as a whole for the slave trade - it doesn't want to let northern states off the hook because they didn't happen to own many slaves, comparitively. As a moral argument, I can see the point. As a historical argument it's kind of all over the map; but then again it's a synopsis of a much longer work. Presumably the longer work deals with these issues in a more systematic way.

Bryant

RI merchants would take molasses from the Caribbean to make rum, send the run to Africa to trade for slaves, and then send the slaves to the Caribbean to produce more molasses. The Brown family that founded Brown University made their fortune in this trade.

After the industrial revolution, RI textile mills depended on cotton from the slave states.

it prison labor and unpaid internships.

called The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander about how prisons have been intentionally used to perpetuate the slavery of African Americans. There's another book called Slavery By Another Name (with a great video you can probably find on YouTube that talks about the history of the criminal justice system being used to perpetuate slavery - starting just after the end of the Civil War.)

them are Mexican ethnicity, another brown people.

definitely applies there too.

It is one of the best nonfiction books I have read in years.

One of those that has half the pages dog-eared.

And sometimes there is wage theft and even cheated out of wages all together.

they come with a high potential of a job (often high paying and high status job) at the end, and are more difficult for people of color to get. They availability of those sources of future employment to white people vs. people of color is an example of white privilege.

I have to edit this again because I can think of another way privilege contributes to these being a good thing for the group of people who hold power. Certainly class privilege at least, and there's an intersection between class and race privilege. If you are able to take an unpaid internship to get one of these high paying jobs, you have to have parents or a trust fund or something taking care of you during it, therefore it is only available to people who are already pretty well off, and limits people who need money in the meantime from taking these internships and moving into the high paying jobs they lead to.

in the American colonies. But unpaid work is slavery nonetheless. I can point you to many more abuses of our system going on today. The latest is Asian workers working in foot massage stores for tips. They can walk away in theory but since most are undocumented, they won't.

Some unpaid interns work another job to support themselves because they don't have rich parents to support them. They are forced by the system to do so if they ever want an opportunity to get ahead in their field.

no voluntary work arrangement, i.e., unpaid internship, is related to slavery, by whatever definition you wish to use.

You obviously have a different definition of slavery than I do. To me slavery is any work that isn't paid for or somehow compensated for in full. You seem to have narrowed it down to work that is forced on you and unpaid for. Also there is that issue of ownership of humans like farm animals, a whole different dimension.

So since our premises are defined differently, we cannot reach the same conclusion to the debate.

being an intern in NO WAY is an "issue of ownership of human" and seeking out and accepting a voluntary work arrangement IS NOT slavery ... PERIOD.

Just stop!

You obviously don't want a discussion and aren't even reading what I say.

I read what you wrote ... it's still B.S.; voluntary unpaid internships are nothing approaching slavery ... any more than volunteering in a soup kitchen or leading a Scout Troop is slavery.

And no ... why would I, or anyone else, want to have such a wrong-headed "discussion"?

No ... I don't put volunteering in that column, you do.

liberals don't, typically, make victims out of those making choices. In this case, interns have the CHOICE to enter and the CHOICE to exit the arrangement at will.

Now, if you wish to argue that internship can be exploitive (along with the millions of paid; but low wage positions), I'm right there with you. BUT INTERNSHIPS ARE NOT SLAVERY.

Even if the former are frequently used in unethical ways.

you can talk behind my back.

Placing it in that forum (THAT APPEARS ON THE "LATEST THREADS" PAGE) is not an attempt to talk about you behind your back ... it was an attempt to draw the attention of others (that have a unique interest in such matters) to what we are working with on this "liberal" site.

Can you link me with where this is being discussed?

Thank you.

Unpaid Internships = Slavery claim: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5503721

And, here is my post to the AA Group: http://www.democraticunderground.com/11878559

Anything you can choose not to do and walk away from is not slavery. Asian workers brought here illegally with their passports taken away from them can't leave - that is a form of slavery. But unpaid interns are absolutely not in any way enslaved. They aren't forced to be there - they can simply take a different job - they do it to get ahead in their field. It should be paid but it leads to somewhere good and the people who get internships have an advantage. Anything that is a choice, temporary, and gives you an advantage can't possibly be slavery. No one is sold into an internship, is there for life, has their children sold away from them, can be legally raped at will, can be legally beaten in whatever way and as often as wanted, etc. There's just no comparison and it's embarrassing reading this at a liberal website like DU.

