this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Political Memes

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[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Equating prison labor with the system of slavery that existed before it was abolished is very disingenuous. Both are shitty practices, but not the same thing.

[–] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

People are literally rounded up off of the street and put in jail to work against their will. Quite often it turns out these people were innocent. They're also abused physically and mentally and sometimes simply left to fucking die in their cell. And let's not forget how often they're raped! And the fact that they're always being raped is literally comedy to most of the world.

You're trying to downplay this, and also, for some reason, change the subject to semantics.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Were they brought to prison crammed into boats like livestock and bred like them as well? Forbidden having any rights due to the way they look even when not in prison? A lot of slavery's legacy has resulted in people whose ancestors were slaves being fed to the prison system, yes, so they're connected, but it's extremely unhelpful to lump them together as being entirely the same thing. You can hate the prison system without completely equating it to the institutional slavery of the past.

[–] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

I never said it's exactly the same. I'm just saying it is literal slavery. They are forced to work against their will.

But okay what is the acceptable terminology? What word do you personally feel is morally acceptable to call the people that are currently being forced to work against their will?

[–] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Also I just want to be very clear, and I don't think you understand this, but you are flat out saying that a person who is being forced to work against their will cannot be considered a slave as long as you treat them relatively nicely when they are not working the fields.

This is a literal argument for why slavery wasn't bad in the past. They were better off then in Africa.