Category Archives: Wage Slavery

A poster board in a classroom shows traces of lessons and projects before the Yung Wing School PS 124 in New York City was closed on June 09, 2020. (Michael Loccisano / Getty Images)

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After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, President Barack Obama delivered what I have always believed to be the best speech of his presidency. He talked about what its like to be a parent, and the critical realization, experienced by most parents, that you cant keep your children safe or teach them well without the help of your friends and neighbors. Then he expanded that idea to include the whole of society. He said, This is our first taskcaring for our children. Its our first job. If we dont get that right, we dont get anything right. Thats how, as a society, we will be judged.Ad Policy

We have not gotten anything right when it comes to caring for our children. We were not getting things right before the coronavirus pandemic; we did not get things right at the outset of the crisis; and as we hurtle towards the fall, we are on the verge of getting things dangerously, irreparably wrong again.

We are now embroiled in a critical debate about sending our kids back to school, and we have left ourselves nothing but bad options. If we send them to school, they might get sick or might get others sick. If we keep them home, we wont be able to go to work and we might stunt their educational growth. If we do a blended learning approach and send them to school some days but keep them home other days, our children might get sick and they might be stunted. Besides, there arent many parents who can hold down a full-time job that they show up for only two-and-a-half days a week.

It didnt have to be this way. If we had successfully done the work of stopping the spread of the virus, as has been done in other countries, we wouldnt have to pick which poison to expose our kids to. If we had committed to testing so as to track the spread of the virus, instead of not testing so as to manage Donald Trumps asinine fear that testing causes cases, we might know which school districts could safely reopen. If we had leaders who cared about the health of our people nearly as much as they care about the health of their stock portfolios, we would be able to protect teachers instead of asking them to risk their lives.More from Mystal

Instead, our leaders view children as nothing more than tiny impediments to efficient wage slavery. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar put it most bluntly: Parents have to get back to the factory. Theyve got to get back to the job site. They have to get back to the office. And part of that is their kids, knowing their kids are taken care of.

Meanwhile, just last week President Donald Trump worried that CDC guidelines for protecting our children were too expensive. He tweeted, I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!

And so, we are here. I wouldnt let my children eat candy handed out by this administration. There are snakes with better parental instincts than these people. The people running the nation have led us to 138,000 deaths and counting, the most in the world. Theyve lost the right to advise me on how to keep my kids safe.Current Issue

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To be sure, there are decent people, mainly at the local level, trying to come up with humane plans for the fallplans that keep our kids safe, teach them, and dont kill thousands of teachers while doing so. The problem is, a national crisis has a way of exacerbating everything that is weak with the underlying society, and our child care and school systems were hobbled and broken well before Covid-19 reared its viral head.

The first problem is that our child care system and school system are the same system, and that means that working families have no access to reliable, affordable child care without in-person schooling. In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Cant Have Both, blared a recent New York Times headline, highlighting the problem every working parent has faced since the onset of the pandemic. Unequal access to home computingthe digital dividedeepens the problem and renders remote learning a disaster for many families. A family with only one device that can connect to the Internet is put under immense stress while parents are trying to work from home and a child (or multiple children) must Zoom in to school. And I dont even know how the millions of families who have no devices and no reliable Internet service are getting by.

Meanwhile, experts tell us that there are psychological and social benefits to having kids return to school. The American Academy of Pediatrics is pushing for kids to be physically present in a classroom, if possible. Im no doctor, but I worry a lot about how this extended quarantine (my kids havent been out in public since March 6) is delaying my childrens social growth and emotional intelligence. I can homeschool math; I cant homeschool Yes, your classmates made fun of your comment. Are you going to deal with it or are you going to act like Bari Weiss about it? There is learning that can happen only out here in these streets, and the pandemic is robbing my children of such experiences.

But my first job is to keep my children safe. Sending them to a physical building with a bunch of other people doesnt feel safe right now. When I last saw my 7-year-olds class back in March, the kids were trampling each other to get in line for recess. Now Im supposed to believe they will wait patiently six feet apart for an entire day? Have you met children? Socially distant school is one of those phrases, like clean coal or compassionate conservative, that names a thing that does not exist.

Covid-19 does not seem to kill children at the same rates as it kills adults, which is a blessing. But the long-term health effects of the virus on growing lungs are still largely unknown. Do people really expect parents to offer their children as guinea pigs in a years-long coronavirus study? Come on. I know parents who wont let their kids near a Nintendo for fear of what screen time will do to their young minds.

Thats probably why, despite the desperate need for education and child care, an Axios poll found that 71 percent of parents thought sending kids back to school was a moderate to high risk. Among communities of color, the dread is even higher: 89 percent of Black respondents and 80 percent of Hispanic respondents thought sending kids back to school was risky.Covid and Schools

Even if I werent myopically concerned about the health and safety of my own children, I would be skeptical of opening schools and risking the lives of my kids teachers. Whatever protections children seem to have from the virus does not extend to their caregivers and educators. Teachers should not be used like frontline infantry in our fight to return to normalcy.

The Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), the progressive caucus within New Yorks United Federation of Teachers, is saying more or less the same thing: Its too soon to go back to school. Even beyond the obvious health risks, decades of underfunding and inequality have robbed many school districts of the resources they would need to keep children and teachers safe if we reopened schools during the pandemic.

Once kids are back in the building, who is washing all those germy little desks? We saw this past spring that schools didnt even have the basic supplies needed to keep classrooms clean. The government has had problems getting personal protective equipment to hospitals; how are we going to get all of that stuff to schools? Where are all the cleaning supplies coming from? Who is paying all the overtime for janitorsparticularly in all those districts facing budget cuts?

And who is paying off the wrongful death lawsuit if even one child dies from Covid at school? Or will parents be expected to sign a death waiver, as if theyre sending their kids to a Trump rally?

And what happens when someone inevitably gets sick? You can read reams of plans and proposals for reopening schools, but you dont see plans for when a child or teacher contracts the disease. Will the schools be closed? For how long? You dont see plans for easy access to testing. You dont see reporting guidelines for confirmed cases, or transparency guidelines for informing the school community when someone comes down with the illness. Do we really think parents are going to want to send their kids back to school when their kids teacher has Covid-19? Or is the plan simply to not tell the parents that the teacher got sick?

Despite the demonstrable need to send children back to school, it is highly unlikely that I will be sending my kids to a physical building this fall. I can say that because I am drenched in privilege. I have a house with a yard, so my kids arent cooped up all day. Each kid has their own dedicated iPad, and they have their own laptop. My wife and I both have jobs we can do from home, while homeschooling our kids. Its terrible, but I at least have the option of dashing off crappier columns while taking care of my kids (sorry, readers). Most important, my kids school, a private one, provided all of the materials and support my family needed to keep educating the kids through this crisis. Zoom learning isnt the best, but well get by.

