Category Archives: Wage Slavery

North Korea leads the world in the percentage of its population forced to work as slave labor, according to a report compiled by an Australian human rights organization, Walk Free.

Dedicated to campaigning against modern slavery, Walk Free in its newly released Global Slavery Index estimates that more than one out of ten 2,696,000 of North Koreas 25,779,000 people are slaves. That number includes all those forced to work by the state or risk being penalized with hard labor in prison camp.

The countries estimated to have the highest prevalence of modern slavery tend to be conflict-affected, have state-imposed forced labor, and have weak governance, says the report, ranking Eritrea as second with nearly one in ten, with 90.3 of every 1,000 people,or 320,000 people, living in slavery.

The percentages for North Korea and Eritrea are by far the highest of any country, according to Walk Free, relying on its own research and that of the International Labor Organization and the International Organization for Migration. The report estimates the number of slaves worldwide at 50 million as of 2021.

Walk Frees report, though, seeks to create an equivalence between what is going on in North Korea and judicial punishment in America. It does so by including in respect of America, a nation of some 330 million, the estimate that1.1 million persons the vast majority of whom are in prisons after conviction of crimes under American due process or 0.33 percent of Americans, are living in modern slavery.

The report, however, makes clear America ranks low in prevalence of what it counts as slavery 122nd out of 160 nations. In America, involuntary servitude is specifically permitted in the Constitution.

The 13th Amendment ordains that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.

The Walk Free report coincides with a report published by Asia Press, headquartered in Japan, of an increase in the numbers of North Koreans facing poverty and suffering from malnutrition while the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, invests heavily in nuclear warheads and missiles.

Since the start of May, Asia Press quotes a North Korean informant, our neighborhood watch unit has suffered four deaths, all from malnutrition. There are a lot of people suffering from tuberculosis due to malnutrition, says the informant, along with a dramatic rise in wandering homeless people.

The Asia Press report conjures images reminiscent of the mid-1990s when famine and disease killed approximately 2 million North Koreans.

Since April, urban dwellers nationwide are mobilized to work on farms, it says. People are fighting with whatever they have to survive, but market commerce doesnt make any money, and people are too weak to engage in wage labor. People are dying.

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Ten Percent of North Koreans Forced To Work as Slaves: New Report - The New York Sun

MODERN slavery was in the national news last week with a Melbourne couple appearing in court accused of keeping a person in domestic servitude.

Most people think of slavery as something from the past, but, according to Dr James Cockayne, the first full-time, independent Anti-slavery Commissioner in Australia, it still exists.

His role was established by the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (NSW) and includes advocating for and promoting action to combat modern slavery, identifying and providing assistance and support for victims of modern slavery, support to and oversight of NSW public procurement efforts to remove products of modern slavery from supply-chains, issuing codes of practice and maintaining a public register related to efforts to address modern slavery risks in supply-chains and raising community awareness of modern slavery.

Dr Cockayne made his third visit to the Coffs Coast last week, and met with a range of people to discuss modern slavery issues.

He said that the Coffs Coast is one of a number of places of interest in New South Wales, not only because of concerns with agricultural workers but also because of migrant communities with historical issues related to modern slavery.

Forced marriage might be slavery as could the use of international labour with the possibility of forced labour, wage theft and physical and sexual assault.

Modern slavery involves exploiting vulnerable people and there are a range of reasons why people might be vulnerable, Dr Cockayne said.

His office does not have enforcement powers, but has mandatory information gathering powers and can refer victims, and follow up.

He has already assisted victims of modern slavery and helped them get the assistance they need.

However, he said a large part of his work is in the area of procurement.

NSW Government agencies and local councils are required to take reasonable steps to ensure that the goods and services they procure are not the product of modern slavery and Dr Cockayne is currently working with 400 entities across NSW to help them meet their obligations to procure resources not produced from slavery.

An example he gives is cleaning services, which have an element of risk because labour hire companies could be better regulated in NSW and some cleaners might be in debt bondage, with the people whose premises they clean being completely unaware.

Because he can report directly to Parliament, Dr Cockayne also has a role in policy development.

He pointed out that the most powerful weapon against modern slavery is to raise awareness that there is now somewhere for people to share information if they suspect that someone is being ill-treated.

The role is incredibly energising because we have the opportunity to help people, Dr Cockayne said.

His office can be contacted by emailing antislavery@justice.nsw.gov.au

By Andrew VIVIAN

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Anti-Slavery Commissioner visits the Coffs Coast - News Of The Area

If figuring out how much gratuity to leave restaurant workers has you scratching your head, one creator has some tips about tips.

I feel like the tip discourse has reached the mainstream of TikTok, so I wanna talk about it, said Horace Gold (@horacegold) ina recent video that appears to have been deleted from the TikTok app. Prior to being deleted, the video had almost 93,000 views and more than 7,000 likes.

Gold made the video as a response to creator @poorandhungry, who posted about their frustration with being asked to tip on small items like ice cream cones.

Gold explained in his video that he worked as a server for several years in Los Angeles.

His first rule: seldom tipping on takeout orders.

Theyre putting it in a bag. What am I tipping for? Gold said.

The second guideline, Gold said, only applies to states like California, where servers are getting a livable wage, which they define at $15 to $17 plus tips on top. (If youre in a state like Alabama? Just tip them, Gold said.)

I look at that hourly wage like work you do for the restaurant whether there are customers and guests inside or not, Gold said.

He continued, If a guest asks one questionone questionyoure getting tipped, because we dont learn that information for free, b*tch.

You gotta pay for this knowledge. Youre tipping for that knowledge, Gold said.

Commenters had a lot of opinions about tipping.

A lot of places, like coffee & ice cream shops, I will give change if theres a jar. But to ask for tips on the iPad?? no, one person said.

One viewer wrote, I tip everyone so they can have a treat after work.

Another comment read, Most to-go workers make the same hourly as servers, so if they dont get tipped they make essentially nothing.

I work for $2.13 hourly and when people dont tip they dont understand how seriously this affects me, someone commented.

The Daily Dot reached out to Gold for comment via Instagram direct message on Tuesday and did not receive an immediate response.

According to a guide published this year by U.S. News & World Report, current etiquette calls for a 20% tip at sit-down restaurants and 10% for quick-service restaurants. Youll find no shortage of opinions about tipping on TikTok; take the creator who recently said they would no longer tip over 15%.

One commenter wrote on Golds TikTok, Currently working in a country where the idea of tipping is wild. It honestly is so funny how weve been tricked into thinking tipping is normal.

Theres a thorny history to tipping, including wealthy Americans in the mid-1800s wanting to seem aristocratic and people post-Civil War using tipping as an excuse to not adequately pay people recently freed from slavery, according to Time magazine in 2019,

The legality of the practice across the states has gone back and forth over the decades, according to Time.

Currently, the federally mandated minimum cash wage for tipped employees is $2.13, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

*First Published: May 30, 2023, 11:50 pm CDT

Eric Webb is a native Texan and national award-winning pop culture critic, arts & entertainment journalist, and editor.

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Former Server Says Customers Should Tip If They Ask Questions - The Daily Dot

A little-known period of post-slavery life in the Caribbean is being explored in a new exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands.

I say little known, for those involved, its very well known, but often the narrative in the UK about the ending of slavery in the sugar plantations seems to end at that point, and doesnt look at the slavery in all but name that followed on afterwards.

Following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, British planters in the Caribbean devised a new scheme to source cheap labour for their plantations, recruiting workers from India to work for three to five years in return for transport, a minimal wage and some basic provisions. Known as indenture, it was pretty much slavery without the ugly name.

Having successfully petitioned the British government for their support, the first indenture ships to the Caribbean set sail in 1838. Between then and its end in 1917, around 450,000 Indians were recruited to work in the British Caribbean.

A modest display telling this overlooked period of British colonialism has now opened in the Docklands museum, on the top floor at the end of the existing sugar and slavery exhibition space.

There are a few books, some documents and a number of explanatory boards to tell the story of what happened after slavery ended.

