this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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You're Cherokee? Nice to meet you my very, very distant cousin. My white ancestors came in two waves, in the first most died during witch trials. The second wave (the relevant one) was a few Indentured servants, all but one died of bring overworked. That's a distressing common patttern of indentured servitude, there was an end date but you were unlikely to survive your master trying to get the best out of his investment. To call I Indentured Servitude less than slavery is degrading to every one of those people. For a more modern analogy, if Indentured Servitude isn't a form of slave labor, then prison labor, which is even listed in the Constitution as a form of slave labor is not in fact slavery.
Well I never said indentured servitude wasn't a form of slavery, but I wanted to make it clear that it wasn't chattel slavery like was mentioned earlier. I don't want the two equated, because while some people don't like the thought of "degrees of slavery", I think it's absolutely warranted as human beings in indentured servitude were thought of as human, but chattel slaves were not.