Our Society and Slavery

In the First World, we think of slavery as dead. Over. Gone. We think of it as an historic aberration, a blemish on the past, but certainly not something that still exists in modern times. Yet over 27 million people are still enslaved today, and that number isn’t decreasing. Slavery is not dead at all, we just don’t notice it, and our failure to acknowledge its existence,it allows it to continue unchecked. To truly abolish slavery we must take down a system that is already in place, and has been in existence for thousands of years. Slavery is deeply ingrained into many sections of society, and to eradicate it we must change society.

The most challenging part of stopping slavery is giving up our reliance on it. Unseen slavery powers many parts of the world economy, and so we all rely upon it, knowingly or unknowingly. The list of major companies that use slave labor is long, and shockingly includes many iconic brands such as Nike, Apple and Disney. The fact that we in the First World allow anyone, especially such high profile, successful companies, to get away with exploiting people is truly atrocious and shameful, and most of us are shocked to learn about it. So how does it come about? What is modern slavery?

Slavery relies on systems of bondage, discrimination and exploitation that have been in place for thousands of years and have continued to grow and evolve throughout history. Modern slavery is also fueled by globalisation. The movement of people, money, and information throughout the world, and the spread of production, supply, and distribution chains has allowed modern slavery to grow, and enabled it to stay out of the grasp of authorities. Of course Nike, Apple and Disney don’t directly enslave people, but their suppliers do, which makes them, the companies and us, their customers, ultimately responsible for the exploitation of slave labor.

Modern slavery exists in many forms, the most common of which is debt bondage. Debt bondage occurs when people are encouraged to borrow money, often on the promise of a better job, or a better life elsewhere. The debt they are subsequently forced to pay back is massively inflated by interest and other charges, so these people end up working for years with no reward, in short as slaves. Sexual slavery, where people, usually women and children, are forced to work in the sex industry is also flourishing in modern times. As is domestic servitude, where the normal and legal practice of live in help is used to cover the exploitation and control of another person, and contract slavery, where people are deceived into slavery by a false employment contract. So you can see that while the traditional chattel slavery, where a person is legally owned by another, may be virtually extinct, slavery itself is alive and well.

How is it that this abhorrent and illegal practice is so widespread today? Put simply, it is because we aren’t doing enough to stop it. Kevin Bales, president of Free The Slaves, says that the fact slavery is still thriving comes down principally to ignorance about the institution and lack of resources directed at eradicating it. This is particularly true in first world countries where we are often not aware that slavery is not exclusively a thirld world problem. Many people in first world countries believe that slavery is nothing to do with them and that they are powerless to prevent it. Nothing could be further from the truth. We all benefit from the slave trade, only the slaves themselves do not.

Slavery may be illegal in every country in the world, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist. Between 14,000 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year. Most are forced into the sex trade, domestic servitude, or agricultural labor. At any one time, between 52,000 and 87,000 are in bondage. We don’t notice these people because we don’t realise what they are, we simply don’t perceive them as slaves. David Batstone, the author of ‘Not For Sale’ describes how he had, unknowingly, been dining at a restaurant staffed by slaves. “That’s the paradox: slavery is in reality not invisible, Except in rare circumstances, slaves toil in the public eye. The truth is that we do not expect to find it in “respectable” settings.” he writes.

We may prefer to think of slavery as a thing of the past, but in doing so we turn a blind eye to the crime of slave trading and we fail to acknowledge the suffering of the slave. David Batstone also writes that

“Many people bristle to hear the word slavery used to describe the modern practice of exploitation. Deeply ingrained in the collective psyche of Western culture is the notion that slavery ended in the nineteenth century. It is not unusual to read a newspaper account of “slavelike conditions” in a copper mine in, say, Bolivia. The laborers were kidnapped, coerced to work without pay and prohibited from leaving the mine. So why would the writer ferfer to the laborer’s conditions as “slavelike”? Because the writer buys into the cultural myth that “real slavery” was vanquished long ago.”
If we continue to deny the suffering of these millions of people, nothing will change.

Slavery will only be eradicated if we all take responsibility for its existence. All sections of society must acknowledge their reliance on slavery and take active steps to cease this unhealthy dependency. It is no good pleading ignorance and shifting the blame onto others. We must all stand up to be counted and reject slavery in its entirety. We must boycott products and services produced by slave labour, even if this means paying higher prices. We must lobby our governments to enforce anti slavery legislation, to end human trafficking and to help other nations tackle the endemic poverty, corruption and violence which allows slavery to flourish. We must provide better opportunities for those at risk of exploitation and we must work to overturn cultural norms which encourage and condone the exploitation of others. Slavery is a scourge on humanity and it is the responsibility of all humankind to work towards its abolition.

Awareness and ignorance of the public

Saturday, families sit together and watch the news. The headlines were blazing bright red saying terrorism and bombings, yet they were unaware of the fact that there is still people without electricity or heroes uncelebrated.

The news, providing information to the world about the place that they are living in yet the awareness levels for brewing problems is still low. In the news nowadays we normally see a lot of terrorist news and a lot about attacks, but not a lot about problems that actually haven’t been solved since they began a long time ago or smaller stories that matter to some. Part of the reason that the media is not facing these is because people tend not to want to know about this kind of thing and want to learn only the major news. This leads to a major issue of low awareness which could improve if the media or social media had more information about smaller stories.

Recently there had been a lot of news about isis and the plane shot down, but there are also greater things like Akon providing electricity for places in Africa and from research a huge percentage of people had no idea that had happened and were not aware of the fact that there are still some place in the world living without electricity . The bombings in France were tragic but it could have been a lot worse. On that day a hero stepped up, but was ignored, a Muslim security guard named Zouheir stopped the bomber from entering and reduced the death toll to just himself. If the public had been aware of this maybe the problem of stereotypes could have been helped since people have been categorising Muslims as terrorists because they were born there, this time the Muslim was the hero and yet no one knows about him“,I would like to learn smaller news other than the big headlines,”said an anonymous interviewee.

Media not only can create awareness, but it can also create ignorance and especially social media. Everyday, people use social media to show what they are doing, but getting too attached to their phone. When people post they usually ignore what is around them and by using social media they are essentially blocking out real life and being ignorant to their surroundings. Fast food restaurants are showing that people tend to be ignorant about what they don’t want to know. Fast and cheap, but unhealthy yet everyone still goes. People tend not to think about their future, but look at the present harms and effects only even when knowing that fast food causes obesity, diabetes and so on. Even in getting a job or education people tend to only get people that have good grades or sports, but forget that there are people who want to learn out there and people who work hard that might deserve more of a chance or opportunity to get to learn.

Awareness is a problem that can be solved if the media or social media could give a bit more information or story to things that are smaller in scale, but matter a lot. Ignorance about facts would not be a common thing and a lot of issues would be solved just by raising the awareness.




By:Chien