My privilege speaks to the shocking inequality in our society and school system. Fortunate people will opt out of this madness until there is a vaccine. Well print out workbooks, take virtual-reality trips to the zoo, and wait until everybody stops dying before letting our kids out of our cocoon of safety.

Less-privileged people will have to suffer the full consequences of living in the only advanced nation that cant be bothered to stop the spread of the virus. Other countries are in a position to reopen schools and businesses because they did the right thing with lockdowns and didnt turn public health into a culture war. Our country, led as it is by a ruling party that has spent three decades acting like science was a liberal hoax, is only in a position to court death.

Reopening schools in this environment will have predictable results: The children of poor and working-class folks will be more exposed to the disease, because those families will have no choice but to risk their health in order to work. Those children will, in turn, infect their parents and the teachers who work in lower-income communities, and any long-term health risks from Covid-19 will be borne more heavily by those who grew up with more economic challenges. Eventually, clusters of teachers will turn up dead, and schools will re-close just as many bars and restaurants are doing now.

It would be nice if we could skip over the dead teachers phase, but Trump and his education secretary, Erik Princes sister, have evidently decided that getting people killed is the best way for him to win reelection.

Trumps predecessor poignantly concluded that our inability to protect our children from gun violence is the most unforgivable failure of American society. I guess I shouldnt be surprised that a society that cannot come together to prevent children and teachers from being shot at school has no plan to keep children and teachers from getting sick at school.

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There Are Literally No Good Options for Educating Our Kids This Fall - The Nation

This article was originally published at InTheseTimes.

Pedro, a laborer from Chiapas, Mexico, worked 13 hours a day picking blueberries on a farm in Clinton, North Carolina. He had no time off, except when it rained.

We had no Sundays, Pedro (a pseudonym to protect his identity after he breached his visa agreement) says in Spanish. Working from May to June under the H-2A visa program for guest farmworkers, he saved only $1,500.

According to Pedro, his work conditions and payment violated the contract he signed when he was recruited by a middleman in Mexico. Still, he could not quit his job. The H-2A programrequiresguest farmworkers to work only for the employer or association that hires them.

Pedro was entitled to a$12.67 per hourwage with no overtime, according to the H-2A provisions for North Carolina. However, Pedro says he never received more than $425 a week, or about $4.60 per hour.

They took away our passport as soon as we arrived, Pedro explains. His employer tried to dissuade Pedro and his workmates from quitting the job. Still, he ran away, leaving his passport behind.

Never in my life [have I] worked this hard, not in Mexico City or back in the fields in Chiapas, Pedro says. Undocumented and with no official identification, Pedro now works at a construction site in Georgia. All the other guys stayed in the farm, he says. They are afraid of being deported. They dont want to get in trouble.

Pedros story is all too common. The wage provisions in the H-2A program areroutinelyviolated, according to the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofitFarmworker Justice, and, as a recent Center for American Progressreport put it, the lack of labor protections for foreign farmworkers like Pedro are already particularly dangerous. The H-2A program has led to so much abuse of workers that manyliken it to modern-day slavery.

Now, things could get even grimmer, as the Trump administration is proposingto reduce the statutory pay ratefor H-2A workers, just months ahead of the presidential elections.

Workers wages are already extremely low by any measure, even when compared with similarly situated nonfarm workers and workers with the lowest levels of education, an Economic Policy Institute (EPI)reportfound in April.

Wage cuts

North Carolina is among the top recruiters of H-2A guest workers in the United States.The state, like the rest of the country, has grown increasingly dependent on this labor force. Nationwide, there has been a fivefold increase in the number of H-2A visas approved since 2005, climbing to258,000 in 2019. Most of these workers are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans.

The growing reliance on H-2A visa farmworkers isoften linkedto a shortage of local labor, even among the undocumented population that comprisesat least halfof the U.S. agricultural workforce. The reality could be more problematic.

H-2A visa holders are seen by employers as very productive. Employers often say they are better workers than the locals, but it has nothing to do with their performance, according to Bruce Goldstein, president of the farmworkers rights group Farmworker Justice. It has to do with the fact that the H-2A visa workers are not free.

Even undocumented workers, who are not necessarily tied contractually to their employers in the same way as H-2A workers, have more legal recourses to obtain compensation if they claim workplace abuse, according to Goldstein. H-2A workers areexcludedfrom the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA), the main labor law that protects farmworkers. Thats why, he says, H-2A guest workers are very desirable by employers.

To satisfy the agriculture industrys desire for guest workers, the Trump administration, contradicting its anti-immigration stance,relaxed the rules around H-2A hiringandexemptedfarmworkersfrom a broad ban on foreign labor during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now, the U.S. Department of Labor isconsidering publishing changesthat would recalculate guest workers wages. According to Goldstein and to publicly posted information, the changes could comeas early as August.

Instead of using a labor market survey, the proposal would allow farms to hire workers at an arbitrarily lower wage rate,according toFarmworker Justice. In Florida, for example, the $11.71 per hour wage would be cut by $3.15.

Though Congress could stop these changes, the Republican-led Senate makes this a remote possibility. Another option is taking the administration to court, although the outcome would be far from certain, Goldstein explains.

The only rational explanation for lowering the wages of H-2A farmworkers right now is corporate greed and unquestioning subservience to agribusiness on the part of the Trump administration, according to the EPI report.

If implemented, the wage cut would come even as farm owners received as much as$23.5 billionin federal aid due to the pandemic.

The new guidelines would mean that workers deemed essential and expected to keep working amid the pandemic, would risk their lives for even less money andno mandatefor employers to provide them with Covid-19 protections.

Unfree labor

Violations of the H-2A visa holders rights are rampant and systemic, according to a2015 Farmworker Justice report. The Department of Labor frequently approves illegal job terms in the H-2A workers contracts, its findings show.

Five years after the report, the guest workers conditions remain unchanged, according to Goldstein. They are similar to the ones under the Bracero Programthrough which millions of Mexican farmworkers labored in the US from 1942 to 1964which was ultimately terminated because of its notorious abuses, including wage theft, according to the report.

Even when employers comply with the contract obligations, H-2A farm laborers are among the nations lowest-paid workers. The Covid-19 pandemic has made their jobs even moredangerous.

Farm owners are not mandated by the federal government to provide protective equipment or enforce social distancing in often overcrowded and unsanitary housing facilities, despite the risks to foreign workers health, according to Anna Jensen, executive director of the nonprofitNorth Carolina Farmworkers Project. (State guidelines vary across the country.)

Its not unusual that laborers are only given one option to buy food, regularly overpriced, or that workers cannot receive visitors, says Jensen. Its also common that the employers do not reimburse H-2A workers for traveling to the U.S., she adds, a practice that isvery often illegal.

The violations often start in the hiring process. Two of the former deputy directors of the North CarolinaGrowers Association, the largest recruiter of H-2A farmworkers in the state,pleaded guiltyin 2015 of fraud related to the program. AnotherinfamousNorth Carolinian farmworker recruiter, Craig Stanford Eury Jr., also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S.