Oh, the propaganda devil has done his work very well.

No. I think it's just telling you you're wrong. Interns aren't slaves.

When you are ready to learn about the deterioration of labor and wages in this century, please look at what they should be defined as, if we are ever to give a legacy that isn't of poverty and servitude to the upcoming generations.

the point you are ATTEMPTING to make, then you'll be doing yourself a tremendous favor. You could have easily brought up the "deterioration of labor and wages in this century" without your thoughtless analogies, not that this thread would have been the appropriate place to do so anyway.

Because anyone that thinks that a voluntary unpaid internship is the same as slavery (and I did TWO voluntary unpaid internships) is not someone that you can have a reasonable or intelligent conversation with.

I would go back and sue them for unpaid wages but I guess the laws have been changed to favor them not you these days. Have a nice life.

Are you now starting to see some of the many, many ways your analogy doesn't hold up?

matter where their life takes them. I know I did. In my day we didn't have to do unpaid work though to do it. There were laws stating that such positions got minimum wage during a probation period before they became real jobs. That was the difference.

You should have taken my advice and exited while you had a shred of integrity.

Done.

I just realized why what I said is offensive to you. My apologies. It wasn't meant to be. I'm very much into labor issues.

An intern can leave their job anytime they want. A slave can never leave. Nor can their children.

and let us talk about all those interns being whipped, and sold away from their families, etc.

You have made a very poor analogy.

I didn't say it's "a liberal concept." I said it isn't slavery. Do you understand the difference?

Let's just say that it disrespects the horrors of slavery as it dismisses the good that many, if not most, internships do for the interns.

Wow.

of the creeping slavery in this century, unpaid internships being one of them. I have yet to see how much better and beneficial they are than paid internships.

I'm sure you agree that comparison of forced servitude, with rape and beatings, literal ownership and no rights, is just a bit different from modern conditions that for many are pretty horrid.

But at least people today have choices, have rights, and can call on the law and others for assistance.

With unpaid internships, I'm only familiar with those that are absolutely voluntary and very popular with the interns and that give them skills and experiences that they wouldn't otherwise have.

In many cases, they cost the provider money rather contribute anything of immediate value.

Where the providers benefit, however, is that they have a more well prepared selection when real paid permanent jobs become available.

I hope you can see how that might work (I help coordinate such arrangements).

Usually, and ideally, internships (in my experience) are paid internships.

present day labor abuses especially using prisoners for cheap labor. Others decided to bring in the past to discredit my use of the word slavery. It dilutes the conversation. It's very obvious. Any work that is not compensated for with money or other value is slavery, no, it's not the ownership type of slavery like happened in colonial America, but wage slavery.

Also, those prisoners and the illegals brought here for domestic work are pretty much in forced servitude.

We might, however, disagree.

I hate our prison culture and the privatization of incarceration facilities and services.

I'm not against, however, providing opportunities for convicts to be productive, but the value of their production has to go toward the public good somehow.

same work. I know the prisoners often like to do the work as it gets them outdoors for awhile even if there are guys with shotguns watching them. They don't have to get the money. Some could go to the cost of their incarceration and some to their families as many have small children. Also, since the ethnicity of these prisoners is pretty obvious, it seems they are caught in a for profit scheme. Since these are jobs that could go to unemployed and often homeless people too if they were paid jobs it seems the companies and in my case the government who hires them should be forced to pay a proper hourly minimum wage to them.

They have committed a grievance against their neighbors and should, I think, have to cover the expense to the state for their incarceration.

Housing, room, board, medical care, just like the rest of us do, plus any restitution.

Beyond that, sure, let them keep their earnings.

which works better than slavery. When you bring up wage theft in a thread about actual slavery, it looks like hijacking. Wage theft is a problem but this is about people being kidnapped, put on nightmarish horrific boats to cross the Atlantic, sold into real slavery where they were physically owned and could have anything at all done to them - and did - and whose children were born into slavery and could be sold away from them. The word "slavery" has a meaning and it isn't just "work without pay." It is, "A person who is the legal property of another person and is forced to obey them." If you aren't someone's property and you can leave, you aren't a slave. You might be a victim of some other kind of exploitation, but it does not compare to slavery.

children and grandchildren gradually becoming serfs, another form of slavery. Travel to some third world countries, many that are technologically advanced and see how that type of labor economy works and then tell me how we achieve the so-called American dream with that wage theft idea.