A long contract is on display with a display message about whether you think the terms in the contract would be acceptable today. Having asked the question though, it would have helped to display the document in question in a way that it can be read, rather than sideways, and considering the small text size, maybe printed a replica on the wall.

In the end, I took a photo and read it at home on my computer, and I would recommend doing the same as I would say this document is probably the most important item in the collection as the text shows how oppressive indentured workers lives were.

For example, the working day was nine hours, with just 30 minutes for lunch, and having signed a 5-year contract, they were only offered half-price travel back home to India if they worked for 10 years.

Its this difficult to read (physically as well as emotionally) document in the glass case that should be the highlight of the exhibition.

The exhibition, Indo + Caribbean: The Creation of a Culture runs until 19th November 2023 and is free to visit. Its on the top floor of the Museum of London Docklands.

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New exhibition looks at the UK's role in indenture labour - ianVisits

Since the first decade of the 20th Century, Black Greek-lettered organizations have worked to protect the interests and Constitutional rights of African Americans on college campuses and in the communities they serve. Now, more than 100 years later, the 2.5 million+ members of the nine National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) organizations find themselves standing vigilant against Jim Crowesque attacks from those who seek to undermine the foundational freedoms of Black people and marginalized communities across our United States.

Emboldened by divisive white nationalist rhetoric from prominent American political leaders and influential media figures, state and local officials have introduced and adopted laws that target efforts to diminish and/or erase diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at public institutions. For example, Floridas governor recently signed legislation that bans the states public colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs a clear retrograde for our nations education system.

In addition, members of K-12 school boards across America have considered and adopted policies to severely limit students exposure to perspectives, research and ideas that deviate from narrow and sometimes inaccurate depictions of American culture and history. As a result, educators have been blocked from presenting books and curricular topics that examine systems of oppression like slavery, racism, and sexism; as well as historical stories of marginalized people that overcame said oppressive systems to make this country a better place.

As a result, local school districts have been transformed into political battlegrounds where extremist activists wage divisive and faux attacks on so-called woke culture while seeking to impose a neo-segregationist framework in public education. This is a deliberate attempt to undermine the intent of the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education by devaluing the benefits of integration and culturally inclusive curriculum. This is not a popular movement, but one driven by a small group of well-funded, extremist activists with a clear intent to destroy public and culturally inclusive education as a public good.

Many of the same political leaders who are motivated to ban books that present difficult truths about the sins of America are utterly silent and unwilling to grapple with daunting challenges like gun violence which continues to plague the communities in which we live and serve. Issues like the irresponsibly laxed availability of assault weapons, which has facilitated mass shootings of American children, should be countered with sensible gun legislation to protect the lives of all Americans.

Yet all around us, the courts and elected officials are constantly eroding our rights; including a womans right to bodily autonomy.

A small minority of Americans appear to wield outsized influence, leaving the majority feeling increasingly disempowered. In the face of systemic social, political, and economic injustices, its impossible to overstate the ominous impact that overturning Roe v. Wade will have on the lives, safety, and wellbeing of not just women, but men and families alike. Additionally, the sheer consequences of inaction at a time such as this would have a devastating impact on the lives and liberties of many generations to come.

At this pivotal moment in history, the NPHCs Council of Presidents reaffirms our commitment to civic engagement and through our chapters, will present programming to inform our communities of the potential consequences of laws that would erode or prevent the expansion of our rights.

We will stand united and steadfast in leading and organizing efforts to oppose restrictive laws and work to enact laws that will expand freedoms for all Americans.

We will continue to push our members to fully engage in the political system as voters, election volunteers and elected officials.

And like our organizations founders and elders, well use our talents and resources to fight against oppression because complacency is too high a cost to pay today and sacrifice for future generations.

The National Pan-Hellenic Council, Incorporated (NPHC) is currently composed of nine (9) International Greek letter Sororities and Fraternities: Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc., Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.nphchq.com or CONTACT: Donna Jones Anderson, 470- 898-8655, president@nphchq.com.

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UNITED WE STAND: THE FIERCE URGENCY OF NOW - Savannah Tribune

Its always tough to know whether youre helping or just adding fuel to the fire when you amplify a so-called bad take only in order to refute it, so I try to refrain from the practice in general. But this opinion piece really stuck in my stomach the argument it made was so damaging as well as so uninformed that it made me feel physically ill.

To make things worse, this op-ed was also written on a topic that happens to be a research specialty of mine: White Christian Nationalism in America and its growth in recent years.

I came across the article through a tweet from Religion News Service writer Jack Jenkins, who was frustrated that the writer tried to discount the meaning of Christian Nationalism by suggesting that it wasnt clearly defined.

Hm, I thought, let me read this.

To simplify things for you, I will summarize the article here:

I am going to attempt to be snarky here and make fun of the myriad of dedicated researchers, pastors, theologians, and historians who have well-documented the existence and danger of Christian Nationalism in several books, by doing a quick cursory study of exactly one of those books and frameworks, setting it up as a straw man headed by a White former Southern Baptist thirty years younger than me (Im 87) to say that I think I am a Christian Nationalist and of course, if I think I am one it cant be a bad thing.

Also, I will throw in there an aside that Martin Luther King, Jr., was also a Christian Nationalist, so it cant be a movement based on racism (as countless scholars have proven it most certainly is, foremost among them Black researchers and Christian thought leaders such as Jemar Tisby, PhD, Prof. Anthea Butler, Dante Stewart, and many, many more).

I will ignore the seminal work and study connecting Christian Nationalism to gender-based violence and gender roles in the church, particularly the role of abuse of women and children in the church (convenient, as I am a Catholic), and will refuse to engage with the work of scholars like Kristin Du Mez and Beth Allison Barr, the powerful witness of Beth Moore, and the well-documented survivor stories of journalist Sarah Stankorb.

Basically, I will ignore the huge body of work that refutes everything Im saying, and instead continue on my dangerous path of whataboutism, ignoring the history of the theology of glory, which leads Christians to confuse salvation with worldly power and esteem, and a suggestion that Gods Kingdom is meant primarily for White American Christians.

The first time I read this abomination of an op-ed, I think I came at it from a journalist lens similar to Jenkins, and I was frustrated that such a well-respected news organization like the Post would publish something that has so little engagement with reality. It came off to me basically like a befuddled older man being frustrated that research and current thinking on American religion had left him behind, while he spent his entire professional career as editor of the religion section for Newsweek magazine. A position that Im almost certain no longer exists and would also not afford a middle-class American lifestyle, much less supporting an entire family, as it did for this writer.

And let me be clear here, too, that while I think its relevant that this op-ed was written by an 87-year-old former journalist who has written several books published by major New York publishers, I do not wish to suggest that the writers age means he cannot make valuable contributions to scholarship/journalism today.

In fact, I know many of you who read this might be officially classified as seniors according to the AARP. And I value and treasure the witness and wisdom and learning Ive received from each and every one of you. There is great value in listening to our elders and understanding the lessons of the past when applied to the present.

This op-ed is not that at all, unfortunately. Instead, the writer engages in dangerous historical revisionism, failing to listen to and learn from the lessons of the past, in order to, I can only imagine, preserve his own sense of power and esteem in a world that maybe he feels is passing him by. And unfortunately, the Washington Post was more than happy to oblige.

Maybe they thought it was cute or funny that this writer declared himself to be an innocuous Christian Nationalist, thereby writing off the whole thing as a sort of Proud to be an American exercise in flag-waving, hot-dog-eating, fireworks-watching, Onward Christian Soldiers-singing worship service.

Thats the thing, though. Only someone who knows that hes not one bit threatened by the violence, hatred, and destruction wrought by Christian Nationalism could write such an article, and only someone willfully ignorant to their own risk or similarly unthreatened could decide to publish it at the Post.

Women, of course, especially those of us women who happen to be ordained clergy members or happen to be experts in this field, know much better. In fact, after appearing in a viral video about Christian Nationalism last week, I was the proud recipient of several hate comments and notes sent to my email, as well as one disturbing packet sent to me via USPS priority mail (I have no idea how he got my home address).