Many H-2A workers, who aspire to return to the U.S. farms in the following seasons, do not mention their mistreatment for fear of being blacklisted by employers. But even if they wanted to, filing complaints is really difficult, Jensen says.

The North Carolina Department of Labor operates acomplaint hotline, open only from 8:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday, making it not very accessible for many migrant workers, according to Jensen. Twelve to 14-hour workdays, six or seven days a week, make filing a claim virtually impossible for guest farmworkers.

The H-2A is an inherently abusive program, Goldstein says. It practically assures employers that even workers who do not stand the poor treatment will not complain, even when their passports are taken away, which could be considered an act of slavery or peonage, according to Goldstein.

If the Trump administration follows through with its plans, workers like Pedro could be forced to labor under these conditions while taking home even less money than they already make.

Original post:

Foreign Farm Workers Already Face Abusive Conditions. Now Trump Wants to Cut Their Wages. - Workday Minnesota

In a letter to the editor, HudPost publisher and North Bergen resident James de los Santos lays out three ways the township can be a part of to fight racial injustice.

Dear Editor,

The global Black Lives Matter movement is the largest civil rights movement the world has ever seen.

The North Bergen BLM rally on June 6th, 2020 was likely the largest grassroots demonstration this township has ever witnessed.

While many cities and police departments have responded in ways to answer the demands of their people, it is time for our officials to do the same.

Today, our leaders must take action to pass meaningful legislation and resolutions to build towards a more just society.

1. Abolish Slavery Amend the 13th

Recently, Hoboken and Jersey City passed resolutions backing ACR 145. We must hold our board of commissioners to the same standard and call for them to make amending the 13th a concerted county-wide effort.

Our state senator and assembly people need to support the state legislation to Abolish Slavery in New Jersey by endorsing a bill being proposed by the Legislative Black Caucus of New Jersey and sponsored by Senator Ron Rice and Assemblywoman Angela McKnight.

ACR 145 proposes to add language to our state constitution, permanently abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, including as punishment for a crime.

As a state amendment, this measure would go to the ballot in November of this year. This means the people will be allowed to take action at the ballot box and carry this over the finish line.

Currently, the United States has 5% of the worlds population, but 25% of the worlds prisoners. In Hudson County, Blacks and Latinos makeup 40% of the population but are at the 80th percentile inside of our county prison facilities.

When the 13th Amendment was passed ending slavery in the country, the clause except as a punishment for crime was included allowing our judicial court to systematically oppress people of color.

This clause led to the Jim-Crow era where our criminal justice system and corporate retailers have exploited the 13th amendment clause by way of slave wage prison labor and for-profit prisons.

2. 8 Cant Wait

Our police department should immediately adopt the policies of 8 Cant Wait. The initiative is a set of policies introduced by Campaign Zero.

The policies call for: ban on chokeholds and strangleholds, require active de-escalation tactics during all interactions, require warning before shooting, exhaust all alternatives before discharging a weapon, duty to intervene, ban on shooting at moving vehicles, require the use of force continuum, as well as require comprehensive reporting.

Most of these policies have been implemented by the New Jersey Attorney General, which prohibits the North Bergen Police Department from failing to enact these changes.

With the help of our department, we can drive this initiative forward in its entirety.

3. Mandate the Inclusion of Black History in High School Curricula

Our Board of Education must immediately implement a mandated Black History course in North Bergen High School curricula beginning no later than the 2022 academic year.

A petition started by recent North Bergen High School graduate, Izabella Lima, received over 600 signatures from classmates, teachers, and alumni demanding North Bergen High School require a meaningful and thoughtfully curated African-American history course for all students

History will ask what we did during these unprecedented times and we must rise to the call for justice for all.

Take Action Today

Contact your local officials and urge them to support these policies

1. Abolish Slavery

State Representatives

State Senator Nicholas Sacco (201) 295-0200

State Assemblyman Pedro Mejia (201) 770-1303

State Assemblywoman Angelica Jiminez (201) 223-4247

North Bergen Board of Commissioners

Nicholas Sacco (201) 392-2005

Hugo Cabrera (201) 392-2062

Allen Pascual (201) 392-2031

Frank Garguilo (201) 392-2161

Julio Marenco (201) 392-2012

2. Implement Black History Course

George J. Solter, Superintendent of Schools (201) 295-2706

North Bergen Board of Education (201) 868-1000

Patricia Bartoli, Board President

Claudia Rodriguez, Vice President

Claudia Baselice

Luis Diaz

Haissam Jaafar

Kanaiyalal Patel

Luis Rabelo

Sai Rao

Ruth Shaw

3. 8 Cant Wait

Police Chief Peter Fasilis (201) 392-2100

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LETTER: Here are 3 initiatives North Bergen can be a part of to fight racial injustice - Hudson County View

On my last trip to the supermarket, I saw a familiar sight: a red carton with an older Black man in a chef's hat and bowtie. He looked joyous, holding a steaming bowl of Cream of Wheat in his right hand, beckoning for me to try it. Behind Rastus's welcoming Black face (that's the name given to the caricature used as Cream of Wheat's mascot), though, is a longstanding stereotype, one that's far from comforting for many Black people. It's rooted in racism, serving as a constant reminder that America loves to portray Black lives as valuable only within the confines of servitude.

Rastus is "under review" now as many other companies examine their products and packaging. Aunt Jemima is changing its name and logo. The Uncle Ben's branding will "evolve" soon.

But the comeuppance the brands are experiencing is long overdue. The usage of Black caricatures like these represents a denial of Black humanity that's always existed. According to the Smithsonian, The Supreme Court ruled in 1857 that people of African descent were not humans, which "permitted the image of African Americans to be reduced to caricatures in popular culture." These stereotypes from slavery not only persisted, they gained new groundespecially the Mammy, a rotund, perpetually jovial caricature who "loved" the white family she served and attended to their every need, never complaining.

It's this stereotype that prompted Chris Rutt to name his new pancake flour after "Old Aunt Jemina," a minstrel song in 1889. But the real Mammies and Aunt Jemimas were a stark contrast from their cartoon-ish counterparts, explains Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson, Department Chair of American Studies at the University of Maryland College: "Nine times out of 10, the Aunt Jemimas were in the kitchen. She was worried about the children who were running around the kitchen while [she was] cooking. She was worried about whether [she would] have dinner on time, and if she had all the ingredients she needed. [She was] worried about getting maimed, hurt, raped, or killed. She wasn't smiling."

Uncle Ben's, Cream of Wheat, and other brands used these tropes, too, liberally exploiting Sambo and Uncle Tom caricatures to sell goods. Food was the place where eugenics, racism, and sexism fusedwhere stereotypes were used to pedal everything from coffee to cupcakes. The invention of these caricatures attempted to rework the narrative of slavery as something benigneven beneficialto Black people. White comfort was paramount, and that meant hiding the very real evils of slavery, its visceral effects acutely felt in Black communities over a century later.

