This is slavery, not even indentured servitude, let alone a fair exchange of labour for compensation… There is no point at which the slave is released to make use of those skills.
Any and all skills gained are either used as tools by the owner, or as coping/survival mechanisms by the slave.
Slavery is, in all ways, an abhorrent exploitation and degradation of a human being.
That there is even the slightest tolerance for this curriculum change is appalling. Is Florida really so filled with the morally bankrupt and apathetic that this can pass without ending the careers of the contributors?
How can we ever expect greater progress on stamping out the ongoing modern forms of slavery, when things like this can make its way into the classroom.
I really hope this change is crushed before it reaches the ears of impressionable children. But the fact that it got this far means that this is the kind of thinking that too many already get at home.
I agree with you 100%. What they are latching on to is the fact that SOMETIMES, in EXTREMELY LIMITED AND SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES, some enslaved people were able to “hire themselves out” as craftsmen when they had done whatever work the enslaver had required of them. An even more limited number of those enslaved people were paid for their work and got to keep their pay.
But the percentage of people we are talking about here is tiny … but it is nonzero. The standard therefore isn’t completely wrong, but it absolutely gives the impression that these cases were waaaay more common than they actually were.
An unnamed(!) victim of slavery had an agreement with her enslaver to keep excess wage money from her work, which she used to buy the freedom of another person, Sally. Her enslaver figured she didn’t have the right to own “property” and it was his lucky day to now own 2 human beings. The courts disagreed and said Sally was a free person. However this was still South Carolina so they made sure to patch up that little “loophole” after the case was over.
The full list is quite interesting. The ~1780 cases in New England outlawing slavery (while the Revolution was ongoing!). Dred Scott and Amistad, of course. Cases mostly from 1780 to 1859. But then heinously, but somehow unsurprisingly, there’s a case from 2021: Nestle Inc makes an appearance using child slave labor for cocoa.
I wish more people realized that when we talk about child slavery in the cocoa industry we are not talking about kids working alongside their parents.
We are mostly talking about trafficked and stolen children taken to plantations in the middle of nowhere and forced to labour long hours by themselves.
Well this is news to me and I say if you have some articles bookmarked already fuckinf share them here (as a new post)*** cuz on lemmy rn it’s more likely to reach front page. I consider myself more aware than average American and I still didn’t know this.
Some children end up on the cocoa farms because they need work and traffickers tell them that the job pays well.[8] Other children are sold to traffickers or farm owners by their own relatives, who are unaware of the dangerous work environment and the lack of any provisions for an education.[25, 4] Often, traffickers abduct the young children from small villages in neighboring African countries, such as Burkina Faso and Mali, two of the poorest countries in the world.[26, 27] In one village in Burkina Faso, almost every mother in the village has had a child trafficked onto cocoa farms.[6] Traffickers will then sell children to cocoa farmers.
Journalists who went undercover as cocoa farmers documented traffickers in Ghana selling children to them for $34 a child.[14] These children were liberated, and social workers reunited them with their families.[14]
Once they have been taken to the cocoa farms, the children may not see their families for years, if ever.[14] If a child who has been trafficked wants to go home, they will likely not be allowed because the trafficker has sold them to work on the cocoa farms for a certain number of years.[14]
Most of the children laboring on cocoa farms are between the ages of 12 and 16, but reporters have found children as young as 5.[28, 29] In addition, 40% of these children are girls, and some end up working on the cocoa farms through adulthood.[29, 4]
Child laborers on cocoa farms work long hours, with some being forced to work up to 14 hours a day.[30] Some of the children use chainsaws to clear the forests.[29] Other children climb the cocoa trees to cut bean pods using a machete. These large, heavy, dangerous knives are the standard tools for children on the cocoa farms, which violates international labor laws and a UN convention on eliminating the worst forms of child labor.[20, 31, 8]
Once they cut the bean pods from the trees, the children pack the pods into sacks that weigh more than 100 pounds when full and carry them through the forest.[8] Aly Diabate, a former enslaved cocoa worker, said, “Some of the bags were taller than me. It took two people to put the bag on my head. And when you didn’t hurry, you were beaten.”
The standard therefore isn’t completely wrong, but it absolutely gives the impression that these cases were waaaay more common than they actually were.
It’s also dishonest because it leaves out the limitations that slavery put on those same people.
One of them could have been the next Mozart but we will never know because they weren’t allowed to do anything more than hire themself out as a piano tuner at wages far below those a white person would get.
Are they kidding.
This is slavery, not even indentured servitude, let alone a fair exchange of labour for compensation… There is no point at which the slave is released to make use of those skills.
Any and all skills gained are either used as tools by the owner, or as coping/survival mechanisms by the slave.
Slavery is, in all ways, an abhorrent exploitation and degradation of a human being.
That there is even the slightest tolerance for this curriculum change is appalling. Is Florida really so filled with the morally bankrupt and apathetic that this can pass without ending the careers of the contributors?
How can we ever expect greater progress on stamping out the ongoing modern forms of slavery, when things like this can make its way into the classroom.
I really hope this change is crushed before it reaches the ears of impressionable children. But the fact that it got this far means that this is the kind of thinking that too many already get at home.
I agree with you 100%. What they are latching on to is the fact that SOMETIMES, in EXTREMELY LIMITED AND SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES, some enslaved people were able to “hire themselves out” as craftsmen when they had done whatever work the enslaver had required of them. An even more limited number of those enslaved people were paid for their work and got to keep their pay.
But the percentage of people we are talking about here is tiny … but it is nonzero. The standard therefore isn’t completely wrong, but it absolutely gives the impression that these cases were waaaay more common than they actually were.
You reminded me of a legal case I read recently: Guardian of Sally v. Beatty
An unnamed(!) victim of slavery had an agreement with her enslaver to keep excess wage money from her work, which she used to buy the freedom of another person, Sally. Her enslaver figured she didn’t have the right to own “property” and it was his lucky day to now own 2 human beings. The courts disagreed and said Sally was a free person. However this was still South Carolina so they made sure to patch up that little “loophole” after the case was over.
The full list is quite interesting. The ~1780 cases in New England outlawing slavery (while the Revolution was ongoing!). Dred Scott and Amistad, of course. Cases mostly from 1780 to 1859. But then heinously, but somehow unsurprisingly, there’s a case from 2021: Nestle Inc makes an appearance using child slave labor for cocoa.
I wish more people realized that when we talk about child slavery in the cocoa industry we are not talking about kids working alongside their parents.
We are mostly talking about trafficked and stolen children taken to plantations in the middle of nowhere and forced to labour long hours by themselves.
Well this is news to me and I say if you have some articles bookmarked already fuckinf share them here (as a new post)*** cuz on lemmy rn it’s more likely to reach front page. I consider myself more aware than average American and I still didn’t know this.
I think it has to be actual news to be posted in here?
Here is an article
Excerpt:
It’s also dishonest because it leaves out the limitations that slavery put on those same people.
One of them could have been the next Mozart but we will never know because they weren’t allowed to do anything more than hire themself out as a piano tuner at wages far below those a white person would get.