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Black and brown Americans, AAPI Americans, and LGBTQIA Americans know this threat all too well, too. One only has to watch the rightwing Christian response to the killing of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway to know that the lives of Black Americans still do not matter the same as those of white Americans to so many in this country, the valiant work of Black Lives Matter notwithstanding.

We have a national lynching memorial established in Alabama with 805 hanging steel rectangles representing each U.S. county where a documented lynching took place. And still, last month, 16-year-old Black teenager Ralph Yarl was shot and nearly killed in Kansas City just for ringing the doorbell of his white neighbor.

The lies of Christian Nationalism kill. They inspired the shooter who killed nine people, including three children, at a mall outside Dallas. They were the impetus that sent a shooter in rural New York on a killing rampage in a Buffalo grocery store where hed researched that he would have the highest probability of killing the most Black victims.

The lies of white Christian Nationalism sent ELCA Lutheran-raised 21-year-old white man Dylann Roof into a Bible study prayer meeting at a famous and historic Black congregation in Charleston, where after being warmly welcomed to join the group, he killed nine of the same Bible Study participants who welcomed him in, all of whom were Black.

Thats where this road of white Christian Nationalism ends. It ends in death. Death first for the most vulnerable, but ultimately death for us all. Death too for the progenitors of violence and hatred, which often begins as hatred directed at themselves. Death due to poverty and violence and despair around the world, for an inability to see or care about the ways our greed and actions impact those far from us those who arent Americans or self-declared Christians, but those who suffer because of our choices, political and economic.

Its breathtaking to me that someone who was immensely privileged to spend his entire career working at the intersection of journalism and religion, in a position and career class that frankly no longer exists, would so carelessly fan the flames of hatred and violence in Christianitys name, all to I guess absolve himself of his own self-guilt due to benefiting from American white Christian Nationalism.

Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd on 8/28/1963. Original black and white negative by Rowland Scherman (The National Archives and Records Administration). Colorized by Jordan J. Lloyd. (U.S. Information Agency. Press and Publications Service. ca. 1953-ca. 1978.)

And heres the final thing I want to say about this and it might be the most important.

It took me years of reporting, studying, and research and honestly a period of self-introspection, reflection, and repentance after the murder of George Floyd not far from my house to recognize the massive role that white American Christian racism plays in the growth of white Christian Nationalism in this country.

American Christian Nationalism is built on a belief that America is the Promised Land and that Jesus came especially to save, redeem, and uplift Americans. Extrapolate that promise and history just a little bit, and you realize that such an understanding of America requires a purposeful ignorance of Americas racial sins: beginning with slavery and people brought against their will to America from Africa and continuing in killing and subjugating and abusing Indigenous peoples, and on to lynchings and segregation and redlining and mass incarceration and police brutality and healthcare inequalities and the war on drugs and micro-aggressions and all the ways in which White American Christians maintain their sense of superiority by promulgating a belief system that necessitates the dehumanization of Black Americans (and by extension, anyone who isnt a cishet conservative, wealthy White man).

To suggest, as this article did, that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., himself was a Christian Nationalist is among the most pernicious and racist sins of Christian Nationalism itself. Dr. King was steeped in the global liberation movements of his time, and while he was called particularly to the struggle of Black Americans his theology was such that called for the liberation of all people, the same Gospel witness lifted up by Jesus himself.

Thus Dr. King preached against the demonization of the poor, the soulless evil of unfettered capitalism and predatory debt; and he connected the struggle of Black Americans to the struggle of oppressed peoples all over the world. His was an inclusive gospel, even as I acknowledge that as no human is neither was Dr. King perfect, particularly in his understanding of the need for the liberation of women and LGBTQIA Americans.

No one person can fully encompass the liberation of Jesus Gospel, just the same as no one country or people can lay claim to the redemption and glory that Jesus promises the world. The lie of white Christian Nationalism is that white American Christians are especially saved. The specialness of our salvation is its exclusivity, they claim, but the New Testament says the exact opposite: the specialness of Jesus salvation is its inclusivity.

If only conservative scholars would dwell more on Pauls revolutionary words in this sense, and less on his particular prohibitions to the women of Corinth during worship, or the sexual practices of the Roman world.

The inimical sin of this article in calling Americas most famous Black preacher himself a Christian Nationalist is that by doing so it attempts to inoculate white Christian Nationalism itself from claims of being racist. No, of course this movement cannot be racist (and implicitly, neither can I if I support it, this author suggests) because look, a Black preacher himself was a Christian Nationalist.

Notably, the article does not even attempt to back up such an insupportable claim, and mentions it almost as an aside, so much so that I missed it upon first reading.

This is so often the case, though, is it not? That its not the loudest pronouncements, the most egregious offenders, that lead to mass movements of hatred. It is not the men with the fashy haircuts carrying tiki torches, or the shooter covered in swastika tattoos, or the writers of online manifestos, dangerous as they are, who we must be most careful to guard against.

Instead, it is those who look presentable, in 3-piece suits with careful language and elite college pedigrees, who serve as apologists for hate. Those who couch their language in studied terms and phrases, who often appeal to the center and who say, You know, I am a registered Democrat, but

It is those who spend their lives in elite media siloes, then cast stones at others who dare to call out clear and present danger to themselves when powerful people continue to platform a violent, convicted sex offender.

It is those who make their money on the backs of young, underpaid, inexperienced journalists, or those independently wealthy enough to do a professional job for a salary just barely above minimum wage; those who make their news-worthy decisions primarily on how they will play with Wall Street, shareholders, and SEO.

It is those who decided, oh, this will be a fun, snarky little op-ed to publish in the Washington Post about Christian Nationalism, undermining the work of countless scholars and eyewitnesses because we are too busy or too scared to actually account for the damage its wreaking on America. And worse, to clearly see our role in allowing it to fester, grow, metastasize, and kill.

Angela Denker is a Lutheran pastor and veteran journalist. She has written for many publications, including Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, and FORTUNE magazine. Denker has appeared on CNN, BBC, and SkyNews to share her research on politics and Christian Nationalism in the U.S. Her book, Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump, was the 2019 Silver Foreword Indies award-winner for political and social sciences. The revised edition ofRed State Christians,subtitled: A Journey into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage it leaves behind,came outAug. 16and is currently available everywhere books are sold.

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No, MLK Was Not a Christian Nationalist - Word and Way

Could Black Americans get reparations for centuries of slavery?

Lawmakers have been trying to pass reparation bills for descendants of slaves. Here's why it's taken so long - and how it might work.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Funding service industry wages through customer tips has long been the norm in the United States. The practice has a history tracing back to Europe and was codified in the United States in 1938 and 1966, after more acceptance largely from restaurant and railroad industries followingtheCivil War.

A Nov. 24 tweet from UberFacts said: "Tipping became popular in the U.S., in part, because restaurant owners didn't want to pay black Americans after the ratification of the 15th Amendment. This way, owners could set a $0 wage for waiters and rely on voluntary tips from customers to pay them."

In another tweet in the thread, the account added a link to a Time magazine article reporting the history of tipping, titled: "'It's the Legacy of Slavery': Here's the Troubling History Behind Tipping Practices in the U.S."

On Nov. 25,MyMixtapez, a hip-hop music app that also reports entertainment news , posted a graphic to Instagram, including only information from the first sentence of the tweet.

The 15th Amendment the last of a trio that abolished slavery and freed enslaved people, gave them citizenship, and gave formerly enslaved men the right to vote was ratified in 1870, after the Civil War. Butits passing wasn't the direct or only reason that tipping became popularized and a mainstay in the United States.

More: Fact check: Historical claims about constitutional amendments lack context

The practice of tipping workers has unclear origins but likely began as a result of the caste system in Europe in the late Middle Ages.

At least two accounts statethat there was no tipping in the United States prior to 1840, Kerry Segrave writes in "Tipping: An American Social History of Gratuities." Wealthy Americans are thought to have brought tipping back to the United States from lavish trips to Europe in the years leading up to the Civil War.