As America moved from slavery to its new form, Jim Crow, these caricatures came to represent the idea of comfort, servitude, and respectability. Through these items, Black people were allowed to occupy white homes and imaginations, but only as one-dimensional characters. "The image of the happy, smiling Black person helps people believe 'Oh, here's my friend. They're going to take care of me,'" Williams-Forson says. "The whole image of comfort given by the smiling Black face is because in American society and throughout the globe, we don't like an angry Black person. That's part of the narrative of the simple Black person. You don't have to deal with our complexity."

Lynn Pitts, a New York-based creative director, notes that these images of happy Black people were a strong factor in appealing to white households. Pitts recalls a piece she read that was particularly salient to her. "I can't remember where I read this, but there was a piece that talked about these brands [that] were designed to appeal to white people who had a really specific idea of what it meant to have a Black face or hands preparing the food, that these were 'trusted Black people,'" she says. "Marketers were trying to appeal to white housewives who wanted to feel confident about the food they were putting on their table. And in some cases, that meant a reminder of the Black people who had prepared food for them at some point in their lives."

While the idea of comfort remained, its iteration changed slightly: Real women like Nancy Green, who was used as the face of the first Aunt Jemima, received little compensation for their likeness. Nancy continued to work as a housekeeper until she was hit by a car and killed in 1923. Aunt Jemima continued to use real women until 1968, until they created a composite with a slimmer face and relaxed hair. The year 1989 saw another makeover: no headscarf, but a new little lace collar and pearl earrings for a "contemporary" look.

Public Domain, Uncle Ben's Co.

Uncle Ben's had to wait a few more decades for a different change: In 2007, he received an abrupt move from the kitchen to the boardroom on a redesigned site, though he kept his original maitre d' uniform. (The website no longer exists, and the Uncle Ben's caricature no longer has a bowtie or jacket.) However, brand names have not changed: While aunt and uncle seem to signal familiarity, they are vestiges of the Jim Crow era, where whites refused to address Black people as Mr. or Ms., even though racial etiquette rules called for Black people to use honorifics or risk putting their lives in danger.

But the changes didn't do much to rectify America's racist past. In response to previous and frequent outcries over racially charged mascots, brands have done little more than adding and taking away clothing. "Very longstanding brands like those can be suddenly reluctant to change aspects of what they consider 'hallmarks' of their brand," Pitts explains. "In Black communities, people have been talking about the problematic images that are in question right now...for a long time, but that talk didn't generate the kind of consequences that are being generated right now."

Brands, relying on warped notions of nostalgia with racism at the foundation, were willing to defend these caricatures for the sake of profit. "What capitalism has figured out is how to use a shorthand toward very complicated conversations because it's easier to rely upon these stereotypes to get across a very simple message, as their whole bottom line is to make money," Williams-Forson notes. And some consumers who don't knowor careabout the history of these stereotypes are excusing brands in defense of happy childhood memories.

From enslaved Africans who were brought into America for their labor to present-day food apartheid, food has always been mired in politics and the subjugation of Black communities.

So are brands truly changing nowdoing more than just adding or subtracting accessories or moving a caricature to a different room? "As long as the Black Lives Matter movement is active and applying pressure, you'll continue to see changes or, at the very least, reactions," Pitts says. "Brands are reacting to what's happening in the marketplace, and there's pressure being applied to their bottom line because of the movement."

Williams-Forson echoes a similar sentiment: "The reason why this particular moment is happening is because of COVID. We're drawn to the media more than ever before, without work or the daily distractions of life. This has been going on for decades, centuries even, but we are literally and globally being forced to stop and watch injustice," she says. "You cannot unsee George Floyd. You're forced to make a decision: Am I going to act, or am I not going to act?"

The current act of choice? Removing mascotsbut it's not a panacea. Quaker Oats (Aunt Jemima's parent company and a subsidiary of PepsiCo) declared they would be spending $400 million dollars over the next five years to "lift up Black communities and increase Black representation at PepsiCo." As plenty of brands clamor to perform solidarity in the wake of Black Lives Matter, the true impact is yet to be seen.

"I'm more interested in how quickly Quaker Oats changes their overall image as a corporation, and I'm not talking about hiring more people in their plants," Williams-Forson says. "I'm talking about a systemic, actual change in the way they do business, from hiring practices to paying people a living wage and providing health insurance, maternity leave, and paternity leave. How are you really going to make those changes across the board?"

Removing these mascots isn't going to magically solve racism; it's a small, reactionary fix to a system ossified centuries ago. And as Dr. Williams-Forson notes, change boils down to the way businesses create long-lasting, equitable policies across entire organizations. The real work that goes beyond reactionary measures like removing mascots, attending protests, or posting black squares to social media is the most uncomfortable. It's in the quiet, ongoing, rigorous, and necessary self-examination and accountability-takingfollowed by actionfor being complicit in the racism that pollutes America.

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Food Brands Are Finally Changing Their Racist MascotsBut Is It Enough? - Delish.com

Last week,fire stations in the Black Country were forbidden from flying the region'sflag at an annual festival devoted to the region.Senior fire-fighters were reportedly concerned that the flag, which features chain in its design, might be seen to glorify slavery and trigger accusations of racism.

So is the flag, or the region, racist?The Black Country name is nothing to do with race or ethnicity. And the imagery or colours of its flag are not intended to be linked to slavery.

But that doesnt mean questions cannot be asked of The Black Country region or the symbolism behind the Black Country Flag. We shouldnt blindly beat our chest in defence of eitherflag or region without knowing their history.

The Black Country is a region of England which today covers the metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. It becamethe birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, with a landscape dominated by coal mines, iron foundries, glass factories, brick works and many small industries, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Chimneys of factories, furnaces and small home forges bellowed out smoke and soot to heavily pollute the air. The pollution filled the sky and the region,described as 'Black by Day' and 'Red by Night' by the American writer Elihu Burritt, became known as The Black Country.

In 1712 the Black Country changed the world when it became the first place to harness the power of steam with the Newcomen Engine. In 1828 the working class people of the region built the Stourbridge Lion, the first steam locomotive to run in the USA. Black Country workersthey made the glass and iron for the Crystal Palace and its great exhibition in 1851 and forged the anchors and chains for great ships like the Titanic.

The efforts ofBlack Country people changed the world and shaped modern society, but that is not to say that the region and its work force did not produce items for the slave trade, or that we should dismiss the region's links to the enslavement.

African men and women were undoubtedly shackled and chained on the Atlantic crossing with items produced in The Black Country. Once they reached their destination, they would be held captive with Black Country-made products of various descriptions.

There is evidence of Black Country products marketed specifically for the slave market with items listed as Negro Collars and African Chains. Enslavement was big business and wealthy men capitalised on that industry to make as much money as possible.