Slavery has an actual definition, which I looked up and typed into the post you replied to, and what you're talking about doesn't fit it. What you're talking about is the theft of wages. Wage theft. Calling it an unpaid internship might be a euphemism though. It still isn't slavery.

Even as horrible (and racist) as prison labor is, it's not the same.

How Tea Party correct. Have it your way. It will do little to solve the labor issues of this century.

was death or escape. Want to try again to tell me how that relates to prison?

Your analogy was piss poor but your hyper defensiveness over establishing such a pointless analogy is telling. But having read how many people disagree with your analogy I guess it makes sense.

However, your point is made.

unpaid internships are a way to get started in a career. I had one in the 70's at a local television stations news department. Showed me I DID NOT belong in that area of human endeavor. Looking at the state of american 'journalism' today, I am truly glad I made the decision to walk away. Be damned the money!!!!

Tell me something. With these unpaid jobs did the news corporation kick in for transportation to go to and from work? Did they buy you clothes for work, or pay for your haircuts? If you needed glasses to do your job, did they pay for that?

but in area we're talking about, slavery led to an early unnatural death usually and an "unpaid internships" could lead to a rewarding career for some. It's not anywhere near slavery, modern or not, just sometimes, abusive use of free labor.

The Truth is The Truth. Can't change that with money nor guns.

yet made an exception for slaves. And Washington and Jefferson each owned hundreds of slaves, never freed any of them, and yet are revered as heroes, when they have more than a little in common with the founders of the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

At least the guy in my avatar had the right attitude towards the abomination that was slavery.

was not referring to status among "men"; but rather, the relationship between man and rulers.

I have yet to decide whether that is correct, or an apologetic for the Founders' hypocrisy; though I am leaning towards the latter, because I have not been able to find anything on the claim, outside of Founder apologia.

2 slave owners. One comes to see slavery as wrong. The other quotes his bible to show that slavery is ok. That's the difference between north and south. Redemption and perdition.

Great post. Thanks!

The north had and has its own racism problem. We aren't exempt.

I grew up in the Chicago area, so I know northern racism. My point was that while there were slave owners in the north, as a whole they were willing to go to war to end it. The south wanted to continue the horror. Some repubs want their country back.

and had to switch channels 1/2 of the way through because it depressed me so much. I can imagine the suffering those people endured.

Just as a film, regardless of subject, it was unique and very well made.

I know quite a bit about the history of slavery, and was still surprised by this film.

But the cruelty and inhumane treatment is what got me.

Not to mention all the white people who yearn to have it as good as the slaves did.

I've read countless slave narratives (the WPA commissioned people to talk to the ex slaves) and slave owner diaries. Most of the slaves questioned said that they'd rather die than go back to the "good old days" when the living was easy. The slave owners during the antebellum period endlessly complained about the "lazy", "lying", "thieving", slaves but also told how much the slaves loved them. The most amusing part of the diaries is the astonishment and outrage the "good masters" beloved by the slaves were when after freedom they didn't stick around or negotiated for wages. "After all we've done for them.." and "..but they were treated like part of our family.." were often the utterances of the bereaved slave owners...along with curses and threats of revenge.

Most of the planters really believed the myth of slave happiness because the "stupid" slaves were smart enough not to tell the master/mistress how they really felt.

One exception was the diaries of Mary Chesnut a rich planters wife and very a figure in the Confederate government circles. Her husband was high up in the Confederate government and she knew virtually all the Generals, politicians, and decisions makers personally. She was definitely not an abolitionist and did not like the slaves. But, she laughed at the very notion of the "happy slave" and was quite cutting in her remarks about the benevolent masters. While sitting outside with other high society ladies who were decrying the "other" planters who kept slave mistresses she remarked in her diary, "Where do these ladies think the light skinned children playing in their own yards come from? Do they drop from the sky?"

She was frightened of the slaves in her own house(s). "The glide silently and smile..but what are they thinking? Won't they, some day, seek revenge on us?"

Paternal grandmother of mine was in the narratives! Thank you for sharing that about Mary Chestnut - I'm going to have to go back to that.