The new custom was thought of by many as un-American because it was classist,Saru Jayaraman has explained to several reporters over the years. Jayaraman wrote"Forked," a book about restaurant worker pay, and, in 2018, was co-founder and president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and the director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley.

More: Man leaves $3,000 tip for single beer at Ohio restaurant closing for coronavirus: 'Incredibly kind and grand gesture'

Thatanti-tipping sentiment found its way back to Europe, contributing to labor movements that ended the practice.

But inthe United States,fresh out of the Civil War, formerly enslaved people were able to find most work in food serviceor asrailroad porters, jobs that relied on tips. Many employers whowanted to hire the formerly enslavedalso wanted to keep them at a low wage.

"When the practice came to the United States, the newly freed slaves, the black workers, were the equivalent of the proletariat in the feudal system,"Jayaraman has explained in The Washington Post.

In 1915, several states passed laws prohibiting tipping, which was a growing practice butunpopular at the same time.All six of the bans were overturned or ruled unconstitutional by 1926.

"When these states banned tipping, it was because they were trying to discourage whites from tipping instead of actually paying former slaves," Jayaraman told the Post. Of six states that made tipping illegal, five were in the South, where the idea was that only Black workers were making tips because "you only tip inferiors," Jayaraman explained.

Also in the early 1900s, Pullman rail company was investigated by the Railroad Commission of California. Even though the company, which employed mostly Black workers, was a proponent of tipping, it was for their own financial gain, Segrave writes, not for the financial gain of the worker. In response to another federal report pointing out the Pullman's savings by relying on tips, a Pullman representative said: "The company simply accepts conditions as it finds them. The company did not invent tipping. It was here when the company began."

Tipping was codified in 1938 as part of the New Deal,Jayaramanhas said, because the Fair Labor Standards Act allowed federal minimum wage to beearned through wages or through tips. And then in 1966, "tip credit" amendments were made to the act, paving the way toward the currentminimum wage of $2.13for tipped employees, like restaurant workers. In seven states, local laws require allworkers must be paid the full federal minimum wage before tips.

Rail workers went on strike and eventually received higher wages.

The users who posted the claim on Instagram and Twitter did not return messages seeking comment.

Based on our research, the claim that tipping became popularized by restaurant owners who didn't want to pay Black workers after the passage of the 15th Amendment is generally TRUE, though more context is helpful.

Tipping in America began before the Civil War. But afterward, it is true that employers in the restaurant industry, railroads and moreused the practice of tipping as a wayto keep somewages low. Formerly enslaved Black people worked in many of these jobs.

Additionally, fiveSouthern states actively banned tipping. Those bans, though, were more concerned with discouraging white people from tipping than they were concerned with not encouraging a tip-based business model exploitative of cheap Black labor that others had adopted.

Laura Testino covers education and children's issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @LDTestino

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

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Fact check: Tipping began amid slavery, then helped keep former Black ...

Treatment of people as property

Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slavesomeone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property.[1] Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perform some form of work while also having their location or residence dictated by the enslaver. Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as a result of breaking the law, becoming indebted, or suffering a military defeat; other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race. Slaves may be kept in bondage for life or for a fixed period of time, after which they would be granted freedom.[2] Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay a debt or earn money due to poverty. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization,[3] and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime.[5]

In chattel slavery, the slave is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labour and forced labour that most slaves endure.[6]

In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world despite it being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of slaves provide forced labour, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy.[7] In industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person,[6] such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers.[8]

The word slave arrived in modern English from Middle English sclave, from Old French esclave, from Late Middle High German sklave, from Medieval Latin sclvus, from Late Latin Sclvus, from Byzantine Greek [Sklbos], [sklabnos].

According to the widespread view, which has been known since the 18th century, Byzantine [Sklbinoi], [sklabno], borrowed from Slavic gen self-name *Slovnin turned into , (Late Latin Sclvus) in the meaning 'prisoner of war Slave', 'slave' in 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved.[9][10][11] However this version has been disputed since the 19th century.[13][14]

Alternative contemporary hypothesis states that Medieval Latin sclvus via *scylvus derives from Byzantine [skl, skyl], [skle, skyle] - "to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)", "to make booty / extract spoils of war".[15][16][17][18] This version is criticized as well.[19]

There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or "enslaved person", rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were" (see also People-first language). Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with person implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.[20]

As a social institution, chattel slavery classes slaves as chattels (personal property) owned by the enslaver; like livestock, they can be bought and sold at will.[21] While it was not present at all times and places in the classical world, chattel slavery did exist in ancient times and was practiced in places such as the Roman Empire.[22] Chattel slavery reached its modern extreme in the Americas during European colonization.[23] Beginning in the 18th century, a series of abolitionist movements saw slavery as a violation of the slaves' rights as people ("all men are created equal"), and sought to abolish it. Abolitionism encountered extreme resistance but was eventually successful; the last Western country to abolish slavery, Brazil, did so in 1888.[24] The last third-world country to abolish slavery, Mauritania, did not do so until 1981.[25]

Indenture, also known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour in which a person works to pay off a debt by pledging himself or herself as collateral. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today.[27] Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia. Money marriage refers to a marriage where a girl, usually, is married off to a man to settle debts owed by her parents.[28] The Chukri system is a debt bondage system found in parts of Bengal where a female can be coerced into prostitution in order to pay off debts.[29]

The word "slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else.[30][31] For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.[32]

Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term "unfree labour" is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person.[citation needed] This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, de jure legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.[citation needed]

Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children.[33][34]

In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in then-current conflicts.[35] More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labour, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty[36] as with the Haitian restaveks.

Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery.[citation needed] Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West.[37][38][39][40] Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa.[citation needed] Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a 2003 study finding a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.[41]

The word slavery is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery."[42][43] Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.[44]

"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind.[45] Drapetomania was a pseudoscientific psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who desired freedom; "symptoms" included laziness and the tendency to flee captivity.[46][47]

Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.[48]

The labour market, as institutionalized under contemporary capitalist systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour.[49][51] Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.[52]

Slaves have been owned privately by individuals but have also been under state ownership. For example, the kisaeng were women from low castes in pre modern Korea, who were owned by the state under government officials known as hojang and were required to provide entertainment to the aristocracy; in the 2020s some are denoted Kippumjo (the pleasure brigades of North Korea serving as the concubines of the rulers of the state).[53] "Tribute labor" is compulsory labor for the state and has been used in various iterations such as corve, mit'a and repartimiento. The internment camps of totalitarian regimes such as the Nazis and the Soviet Union placed increasing importance on the labor provided in those camps, leading to a growing tendency among historians to designate such systems as slavery.[54]

Economists have modeled the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it is more costly for landowners to guard the slaves than to employ paid workers who can demand only low wages because of the degree of competition.[55] Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew. They were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of land with few inhabitants became available.[56]

Slavery is more common when the tasks are relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale monocrops such as sugarcane and cotton, in which output depended on economies of scale. This enables systems of labour, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands toiled with factory-like precision. Then, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a task and made each worker's performance dependent on the actions of the others. The slaves chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excess sprouts. Plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.[57]

Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery retards technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading their efficiency. For example, it is sometimes argued that, because of this narrow focus, technology in Greece and later in Rome was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.[58]

Scottish economist Adam Smith stated that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it was nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves. He further stated that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom under centralized government, or a central authority like a king or church.[59][60] Similar arguments appeared later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially given Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith stated in the Lectures on Jurisprudence, "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."

Even after slavery became a criminal offense, slave owners could get high returns. According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2billion. That was second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. At the time the weighted average global sales price of a slave was estimated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa. The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labour and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave. Approximately 40% of slave profits each year were generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29million slaves.[62]

Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to the frequent lack of footwear, as they were rather commonly forced to go barefoot. This was partly for economic reasons, but also served as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that "Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes."[63] It also puts slaves at a physical disadvantage because of the lack of protection against environmental conditions and in confrontations, thereby making it more difficult to escape or to rebel against their owners.