The rich people who marketed these products neithercared about the slaves that their products were used on, nor those who made the products. The working-class people of the Black Country were extremely poor. Life expectancy in the region in 1841 was 17 years old. People worked from the age they could walk, and some died before they became adults. There was no luxury for our ancestors and there was no profit. They worked hard in hope they would live a little longer than the people dying around them. If cholera didnt kill them then hard work would.

The working-class people of the Black Country never profited from the slave trade, in fact there is little evidence to suggest that they even knew what their products were used for.

When modern Black Country folk show pride for the history of our region, it is the working-class people we are proud of. We dont take pride in the starvation wages that our ancestors were paid or the squalid conditions they were forced to work in or the rich who profited from the slave trade. We celebrate the hard work of our ancestors and the fight they put up to ensure the first ever minimum wage, we respect the courage shown by people uniting and laying down their tools to ensure women were paid equally.

This is not a case of pitting the plight of our Black Country ancestors against the horrendous treatment of the people who were enslaved. It is saying that in many cases working class Black Country people and Black slaves were victims of the very same people who profited from their labour.

To cause offence intention matters, and there is no intention to offend anyone with the Black Country Flag. Most people I speak to are not offended.

The Black Country flag was designed by 12-year-old Gracie Sheppard in 2012. It features a glass cone to represent the glass industry of the Black Country. The cone is flanked by black and red panels inspired by Elihu Burritts famous description of the area, and the chain across the centre represents the chain industry in the region but also symbolises the linking up of different communities.

We should all take time to learn about the remarkably interesting history of our region and it should be open for discussion. Each year we celebrate Black Country Day on July 14. We have a Black Country Anthem and Black Country Flag - and I am proud to fly it.

See more here:

There's nothing 'racist' about the Black Country flag - the reality is far more interesting - Telegraph.co.uk

Markisha Smith and Ted Wheeler

Smith is director of the Portland Office of Equity and Human Rights. Wheeler is mayor of Portland.

At this historic period of protest and institutional change, our grieving process for one Black life lost is interrupted by yet another instance of a Black life lost due to policebrutality and systemic oppression. In just the last few weeks, we learned ofBlack people found hanging from trees, and we saw footage of a Black man who needed assistance, not interrogation,shot in the back and killed in front of his community at a Wendys drive-through. And these are just the stories that we have heard about. We know that there are countless other incidents that are never investigated and never reported. Black Americans have been, and continue to be, mentally, emotionally and physically lynched by oppressive systems and perpetrators of those systems.

Black, Indigenous and people of color constantly attempt to navigate systems that arent designed for them. As a whole, BIPOC communities do not enjoy economic prosperity equally, much less generational wealth, in this country. And Black communities often succumb to modern day slavery through capitalism, low-wage jobs, denial of leadership advancement opportunities, racist educational experiences and businesses or property ownership that is linked towhite supremacist institutions.

The Civil Rights Movement took years; lasting, meaningful reform and dismantling anti-Black, racist, oppressive systems will as well.We cannot simply offer platitudes and small gestures of our commitment to the Black communitywe must change our policies, practices, and procedures. It is time for white people, regardless of position, to step back, listen and follow. We have an opportunity to make history. But what will the history books say about Portland?

History will say that Portland answered the call for reform in transformational ways and rejected the violence that destroyed our city for more than a month.

We are in the midst of a reconciliation process led by Black Portlanders. The terms of forgiveness cannot come from the entity that inflicted the wrongdoing in the first place: Black voices must be elevated when we talk about reconciliation and restorative justice.

Weve listened to the community to disinvest from police, cutting $27 million and reinvesting many of those dollars in programs supporting black youth leadership development, unarmed first responders to move away from police-based solutions for people experiencing homelessness, our Office of Equity and Human Rights and tribal relations.

We are reimagining public safety and proposing policies that will lift our children, unsheltered neighbors and BIPOC people out of the systems of institutional racism that have held down generations.And despite a $75 million gap in our budget due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Portland City Council reaffirmed our commitment to prioritize relief and recovery for our hardest-hit community members, knowing that COVID has worsened disparities for BIPOC communities. Our goal is to emerge from this crisis more resilient.

Our future as a community envisions more counselors, after school programs and restorative justice programs, not school resource officers. More housing, employment, health care options and social workers. We need further investment in more community-based anti-violence programs, trauma services and jobs for young people.

For far too long, our community has relied unreasonably on police to solve a greater amount of our social problems. Detangling these responses will not be easy or fast, but we are determined to invest in the future of what we want to see and not just respond to the crisis of the moment.

And while much of this reckoning is happening within policing, all institutions and organizations should be looking at how they uphold systemic racism.

We have made great progress, but we are not done.

We are not done until we are investing more in the well-being of our communities than we are in the policing of our communities. We are not done until BIPOC students are succeeding at the same rate as their white classmates. We are not done until we have created generational wealth opportunities for Black families. We are not done until we have more elected officials who accurately reflect the diversity of the community we serve.

This is our moment to reshape, reimagine, and rebuild Portland with our Black leaders and communities leading the way.The movement we are witnessing doesnt stop when the marches end.

What will history say about Portland?

History will say the city of Portland did not resist the call for reformation, but rather linked arms with communities and ushered in a new era of reconciliation, restorative justice and prosperity for all.

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Opinion: What will history say about Portland? - oregonlive.com

They are sick and tired of systemic racism against Black people, of bigotry at the top, crude discrimination, police brutality, a prejudiced criminal justice system, economic disparity, and societys robbing black people of experiencing real freedom and equality. Hypocritically, white people blame the victims of racism for their own plight, claiming that Black people would do better in life if they were only willing to work harder.

We are now reaping the harvest of the seeds of racism and discrimination -- the devaluation of Black life. The whole socio-economic and cultural system is lopsided, as it lacks the fundamentals of justice and equality. The pandemic provided the wakeup call that pointed out the ugly tradition of subjugation of the Black community, which sadly did not stop with the end of slavery, but continued in the wanton indifference to their pain and agony, our uncanny negligence, and our failure to understand what they are really experiencing.

Ingrained racism

The fact that Black people were slaves, and the carefully cultivated myth that slaves were always obedient and happily served their white masters, left an indelible imprint on white people that has lasted generations. They maintain that African Americans were born to servitude and hence they do not qualify for equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal status.

Films such as D.W. Griffiths immensely influential Birth of a Nation (1915), which helped to reestablish the Ku Klux Klan, also reinforced the racist stereotype that Black men are unintelligent and an inherent danger to the white community -- specifically white women. When on May 25 (the same day George Floyd was killed) a white woman, Amy Cooper, called the cops on a Black man, Christian Cooper, who was birdwatching in Central Park, she was tapping into the long history of that racist trope. To put it plainly, Black lives are simply not valued the way white lives are, as white people consciously or subconsciously view Black man as both sub- and supra-human, threatening, and expendable.

