frustrates me though is the people
who support them without any clear gain from it.
There does tend to
be a gain in a feeling of superiority, but that is a pretty poor aspiration.
Even if you call that a good gain, it tends to be off-set by all of the ills
that go along with a system based on the abuse of others.
Obviously, what
ticks me off the most is when it becomes a core part of someone's religious
beliefs to look down on others. I feel like I keep harping on that, but maybe
if I keep approaching it from different directions, it will hit different
spots. So, I'll get back on it tomorrow.
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