This was the case in the majority of states. Most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot.[64] Brother Riemer stated, "[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted."[65]

According to the Bible, shoes have been considered badges of freedom since antiquity: "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet" (Luke 15:22). This aspect can be viewed as an informal law in areas where slavery existed as any person sighted barefoot in public was assumed to be a slave.

In certain societies this rule continues. The Tuareg still unofficially practice slavery and force their slaves to remain barefoot.[66]

Another widespread practice was branding, either to explicitly mark slaves as property or as punishment.

Depending upon the era and the country, slaves sometimes had a limited set of legal rights. For example, in the Province of New York, people who deliberately killed slaves were punishable under a 1686 statute.[67] And, as already mentioned, certain legal rights attached to the nobi in Korea, to slaves in various African societies, and to black female slaves in the French colony of Louisiana. Giving slaves legal rights has sometimes been a matter of morality, but also sometimes a matter of self-interest. For example, in ancient Athens, protecting slaves from mistreatment simultaneously protected people who might be mistaken for slaves, and giving slaves limited property rights incentivized slaves to work harder to get more property.[68] In the southern United States prior to the extirpation of slavery in 1865, a proslavery legal treatise reported that slaves accused of crimes typically had a legal right to counsel, freedom from double jeopardy, a right to trial by jury in graver cases, and the right to grand jury indictment, but they lacked many other rights such as white adults ability to control their own lives.[69]

Some scholars differentiate ancient forms of slavery from the largely race-based slavery. The first type of slavery, sometimes called "just title servitude", was inflicted on prisoners of war, debtors, and other vulnerable people. Race-based slavery grew to immense proportions starting in the 14th century.[70] It was argued even by some contemporary writers to be intrinsically immoral.[71][72][73]

Slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures.[3] Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a substantial population density. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.[74]

In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive.[75] The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution.[3] Slavery was practiced in almost every ancient civilization.[3] Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the enslavement of slaves' offspring.[76]

Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone.[77][78] The three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labour, and forced labour.[79][80][81]

Slavery existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty.[82] Slavery was employed largely by governments as a means of maintaining a public labour force.[83][84]

Records of slavery in Ancient Greece begin with Mycenaean Greece. Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[85] As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, across Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War was led by Spartacus.

By the late Republican era, slavery had become an economic pillar of Roman wealth, as well as Roman society.[86] It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region.[87][88] Slaves represented 1525% of Italy's population,[89] mostly war captives,[89] especially from Gaul[90] and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy.[89] Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians.[91] Foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy were estimated to have peaked at 5% of the total in the capital, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent. Jewish slaves never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes subjected to mass expulsions.[92] The average recorded age at death for the slaves in Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).[93]

Slavery was widespread in Africa, which pursued both internal and external slave trade.[94] In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.[95]

During the trans-Saharan slave trade, slaves from West Africa were transported across the Sahara desert to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle eastern civilizations. The Indian Ocean slave trade, sometimes known as the east African slave trade, was multi-directional. Africans were sent as slaves to the Arabian Peninsula, to Indian Ocean islands (including Madagascar), to the Indian subcontinent, and later to the Americas. These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast.[97][98] There, the slaves gradually assimilated in rural areas, particularly on Unguja and Pemba islands.[99]

Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs.[100] Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinamb of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also practiced slavery.[3]

Slavery in Canada was practiced by First Nations and by European settlers.[101] Slave-owning people of what became Canada were, for example, the fishing societies, such as the Yurok, that lived along the Pacific coast from Alaska to California,[102] on what is sometimes described as the Pacific or Northern Northwest Coast. Some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the Haida and Tlingit, were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war and their descendants were slaves.[103] Some nations in British Columbia continued to segregate and ostracize the descendants of slaves as late as the 1970s.[104]

Slavery also existed in India, Japan and Vietnam.

Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper. According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki () and Funada Yoshiyuki (), Mongolian slaves were owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty.[106][107]

Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, in the first century BCE. Slavery has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country, but by the 16th century, population growth was making [it] unnecessary".[109] Slavery went into decline around the 10th century but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced multiple slave rebellions.

In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as nobi. The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen (i.e., the middle and common classes) other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, and legal and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it is inappropriate to call them "slaves",[110] while some scholars describe them as serfs.[112] The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the total, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population. In 1801, the majority of government nobi were emancipated,[113] and by 1858, the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the Korean population.

Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[115][116][117] The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj Rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.[118][119]

Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it, or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, as for example at the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) (which aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland)[120] and the Council of Armagh (1171). Serfdom, on the contrary, was widely accepted. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war.[121] The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455.

In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome, and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester[122] and Bristol[123] supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the Domesday Book, nearly 10% of the English population were slaves.[124] William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.[125] According to historian John Gillingham, by 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent.[126]

Slavery had never been authorized by statute within England and Wales, and in 1772, in the case Somerset v Stewart, Lord Mansfield declared that it was also unsupported within England by the common law. The slave trade was abolished by the Slave Trade Act 1807, although slavery remained legal in possessions outside Europe until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.[127]

However, when England began to have colonies in the Americas, and particularly from the 1640s, African slaves began to make their appearance in England and remained a presence until the eighteenth century. In Scotland, slaves continued to be sold as chattels until late in the eighteenth century (on the second May, 1722, an advertisement appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, announcing that a stolen slave had been found, who would be sold to pay expenses, unless claimed within two weeks).[128]

For nearly two hundred years in the history of coal mining in Scotland, miners were bonded to their "maisters" by a 1606 Act "Anent Coalyers and Salters". The Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775 stated that "many colliers and salters are in a state of slavery and bondage" and announced emancipation; those starting work after 1 July 1775 would not become slaves, while those already in a state of slavery could, after 7 or 10 years depending on their age, apply for a decree of the Sheriff's Court granting their freedom. Few could afford this, until a further law in 1799 established their freedom and made this slavery and bondage illegal.[128][129]

The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world.[130] To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devirme system. They were well cared for but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. They were never bought or sold. The empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.[131]

After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet.[132] Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves for selling them to Ottomans as jasyr.[133] Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into PolandLithuania between 1474 and 1569.[134]

Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom.

Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Crdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal, in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[135] From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in raids on European coastal towns to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.[136]The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.[137][138] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.[138]

By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon.[139][140] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade, and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas especially Brazil.[138] In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.[141]

In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops. According to David P. Forsythe, "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters."[143] Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.[144]

In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century.[145]

As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000.[146] Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery in 1962.[147] Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj), the Caucasus (mainly Circassians),[149] Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly Slavs [Saqaliba]).[150]

Some historians assert that as many as 17million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900.[151] The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.[99][152][153] The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labour, Bantu slaves bought by east African slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.

According to the Encyclopedia of African History, "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labour was extensive, especially in agriculture."[155][156] The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16million.[157]

Slave labour in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast.[98][158] The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa. It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".[160]The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work.[161] As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labour work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labour shortage led to an increased slave market.

In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers.[162] By one estimate, raids by Barbary slave traders on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries.[163][164][165] However, this estimate is the result of an extrapolation which assumes that the number of European slaves captured by Barbary pirates was constant for a 250-year period:

There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.[166]

Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe.[166] In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia. Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.[167] Such observations, across the late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.[168] This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816.[169][170]

Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 African slaves passing through every year during the 19th century.[171][172] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD.[3][failed verification][173] Eduard Rppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt." W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way... Keltie (The Partition of Africa, London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."[175]

Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the slaves were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections.[176] This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties.[177] Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master.[176] Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa.[178] Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.

When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia Mbokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:

The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.[179]

The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire,[180] the kingdom of Dahomey,[181] and the Aro Confederacy.[182] It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.[183][184]

Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions.

In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.[185] Bartolom de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar and Spanish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[186] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates.