Thus, due to this entrenched prejudice, any activity, however innocent, in which a Black man is engaged in invites suspicion, alarm, and often puts the life of Black men in danger such as 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed by white residents of the suburban Georgia neighborhood he was jogging in. The mayor of Minneapolis bluntly said, Being black in America should not be a death sentence. Racism, to be sure, is so ingrained it flows in the veins of many Americans without notice.

The insidious, learned biases pitting white against Black Americans directly leads to the treating of Black Americans as second-class citizens and suppression by white Americans -- a necessary ingredient that satisfies their ego and elevates their self-worth. Although the majority of white Americans may not be white supremacists, they certainly hold onto their privileges in all walks of life as they view their relation with Black people (and other people of color) as a zero-sum game, as if a Black mans gain invariably chips away at a white mans privileges.

Wanton discrimination

Racial prejudice in America takes a heavy toll on African Americans, which translates to discrimination in all walks of life, including education, job opportunities, professional advancements, and medical treatment, especially maternal health. Black workers receive 22 percent less in salary than whites with the same education and experience; Black women receive even less34.2 percent. According to a University of Chicago/Duke 2016 study, when factoring in all African American and white men (inclusive of those incarcerated or otherwise out of the workforce), the racial wage gap is the same as it was in the 1950s. Even where racial discrimination should not occur, in medical treatment, when Black patients access medical care, doctors regularly prescribe fewer pain medications and believe Black patients feel less pain than white patients, even among veterans seeking care.

Whereas Black men have served in the military and fought and died alongside white soldiers in every war since the Revolutionary War (when 5,000-8,000 Black soldiers fought against the British), they had to face the revulsion of discrimination and segregation while still serving in the military, hardly recognized for acts of bravery. Indeed, until 1948 -- after the end of WWII -- the U.S. military was entirely segregated. While the top brass of the military, who are mostly white, like to claim that military institutions are colorblind, the reality is that racism and discrimination remain extensive problems even in the U.S. military.

Police brutality

Although police brutality against Black men in particular, which instigated the current protests, is a known phenomenon, police killings of Black men continue unabated. It can and has taken different forms historically including harassment and intimidation, assault and battery, torture and murder, and even complicity with the KKK. Often, police officers approach any situation connected to a Black man with apprehension and fear. White police officers see threats where they do not exist; they are too quick to draw and as quick to fire to kill.

Here are just a few glaring examples: a Black man taking a nap in a car in a parking lot was shot dead. Another pulled over in a traffic stop was shot and killed in front of his girlfriend and her daughter. A Black man sitting in his home eating ice cream was shot dead by his neighbor, an off-duty white police officer. A Black woman playing video games with her nephew was shot and killed through her window. A Black woman (and EMT) sleeping in her home was shot eight times when officers entered her apartment executing a no-knock warrant.

It is rare for a prosecutor to decide to charge a police officer, especially because they often know each other and have developed close working relationships. Even Internal Affairs divisions of police departments, which ostensibly exist to investigate and report misconduct among officers, have widely conducted sub-standard investigations and failed to identify problem officers who commit wanton abuse.

This cultural pattern enables police officers like Derek Chauvin, Daniel Pantaleo, and Nathan Woodyard to commit the heinous crime of slowly squeezing the life out of George Floyd (MN), Eric Garner (NY), and Elijah McClain (CO). As troubling is the fact that police officers have been known to give false testimony in court, whether to avoid punishment for their own criminal and/or unconstitutional actions, to ensure a conviction, or for other reasons.

Disproportionate incarceration

Although the U.S. judiciary is considered to be just and impartial, in most court hearings race is present albeit it is not spelled out. It is as though Black men inherently have no equal rights and to this day, 230 years since the constitution was written, injustices still exist in both federal and state courts.

Blacks are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites -- while they are 13 percent of the total U.S. population, they constitute 40 percent of the total male prison population. The mass incarceration of African Americans in this country has created what sociologist Becky Pettit, citing the novelist Ralph Ellison, calls invisible men -- the millions of black men in the American penal system. Prison inmates are not included in most data-collecting national surveys, so these men are effectively invisible to social institutions, lawmakers, and most social science research. It is almost as if they do not exist, they do not count; their reality is ignored, neglected, and brushed aside.

A staggering 75 percent of young Black men will be imprisoned at some point in their lives. These statistics can only begin to convey the enormity of the injustice that is being compounded day after day. Pettits book reveals that penal expansion has generated a class of citizens systematically excluded from accounts of the American populace. This exclusion raises doubt about the validity of even the most basic social facts and questions the utility of the data gathered for the design and evaluation of public policy and the data commonly used in social science research. As a consequence, we have lost sight of the full range of the American experience.

Economic disparity

Economic disparity between white and Black Americans is glaring and reverberates through generations of Black families. Economic exclusion is the source of inequality. It is caused by a confluence of factors, beginning with nearly 250 years of chattel slavery (during which Black families were torn apart, let alone able to accumulate wealth), to sharecropping and unrestrained lynchings, to 90 years of Jim Crow laws, to redlining neighborhoods on demographic lines. All of these factors are manifested today in hiring decisions, property valuation, mortgage applications, interest charges, and even how credit scores are tabulated. The average white familys net worth is more than ten times greater than a Black family. Economic disparity, to be sure, is the mother of all evil in the lives of Black people.

A poor Black man cannot pay for decent housing, cannot pay for health care, and cannot afford to send his kids to higher education, which directly impacts his social standing and professional competency. Thus, he has to settle for menial jobs, low wages, and little or no prospect of ever climbing out of the vicious cycle. The saddest thing of all is that he is blamed for his own dilemma, as if the conditions and lack of opportunities in which he lives has nothing to do with his sorry state of affairs.

The bigotry of the leadership

During the past four years, racism in America has been on the rise and in no small measure Trump, the Racist-in-Chief, has made race a campaign issue from the very start. He began his political campaign by branding Hispanics as rapists; in his presidency he banned Muslims from entering the US, cruelly separated children from their parents at the borders, described white supremacists in Charlottesville as very fine people, and celebrated this 4th of July by defending Confederate statues.

Trumps racism against Blacks in particular is nothing new. It was there in 1973 when Trump Management Inc. was sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination against African American renters. We could see it in 1989, when he took out a full-page advertisement in four New York City newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty over the Central Park Five, who were wrongfully convicted and sent to prison. Trump refuses to apologize for that, even though, as Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck said, . . .by calling for the reinstitution of the death penalty, it contributed to an atmosphere that deprived these men of a fair trial. He also refused to apologize for his persistent perpetuation of the birther lie that Obama was not born in the U.S.

Trumps Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore was laden with racially divisive and partisan rhetoric, but that makes no difference to many conservative Republican leaders and his misguided supporters who follow him blindly. They wrap themselves with the flag as a sign of American patriotism, when in fact their patriotism is defined by their racism and intolerance of people of color.