Many whites who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants.[187] The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a Black man, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants.[188][189][190][191]

After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case Johnson v. Parker, where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case.[192] This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.[193][194][195][196][197][198][199]

In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with African and native American slaves providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's largest sugar industries.[200]

As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and African slaves, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out, and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by African slaves. By 1660, there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680, there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans.

Because of the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of African slaves to cultivate sugar cane.

Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.[201]

Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labour during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.

During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[202] Until the early 1850s, most African slaves who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (in present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the country with the largest population of people of African descent is Brazil.[203]

Slave labour was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labour. 1.7million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.

Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.

In 1789 the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labour in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, Cdigo Negro Espaol (Spanish Black Code), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers. The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba. But planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority and an intrusion into their personal lives.[204]

The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices. They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding". The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance. Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.[204]

Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labour which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three to four hours of sleep. The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall.[205]

Cuba's slavery system was gendered in a way that some duties were performed only by male slaves, some only by female slaves. Female slaves in Havana from the 16th century onwards performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as being laundresses and domestic labourers and servants. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes.

Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.[206]

Planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women. They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of "breed stock" children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.[207]

Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types. women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lie "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies."[208] Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages. The wounds were treated with "compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt."[209]

Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population.[210] Following the indigenous Tano's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of African slaves. During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world.

Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain. France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue. To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.

The French-enacted Code Noir ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.[211] Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever.[212] They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather than allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery.[214]

As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights.

Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As of 2015[update], these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.[215]

The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies.

Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.[216]

The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Tano women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children.[217] Sexual violence with the Tano women by the Spanish was also common.[218][219]

Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.

In 1519, Hernn Corts brought the first modern slave to the area.[220] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs. A labour shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died from disease. This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox. In exchange, many Africans were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were granted their freedom by their masters.[220]

Original post:

Slavery - Wikipedia

Hierarchical social stratification

A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories,[1] the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network.[2]

"Class" is a subject of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and social historians. The term has a wide range of sometimes conflicting meanings, and there is no broad consensus on a definition of "class". Some people argue that due to social mobility, class boundaries do not exist. In common parlance, the term "social class" is usually synonymous with "socio-economic class", defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", e.g., "the working class"; "an emerging professional class".[3] However, academics distinguish social class from socioeconomic status, using the former to refer to one's relatively stable sociocultural background and the latter to refer to one's current social and economic situation which is consequently more changeable over time.[4]

The precise measurements of what determines social class in society have varied over time. Karl Marx thought "class" was defined by one's relationship to the means of production (their relations of production). His understanding of classes in modern capitalist society is that the proletariat work but do not own the means of production, and the bourgeoisie, those who invest and live off the surplus generated by the proletariat's operation of the means of production, do not work at all. This contrasts with the view of the sociologist Max Weber, who argued that "class" is determined by economic position, in contrast to "social status" or "Stand" which is determined by social prestige rather than simply just relations of production.[5] The term "class" is etymologically derived from the Latin classis, which was used by census takers to categorize citizens by wealth in order to determine military service obligations.[6]

In the late 18th century, the term "class" began to replace classifications such as estates, rank and orders as the primary means of organizing society into hierarchical divisions.[fact or opinion?] This corresponded to a general decrease in significance ascribed to hereditary characteristics and increase in the significance of wealth and income as indicators of position in the social hierarchy.[7][8]

The existence of a class system dates back to times of Ancient Egypt, where the position of elite was also characterized by literacy.[9] The wealthier people were at the top in the social order and common people and slaves being at the bottom.[10] However, the class was not rigid; a man of humble origins could ascend to a high post.[11]:38-

The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for redress.[12]

Farmers made up the bulk of the population, but agricultural produce was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble family that owned the land.[13]:383 Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on irrigation or construction projects in a corve system.[14]:136 Artists and craftsmen were of higher status than farmers, but they were also under state control, working in the shops attached to the temples and paid directly from the state treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class in ancient Egypt, known as the "white kilt class" in reference to the bleached linen garments that served as a mark of their rank.[15]:109 The upper class prominently displayed their social status in art and literature. Below the nobility were the priests, physicians, and engineers with specialized training in their field. It is unclear whether slavery as understood today existed in ancient Egypt; there is difference of opinions among authors.[16]

Not a single Egyptian was, in our sense of the word, free. No individual could call in question a hierarchy of authority which culminated in a living god.

Although slaves were mostly used as indentured servants, they were able to buy and sell their servitude, work their way to freedom or nobility, and were usually treated by doctors in the workplace.[17]

In Ancient Greece when the clan system [a] was declining. The classes[b] replaced the clan society when it became too small to sustain the needs of increasing population. The division of labor is also essential for the growth of classes.[11]:39

Historically, social class and behavior were laid down in law. For example, permitted mode of dress in some times and places was strictly regulated, with sumptuous dressing only for the high ranks of society and aristocracy, whereas sumptuary laws stipulated the dress and jewelry appropriate for a person's social rank and station. In Europe, these laws became increasingly commonplace during the Middle Ages. However, these laws were prone to change due to societal changes, and in many cases, these distinctions may either almost disappear, such as the distinction between a patrician and a plebeian being almost erased during the late Roman Republic.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a large influence over political ideals of the French Revolution because of his views of inequality and classes. Rousseau saw humans as "naturally pure and good," meaning that humans from birth were seen as innocent and any evilness was learned. He believed that social problems arise through the development of society and suppress the innate pureness of humankind. He also believed that private property is the main reason for social issues in society because private property creates inequality through the property's value. Even though his theory predicted if there were no private property then there would be wide spread equality, Rousseau accepted that there will always be social inequality because of how society is viewed and run.[18]

Later Enlightenment thinkers viewed inequality as valuable and crucial to society's development and prosperity. They also acknowledged that private property will ultimately cause inequality because specific resources that are privately owned can be stored and the owners profit off of the deficit of the resource. This can create competition between the classes that was seen as necessary by these thinkers.[18] This also creates stratification between the classes keeping a distinct difference between lower, poorer classes and the higher, wealthier classes.

India (), Nepal, North Korea (), Sri Lanka () and some Indigenous peoples maintain social classes today.

In class societies, class conflict has tended to recur or is ongoing, depending on the sociological and anthropolitical perspective.[19][20] Class societies have not always existed; there have been widely different types of class communities.[21][22][23] For example, societies based on age rather than capital.[24] During colonialism, social relations were dismantled by force, which gave rise to societies based on the social categories of waged labor, private property, and capital.[24][25]

Class society or class-based society is an organizing principle society in which ownership of property, means of production, and wealth is the determining factor of the distribution of power, in which those with more property and wealth are stratified higher in the society and those without access to the means of production and without wealth are stratified lower in the society. In a class society, at least implicitly, people are divided into distinct social strata, commonly referred to as social classes or castes. The nature of class society is a matter of sociological research.[26][27][28] Class societies exist all over the globe in both industrialized and developing nations.[29] Class stratification is theorized to come directly from capitalism.[30] In terms of public opinion, nine out of ten people in a Swedish survey considered it correct that they are living in a class society.[31]

One may use comparative methods to study class societies, using, for example, comparison of Gini coefficients, de facto educational opportunities, unemployment, and culture.[32][33]

Societies with large class differences have a greater proportion of people who suffer from mental health issues such as anxiety and depression symptoms.[34][35][36] A series of scientific studies have demonstrated this relationship.[37] Statistics support this assertion and results are found in life expectancy and overall health; for example, in the case of high differences in life expectancy between two Stockholm suburbs. The differences between life expectancy of the poor and less-well-educated inhabitants who live in proximity to the station Vrby grd, and the highly educated and more affluent inhabitants living near Danderyd differ by 18 years.[38][39]

Similar data about New York is also available for life expectancy, average income per capita, income distribution, median income mobility for people who grew up poor, share with a bachelor's degree or higher.[40]

In class societies, the lower classes systematically receive lower-quality education and care.[41][42][43] There are more explicit effects where those within the higher class actively demonize parts of the lower-class population.[33]

Definitions of social classes reflect a number of sociological perspectives, informed by anthropology, economics, psychology and sociology. The major perspectives historically have been Marxism and structural functionalism. The common stratum model of class divides society into a simple hierarchy of working class, middle class and upper class. Within academia, two broad schools of definitions emerge: those aligned with 20th-century sociological stratum models of class society and those aligned with the 19th-century historical materialist economic models of the Marxists and anarchists.[44][45][46]

Another distinction can be drawn between analytical concepts of social class, such as the Marxist and Weberian traditions, as well as the more empirical traditions such as socioeconomic status approach, which notes the correlation of income, education and wealth with social outcomes without necessarily implying a particular theory of social structure.[47]

"[Classes are] large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it."

Vladimir Lenin, A Great Beginning on June 1919

For Marx, class is a combination of objective and subjective factors. Objectively, a class shares a common relationship to the means of production. The class society itself is understood as the aggregated phenomenon to the "interlinked movement", which generates the quasi-objective concept of capital.[48] Subjectively, the members will necessarily have some perception ("class consciousness") of their similarity and common interest. Class consciousness is not simply an awareness of one's own class interest but is also a set of shared views regarding how society should be organized legally, culturally, socially and politically. These class relations are reproduced through time.

In Marxist theory, the class structure of the capitalist mode of production is characterized by the conflict between two main classes: the bourgeoisie, the capitalists who own the means of production and the much larger proletariat (or "working class") who must sell their own labour power (wage labour). This is the fundamental economic structure of work and property, a state of inequality that is normalized and reproduced through cultural ideology.

For Marxists, every person in the process of production has separate social relationships and issues. Along with this, every person is placed into different groups that have similar interests and values that can differ drastically from group to group. Class is special in that does not relate to specifically to a singular person, but to a specific role.[18]

Marxists explain the history of "civilized" societies in terms of a war of classes between those who control production and those who produce the goods or services in society. In the Marxist view of capitalism, this is a conflict between capitalists (bourgeoisie) and wage-workers (the proletariat). For Marxists, class antagonism is rooted in the situation that control over social production necessarily entails control over the class which produces goodsin capitalism this is the exploitation of workers by the bourgeoisie.[49]

Furthermore, "in countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed".[50] "An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and sergeants (foremen, over-lookers) who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist".[51]

Marx makes the argument that, as the bourgeoisie reach a point of wealth accumulation, they hold enough power as the dominant class to shape political institutions and society according to their own interests. Marx then goes on to claim that the non-elite class, owing to their large numbers, have the power to overthrow the elite and create an equal society.[52]

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx himself argued that it was the goal of the proletariat itself to displace the capitalist system with socialism, changing the social relationships underpinning the class system and then developing into a future communist society in which: "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all". This would mark the beginning of a classless society in which human needs rather than profit would be motive for production. In a society with democratic control and production for use, there would be no class, no state and no need for financial and banking institutions and money.[53][54]

These theorists have taken this binary class system and expanded it to include contradictory class locations, the idea that a person can be employed in many different class locations that fall between the two classes of proletariat and bourgeoisie. Erik Olin Wright stated that class definitions are more diverse and elaborate through identifying with multiple classes, having familial ties with people in different a class, or having a temporary leadership role.[18]

Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification that saw social class as emerging from an interplay between "class", "status" and "power". Weber believed that class position was determined by a person's relationship to the means of production, while status or "Stand" emerged from estimations of honor or prestige.[55]

Weber views class as a group of people who have common goals and opportunities that are available to them. This means that what separates each class from each other is their value in the marketplace through their own goods and services. This creates a divide between the classes through the assets that they have such as property and expertise.[18]

Weber derived many of his key concepts on social stratification by examining the social structure of many countries. He noted that contrary to Marx's theories, stratification was based on more than simply ownership of capital. Weber pointed out that some members of the aristocracy lack economic wealth yet might nevertheless have political power. Likewise in Europe, many wealthy Jewish families lacked prestige and honor because they were considered members of a "pariah group".

For Bourdieu, the place in the social strata for any person is vaguer than the equivalent in Weberian sociology. Bourdieu introduced an array of concepts of what he refers to as types of capital. These types were economic capital, in the form assets convertible to money and secured as private property. This type of capital is separated from the other types of culturally constituted types of capital, which Bourdieu introduces, which are: personal cultural capital (formal education, knowledge); objective cultural capital (books, art); and institutionalized cultural capital (honours and titles).

On 2 April 2013, the results of a survey[56] conducted by BBC Lab UK developed in collaboration with academic experts and slated to be published in the journal Sociology were published online.[57][58][59][60][61] The results released were based on a survey of 160,000 residents of the United Kingdom most of whom lived in England and described themselves as "white". Class was defined and measured according to the amount and kind of economic, cultural and social resources reported. Economic capital was defined as income and assets; cultural capital as amount and type of cultural interests and activities; and social capital as the quantity and social status of their friends, family and personal and business contacts.[60] This theoretical framework was developed by Pierre Bourdieu who first published his theory of social distinction in 1979.

Today, concepts of social class often assume three general economic categories: a very wealthy and powerful upper class that owns and controls the means of production; a middle class of professional workers, small business owners and low-level managers; and a lower class, who rely on low-paying jobs for their livelihood and experience poverty.

The upper class[62] is the social class composed of those who are rich, well-born, powerful, or a combination of those. They usually wield the greatest political power. In some countries, wealth alone is sufficient to allow entry into the upper class. In others, only people who are born or marry into certain aristocratic bloodlines are considered members of the upper class and those who gain great wealth through commercial activity are looked down upon by the aristocracy as nouveau riche.[63] In the United Kingdom, for example, the upper classes are the aristocracy and royalty, with wealth playing a less important role in class status. Many aristocratic peerages or titles have seats attached to them, with the holder of the title (e.g. Earl of Bristol) and his family being the custodians of the house, but not the owners. Many of these require high expenditures, so wealth is typically needed. Many aristocratic peerages and their homes are parts of estates, owned and run by the title holder with moneys generated by the land, rents or other sources of wealth. However, in the United States where there is no aristocracy or royalty, the upper class status belongs to the extremely wealthy, the so-called "super-rich", though there is some tendency even in the United States for those with old family wealth to look down on those who have accrued their money through business, the struggle between new money and old money.

The upper class is generally contained within the richest one or two percent of the population. Members of the upper class are often born into it and are distinguished by immense wealth which is passed from generation to generation in the form of estates.[64] Based on some new social and political theories upper class consists of the most wealthy decile group in society which holds nearly 87% of the whole society's wealth.[65]

See also: Middle-class squeeze

The middle class is the most contested of the three categories, the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the lower and upper classes.[66] One example of the contest of this term is that in the United States "middle class" is applied very broadly and includes people who would elsewhere be considered working class. Middle-class workers are sometimes called "white-collar workers".

Theorists such as Ralf Dahrendorf have noted the tendency toward an enlarged middle class in modern Western societies, particularly in relation to the necessity of an educated work force in technological economies.[67] Perspectives concerning globalization and neocolonialism, such as dependency theory, suggest this is due to the shift of low-level labour to developing nations and the Third World.[68]

Middle class is the group of people with typical-everyday jobs that pay significantly more than the poverty line.Examples of these types of jobs are factory workers, salesperson, teacher, cooks and nurses.There is a new trend by some scholars which assumes that the size of the middle class in every society is the same. For example, in paradox of interest theory, middle class are those who are in 6th9th decile groups which hold nearly 12% of the whole society's wealth.[69]

Lower class (occasionally described as working class) are those employed in low-paying wage jobs with very little economic security. The term "lower class" also refers to persons with low income.

The working class is sometimes separated into those who are employed but lacking financial security (the "working poor") and an underclassthose who are long-term unemployed and/or homeless, especially those receiving welfare from the state. The latter is today considered analogous to the Marxist term "lumpenproletariat". However, during the time of Marx's writing the lumpenproletariat referred to those in dire poverty; such as the homeless.[62] Members of the working class are sometimes called blue-collar workers.