Although some Republican leaders disagree with him on race, they are fearful of his anger to say anything publicly, lest they risk losing their power or position. Sadly, their silence suggests consent, which only reinforces Trumps racism. With Trump, as with much of the country, racism is deeply ingrained, something he refuses to admit.

Although racism did not start when Trump came to power as it is imbued into Americas history and culture and it will not end with his departure from office, his overt racism brought to focus racism in America. The persistent protests reveal the deep sense of frustration with a president who fans the flame of racism, who sees the country as his own enterprise, who does whatever he wants to serve his own interests. He is cruel, cunning, and careless about the pain and suffering of Black America; he cannot count on their political support and hence completely rejects their outcry.

Unlike any other protests in the past against racism, this years protests have had a greater impact in part due to the spread of the coronavirus and its disproportionate impact on Black people, who are being infected and dying at higher rates than whites. That, and in conjunction with a presidential election, provides a rare opportunity to start a process of mitigating racism in earnest. What will be necessary, however, is for the protests to persist through Election Day in the hopes that the Racist-in-Chief will be ousted. Only then we stand a better chance that a new day will dawn and a new administration will commit to relentlessly addressing the plight of Black people for the sake of all Americans, especially because the day when America will have a majority of people of color is fast approaching.

Although there are scores of measures that must be taken and many years and huge financial resources to make a discernible change for the better in the life of Black Americans, we have no choice but to start, regardless of how insurmountable the obstacles and the culture of resistance to change. It will take the collective efforts, determination, and consistency of local, state, and federal authorities to begin this process if we ever want to reach a modicum of equality.

The work to change the culture of innate racism in America will be long and hard, but we must not shy away from it. As a small start, the immediate focus should be on educating students about Black history, changing the police culture and training, investing in housing in Black neighborhoods, offering educational support for young Black boys and girls starting at elementary age, up to providing free education for them to attend college or professional schools, and providing job opportunities and equal pay to give them the chance to climb up the social ladder over time.

The continuing demonstrations throughout the country suggest not only the obvious -- that Black lives matter -- but that racism is consuming America from within, that injustice affects the perpetrators just as much as the victims, that enough is enough.

(Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.) Photo: MF_Orleans / Shutterstock.com. Prepped forCityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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The Pandemic of Racism in America - City Watch

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Joanna Ewart-James is the Executive Director of Freedom United and a Trustee for Labour Behind the Label Trust

Over the past two weeks discussions abound on the causes of, and responsibility for the exploitation of workers in Leicesters garment industry. Conclusions range from the home secretarys statement that cultural sensitivities prevented police from acting, to the popular position that the heavily-advertised and so easily recognised brands, namely Boohoo, should squarely be in the firing line.

A cross-government taskforce has been set up by the Home Office to investigate how conditions allowed this exploitation. This has been welcomed in aletter by a coalition of NGOs led by Labour Behind the Label, which points to a decades worth of numerous reports detailing abusive working conditions in Leicester, and other factories both in the UK and internationally.

Indeed, Raj Mann, the police contact for Leicesters Sikhs, explained that The local authorities have known these sweatshops exist for decades but theyve been loath to do anything about it for fear of being accused of picking on immigrant or refugee communities, as a lot of the exploited workers are of Indian background.

On the face of it, this quote might support the political correctness argument but what it disguises is a tolerance of exploitation that is facilitated through restrictive immigration policies, the infamous hostile environment in the UK, and race discrimination in society at large that pushes people from minority ethnic groups, including migrants, into accepting illegal exploitation.

Labour Behind the Labels reportexplains: The lack of documented resident status or entitlement to work means that many workers are willing to accept poor conditions in exchange for a job even one without formal contracts or minimum wages.

This also contributes to a situation where workers are unable or unwilling to speak out about labor rights abuses for fear of being deported or otherwise investigated.In the face of race discrimination reducing opportunities and undermining protections, even those with the right to work are easily coerced.

This is not a local Leicester issue, it is a nationwide, no global system that tolerates and even facilitates the mistreatment and exploitation of relatively poor peoples labour because of accepted social discrimination based on race, ethnicity or caste, for an industry bent on driving prices down, quick turnaround, and low labour costs, putting tremendous pressure worldwide on low-wage, immigrant manufacturing workers to churn out cheap garments whilst society comfortably turns a blind eye to what must be the true cost.

A lot less talked about is the role of consumers, the public at large, and their power to change the status quo that has facilitated this exploitation. Some consumers have posted their outrage on Boohoos social media channels, and may be surprised to have learnt that sweatshops are not only a blight for developing countries.

Its possibly the western location of this site of exploitation has underpinned the swift backlash as Next, Asos, and Zalando dropped Boohoo, and Standard Life Aberdeen, a major Boohoo shareholder, dumped nearly all of its shares in the company. Boohoos stock has tanked, dropping 23% and wiping 1 billion from the value of the company.

Yes Boohoo must revise their purchasing practices but we need a shift from a constant game of campaigning by brand, to changes in the wider environment creating communities that are resilient to exploitation. That extendsbeyond the brands practices into a slavery-free economy, civic leadership, labour rights and consumer habits, to draw from Dr Alison Gardners modelling of the social determinants for sustainable resilience to slavery.

At the moment consumers are mostly left in the dark when it comes to supply chains and labour practices in garment factories, limiting their ability to leverage their consumer power without the momentum of a big media campaign.

Thats why transparency is a strong starting point, albeit far from the desirable end point of corporate action. Transparency is publishing full details of a companys supply chain, it is not, as Boohoos action suggest, committing to publishing information and terminating relationships with suppliers on finding illegal practices.

Working towards an end to exploitation like weve seen in Leicester is about everything from changing business practices to building consumer knowledge through transparency and so behaviour; measuring success not simply by measuring profits; being firm on tackling discrimination; providing legal routes for migrant workers; enforcing employment law; and much in between.

Together, as society, we can reset expectations creating the will for change in a system that sadly makes exploitation of some people for others benefit all too easy today.

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OPINION: Who is responsible for fast fashion worker abuses in Britain? - Thomson Reuters Foundation

Pro-slavery advocates before and during the Civil War worked to defend the morality and necessity of American chattel slavery, and one of their defenses was that African-American slaves were actually much better treated than free white Americans.

George Fitzhugh wrote in Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters, published in 1856, of the benefits of American chattel slavery for African-Americans versus the plight of free white Americans.

But we not only boast that the White Slave Trade is more exacting and fraudulent (in fact, though not in intention) than Black Slavery; but we also boast that is tis more cruel , in leaving the laborer to care for himself and his family out of the pittance which skill or capital have allowed him to retain. When the days labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with the cares of family and household, which makes his freedom and empty and delusive mockery. But his employer is really free, and may enjoy the profit made by others labor, without a care, or a trouble, as to their well-being. The negro slave is free too, when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything else to the physical well being of himself and his family. The masters labors commence just when the slaves end. No wonder men should prefer white slavery to capital, to negro slavery, since it is more profitable, and is free from all the cares and labors of black slave-holding.