A person's socioeconomic class has wide-ranging effects. It can determine the schools they are able to attend,[70][71][72][73][74][75] their health,[76] the jobs open to them,[70] when they exit the labour market,[77] whom they may marry[78] and their treatment by police and the courts.[79]

Angus Deaton and Anne Case have analyzed the mortality rates related to the group of white, middle-aged Americans between the ages of 45 and 54 and its relation to class. There has been a growing number of suicides and deaths by substance abuse in this particular group of middle-class Americans. This group also has been recorded to have an increase in reports of chronic pain and poor general health. Deaton and Case came to the conclusion from these observations that because of the constant stress that these white, middle aged Americans feel fighting poverty and wavering between the middle and lower classes, these strains have taken a toll on these people and affected their whole bodies.[76]

Social classifications can also determine the sporting activities that such classes take part in. It is suggested that those of an upper social class are more likely to take part in sporting activities, whereas those of a lower social background are less likely to participate in sport. However, upper-class people tend to not take part in certain sports that have been commonly known to be linked with the lower class.[80]

A person's social class has a significant effect on their educational opportunities. Not only are upper-class parents able to send their children to exclusive schools that are perceived to be better, but in many places, state-supported schools for children of the upper class are of a much higher quality than those the state provides for children of the lower classes.[81][82][83][84][85][86] This lack of good schools is one factor that perpetuates the class divide across generations.

In the UK, the educational consequences of class position have been discussed by scholars inspired by the cultural studies framework of the CCCS and/or, especially regarding working-class girls, feminist theory. On working-class boys, Paul Willis' 1977 book Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs is seen within the British Cultural Studies field as a classic discussion of their antipathy to the acquisition of knowledge.[87] Beverley Skeggs described Learning to Labour as a study on the "irony" of "how the process of cultural and economic reproduction is made possible by 'the lads' ' celebration of the hard, macho world of work."[88]

A person's social class often affects their physical health, their ability to receive adequate medical care and nutrition and their life expectancy.[89][90][91]

Lower-class people experience a wide array of health problems as a result of their economic status. They are unable to use health care as often and when they do it is of lower quality, even though they generally tend to experience a much higher rate of health issues. Lower-class families have higher rates of infant mortality, cancer, cardiovascular disease and disabling physical injuries. Additionally, poor people tend to work in much more hazardous conditions, yet generally have much less (if any) health insurance provided for them, as compared to middle- and upper-class workers.[92]

The conditions at a person's job vary greatly depending on class. Those in the upper-middle class and middle class enjoy greater freedoms in their occupations. They are usually more respected, enjoy more diversity and are able to exhibit some authority.[93] Those in lower classes tend to feel more alienated and have lower work satisfaction overall. The physical conditions of the workplace differ greatly between classes. While middle-class workers may "suffer alienating conditions" or "lack of job satisfaction", blue-collar workers are more apt to suffer alienating, often routine, work with obvious physical health hazards, injury and even death.[94]

In the UK, a 2015 government study by the Social Mobility Commission suggested the existence of a "glass floor" in British society preventing those who are less able, but who come from wealthier backgrounds, from slipping down the social ladder. The report proposed a 35% greater likelihood of less able, better-off children becoming high earners than bright poor children.[95]

Class conflict, frequently referred to as "class warfare" or "class struggle", is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests and desires between people of different classes.

For Marx, the history of class society was a history of class conflict. He pointed to the successful rise of the bourgeoisie and the necessity of revolutionary violencea heightened form of class conflictin securing the bourgeois rights that supported the capitalist economy.

Marx believed that the exploitation and poverty inherent in capitalism were a pre-existing form of class conflict. Marx believed that wage labourers would need to revolt to bring about a more equitable distribution of wealth and political power.[96][97]

A "classless" society is one in which no one is born into a social class. Distinctions of wealth, income, education, culture or social network might arise and would only be determined by individual experience and achievement in such a society.

Since these distinctions are difficult to avoid, advocates of a classless society (such as anarchists and communists) propose various means to achieve and maintain it and attach varying degrees of importance to it as an end in their overall programs/philosophy.

Race and other large-scale groupings can also influence class standing. The association of particular ethnic groups with class statuses is common in many societies, and is linked with race as well.[98] Class and ethnicity can impact a persons, or communities, Socioeconomic standing, which in turn influences everything including job availability and the quality of available health and education.[98] The labels ascribed to an individual change the way others perceive them, with multiple labels associated with stigma combining to worsen the social consequences of being labelled.[99]

As a result of conquest or internal ethnic differentiation, a ruling class is often ethnically homogenous and particular races or ethnic groups in some societies are legally or customarily restricted to occupying particular class positions. Which ethnicities are considered as belonging to high or low classes varies from society to society.

In modern societies, strict legal links between ethnicity and class have been drawn, such as the caste system in Africa, apartheid, the position of the Burakumin in Japanese society and the casta system in Latin America.[citation needed]

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Social class - Wikipedia

Paying lower wages to restaurant workers in the United States is part of the legacy of slavery and continues to contribute to a system of oppression today, a bestselling author, historian and anti-racism activist told a crowd in Portland on Friday night.

Enslavers imagined that they were providing a wage to enslaved people through providing them with clothes, with housing, with Christianity and with civilization, said Ibram X. Kendi. In some cases, if not many, they would also provide what they called tips on top of what they considered those wages.

During the 1830s and 1840s, when movements began to end slavery, there were pro-slavery theories that slavery was good for slaves. Its striking because thats precisely the argument that people are making today, that somehow this (tipped) wage structure is good for restaurant workers, Kendi said.

Kendi, who is the author of How to be an Antiracist and other books, spoke at the First Parish Unitarian Church as part of an event organized by One Fair Wage, a group promoting Question D on the Portland ballot this November. Question D would raise the minimum wage to $18 per hour by 2025 and also abolish the sub-minimum or tipped credit wage for service workers whose employers can currently pay them less than the minimum wage provided the difference is made up in tips.

Opponents of the question, including many tipped workers, say the change isnt necessary and that it could come with unintended consequences such as restaurants having to close or lay off staff due to higher costs, increased automation and service charges.

Kendi was joined by Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, a Boston-based organization that advocates for all workers to be paid the full minimum wage and for service workers to earn the regular minimum wage with tips on top. Most states, including Maine, currently have a lower tipped minimum wage for service workers.

Jayaraman provided a brief history of how tipping in restaurants evolved out of slavery prior to a question-and-answer session with Kendi. Tipping originally came to the U.S. from Europe, but it wasnt widespread until 1853, when waiters in large cities around the country, most of whom were white men, went on a national strike demanding higher wages, she said.

The restaurant industry originally replaced the men with white women, believing they could pay them less, but then 10 years later, after emancipation, something happened that they thought would be an even better opportunity, Jayaraman said.

They felt that was an opportunity to essentially offer Black people, Black women in particular, the opportunity to work, to have the privilege of earning white peoples tips and to work for free, she said.

Today, restaurant workers continue to have a much lower federal wage for tipped workers $2.13 per hour though the tipped minimum both in Maine and in Portland is above $6 per hour.

It fits quite firmly with my findings and the history of racism that is, you have extremely powerful interests who are instituting a racist policy that is disproportionately harming, in this case women of color, and in this case also other people, including white people, Kendi said.

Kendi said there are ways to address historically racist policies, including through organized labor.

I think (workers) are recognizing the ways in which multi-racial organizing is critical to union organizing, Kendi said. But in order to engage in multi-racial organizing, workers have to overcome racist, sexist ideas that have historically divided the workforce.

He said people must work on overcoming their own biases, like ideas that people who are impoverished are not working as hard, or that people killed by police were killed because they were reckless around the police.

Once we start unlearning those racist ideas, it allows us to start seeing the problem not as people, but as actual policies, like the sub-minimum wage, as the cause of inequities, Kendi said. When we start seeing those policies and practices as the problem we can start organizing to eliminate them.

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Author Ibram X. Kendi speaks in Portland on legacy of slavery and the tipped wage - Press Herald