The defenders of American chattel slavery argued that free white Americans were wage slaves, forced to work long hours for low wages in horrid working conditions, which was actually quite true. This gave credibility to the pro-slavery argument in the minds of white Americans in 1856.

Slaveholders asserted that they were benevolent to their slaves and actually treated their slaves well, whereas northern factory owners and other employers abused and overworked their white American employees and then callously cast them out of their work places to fend for themselves, casting the freedom of white Americans as a miserable existence.

Pro-slavery advocates argued that African-American slaves, on the other hand, lived secure lives of comfort and security under the paternalistic care of enlightened and benevolent Christian slave holders.

Indeed, Fitzhugh argued that The negro slaves in the South are the happiest, and in a sense, the freest people in the world, and that they were well treated, living in a utopian world without stress or want.

Free white American workers, on the other hand, were described as wage slaves who were held in thrall by greedy psychopathic employers, and thus abolitionists and free soil advocates were villains who wanted to wrench the slaves from their utopian existence in slavery into the horrific misery that free white Americans had to endure in their daily lives.

This view of slavery still persists in the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War, which persists to the present day.

Grady Atwater is site administrator of the John Brown Museum and State Historic Site.

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George Fitzhugh and the defense of slavery - Miami County Republic

In a recent and valuable My Turn, Katy Burns wrote about the Souths Lost Cause campaign launched several decades after the Civil War. Its efforts to glorify slavery and the Confederacy included the erection of most monuments currently targeted by the rapidly emerging Black Lives Matter movement.

The column speaks of northerners going home to work after the war while southerners sulked for years until launching their campaign, but this jumps over some important matters and I want to describe two of them.

First, the home that northerners returned to was highly racist. The war, after all, was fought over chattel slavery, not over racism, and most northerners shared the racial stereotypes of southerners. Recently I looked at an event in Indiana, the state where I grew up, and it illustrates my point. In 1850, Indiana held a constitutional convention. At it, delegates adopted Article 13 that prohibited Black people from moving to Indiana and also created a fund to remove free Black Indiana residents to Liberia.

Almost every speech during the five-day debate on the Article referred to Black inferiority and white supremacy in terms nearly identical to those of southern defenders of slavery. In 1851, the electorate adopted the new constitution overwhelmingly. Article 13 was voted on separately and adopted 113,828 to 21,873. At least five other northern states adopted equivalent constitutional amendments of legislation at about that time.

My second point is that the South didnt sulk after the war. Its planter elites immediately set out to snatch what victories they could from the jaws of defeat, and they had substantial success. For example, they sought and obtained the return to planters of 850,000 acres of land confiscated by the Union Army, preventing its redistribution to freed men. Planters frustrated the implementation of another land redistribution act, the Southern Homesteading Act.

Their efforts helped curtail the life of the Freedmens Bureau, a remarkable Reconstruction program that helped many ex-slaves gain education, the vote, and work. The program lasted only four years (and its schools an additional three years).

The South lobbied to remove northern troops and end Reconstruction, something it accomplished in a dozen years.

But the biggest challenge to the planter elite was regaining their earlier wealth. Before the War, the South was the richest region in America primarily because of King Cotton. In 1860, for example, cotton accounted for $191 million of the nations $333 million of exports. England, textile capital of the world, bought 80% of its cotton from the South.

Cotton was also vital domestically. For example, the 1860 Census reported that New Hampshire had investments of $23 million in 150 types of industries including over half ($12.5 million) in cotton goods manufacturing. Cotton alone accounted for 12,700 of the states 32,000 manufacturing jobs.

The planters key roadblock to regaining their prior wealth was, of course, the loss of the machines that had made that wealth possible slaves. Yet by 1870, just five years after the end of the War, cotton was again the nations largest export and would remain so until the Great Depression. This amazing victory from the jaws of defeat occurred because the South found an immediate cheap labor substitute for slaves ex-slaves. The story of how this happened is important.

In the decades leading to war, northern abolition efforts intensified; e.g. rapid growth of the Underground Railroad and attacks on slavery such as Uncle Toms Cabin. But during that same period, southern defenses of slavery escalated. Traditional defenses based on God, Nature, prosperity, science, and Christian humanity became more aggressive, but most importantly, the South devised a major, new defense.

It characterized the emerging system of industrial capitalism in the North as wage slavery, criticized it harshly, and argued that its own economic system of chattel slavery was superior and far more humane. The argument was pointed and its rhetoric often acerbic as seen, for example, in these excerpts from early southern sociologist George Fitzhugh. The northern system gives license to the strong to oppress the weak (and creates) the grossest inequalities of condition. Fitzhugh saw the strong as vulgar landlords, capitalists and employers psalm-singing regicides, these worshippers of Mammon (who) think they own all the property (and that) the rest of mankind have no right to a living except on the conditions they may prescribe.

The weak were wage slaves such as women and children (who) drag out their lives (in) the bowels of the earth [i.e. in mines] harnessed like horses. pallid children (who work in) some grand, gloomy and monotonous factory fourteen hours a day, and go home at night to sleep in damp cellars, the same cellars where aged parents too old to work are cast off by their employer to die.

Industrial capitalism created such evils as income ceases if a worker gets sick; laborers are at war with one another; child labor is common; retailers take advantage of ignorance and charge enormous profits; underbidding (by workers) never ceases resulting in wages too low to subsist and ending by filling poor-houses and jails and graves. Frequent riots and strikes were other problems as was widespread begging. One writer noted that you meet more beggars in one day in any street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South.

The imagery of the wage-slave defense is as stark as Harriet Beecher Stowes attacks on slavery, and the arguments are ones that any socialist or union organizer would have made. In fact, these arguments would soon mobilize a progressive challenge to big industrial capitalism in the North beginning in the Gilded Age (1880 1910).

But what is most interesting about this southern attack on wage slavery is that, when the war ended chattel slavery, the South immediately adopted wage slavery in its place. Under slavery, slaves were property controlled by owners. In the new order, ex-slaves were freemen (free employees, sharecroppers, or tenants) controlled by contract.

The new scheme was possible because emancipated slaves deprived of promises of land desperately needed a way to survive and were readily exploited through contractual arrangements. Heres a simple example signed weeks after the wars end:

I, the within-signed woman of color, do hereby bind myself with E. W. Reitzell as laborer on his plantation from this the 1st day of August, 1865, to the 1st day of January, 1866. I further agree and bind myself to do all the work he may require of me, to labor diligently and be obedient to all his commands, to pay him due respect, and do all in my power to protect his property from danger, and conduct myself as when I was owned by him as a SLAVE.

These labor contracts, together with various techniques that forced freed men to renew them, confined millions of black farmworkers to southern plantations for two or three generations beyond the war until the Great Depression and after.

(Paul Levy lives in Concord.)

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My Turn: How racism thrived after the war - Concord Monitor