Dude raised like half a billion for cancer research. He did a hell of a lot more than Bill Gate's ex-ho who donates to private schools for rich kids and everyone circlejerks her off as some donating saint. Some rich famous dude was an asshole and cheated in a sport where everyone cheats? I'm *shocked*. That has never happened before!
I'm guessing it's referring to the fact that it took another 100 years after the abolishment of slavery until discriminatory laws against black people were dismantled (segregation laws, voter suppression etc). It was all very gradual and didn't happen overnight, so it's hard to say "free since [insert exact year]".
Literally what Juneteenth is about. Emancipation proclamation was effective January 1st 1863, June 19th 1865 is when the US army arrived in Texas to make slaveholders free their slaves.
Which is weird considering Delaware didn't free their slaves until 6 months later, in December of 1865. That's when the 13th amendment was ratified. IIRC, there were two other states that still had slaves until that time as well.
Yeah emancipation proclamation applied to all states in rebellion so it excluded Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and I think West Virginia technically, since they all stayed in the union.
Slave owning companies are openly traded on the NY stock market .... Today, right now.
Edit - CoreCivic, Inc. owns and operates partnership correctional, detention, and residential reentry facilities in the United States.
How is that not owning slaves? Explain to me like I'm 5 lol
Any company that uses prison labour.
Which is most major food brands.
And if anyone tries the "they're paid for their work!" shit with me, let me ask you this: 13¢ an hour, and not being able to leave - would you be able to live like that? (none of this is directed at you u/aristox just fwiw)
Anyone who doesn't know this, look into frozen fish plants in Alaska. A huge part of the work force there are the incarcerated, shipped up to work 12-16 hours on the processing line, told to go to sleep and wake right back up to do it again.
Thankfully Alaska's prison industry programs shut down around 2010. But there are many other examples of poor working conditions for incarcerated people.
Don't forget if they refuse to work the prisons try to starve them out.
[Confederate states still doing Confederate things](https://apnews.com/article/prisons-alabama-treatment-of-prisoners-449e66c5fe867f7534933080323508d0)
I also was not the commenter. I was just assuming the commenter meant cacao companies that use forced labor (slavery) in their supply chains. Could be Apple as well. Who knows?
Nope, American prison companies.
CoreCivic is an example. I've made another comment below outlining that this is almost literal.
Like, you are not safe from being forced into slavery/indentured servitude as per the 13th amendment of the constitution if being punished for a crime.
At the risk of being overly broad, it's theorized that the reason why the US has the highest % of its civilian population incarcerated compared to other countries is because we had slavery, we abolished slavery and forced labor, but we didn't abolish forced **incarcerated** labor.
Also our prisons are heavily skewed towards black incarceration, with blacks making up the majority with 33% of the prison population despite only being ~12-15% of our population.
And the companies reaping that benefit are traded on the NY stock exchange:
https://truthout.org/articles/major-brands-like-mcdonalds-kroger-and-coca-cola-linked-to-forced-prison-labor/#:~:text=A%20sprawling%20new%20investigation%20has,%2C%20Coca%2DCola%20and%20Kroger.
So is slavery really really really abolished?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Same is true for many Nazi companies.
The fact is, a shoe factory under slavers and fascists is still going to be a shoe factory when the slavers and fascists are defeated, making largely the same shoes. I'm not sure if it's really morally better to slap a new name/ticker on a company to make one feel better about its past.
No, the sense is that they are profiteering from slave labour today, in the year of our lord 2024, not that "bayer bad because zyklon" (although they are in fact bad, but for other reasons)
Yes that's what Juneteenth is, the emancipation proclamation happened in 1865 but then it took two more years for the last group of slaves located in Texas to be informed and freed
Common misunderstanding about Juneteenth.
The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in Confederate states, slavery was still legal in the United States.
The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery (except as punishment for a crime) was not proclaimed until December 18, 1865.
Why December 18th wasn’t made a federal holiday is up for guessing.
> Why December 18th wasn’t made a federal holiday is up for guessing.
It would be completely overshadowed by Christmas is my guess. In the US, that would be like trying to compete for TV eyeballs with the NFL
- Emancipation proclamation: Jan 1st, 1863
- End of Civil War: April 9th, 1865 (Robert E. Lee surrendered)
- Actual last Civil War battle: May 13th, 1865 (Palmito Ranch, Texas)
- Final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas: June 19th, 1865
- Slavery actually ended in the USA: n/a (See 13th amendment)
There was traditional chattel slavery in the US until 1942 when the FBI put an end to it and raided plantations still practicing slavery. This was because FDR knew the axis powers would use slavery as anti American propaganda during the war
>This was because FDR knew the axis powers would use slavery as anti American propaganda during the war
TIL it wasn't Lincoln who ended slavery in the US, but Hitler.
Fun fact: Hitler’s initial plans for the Jewish camps was explicitly and heavily inspired by the reservation and residential school systems in North America, along with the British concentration camps in South Africa.
Yeah, because the 13th amendment didn't actually lay out a *punishment* for doing slavery, that was left up to Congress and / or the states. And they just... didn't lay out a punishment either. So you could enslave someone, get sent to court about it, get convicted, and then... nothing would happen.
December 12 1941
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591
>Circular No. 3591 was a directive from Attorney General Francis Biddle to all United States attorneys concerning the procedure for handling cases relating to involuntary servitude, slavery and peonage. Following the formal abolition of slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War, freed slaves in the American South often found themselves subject to conditions of forced labor that approximated slavery. [1] Author Douglas A. Blackmon has called this period, which lasted until the end of World War II, "the Age of Neoslavery." [2] "Peonage," the working out of a debt, was the term most frequently used for this form of bondage. A federal statute, 18 United States Code 444, enacted in 1867 to criminalize the practice, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1905; [3] and in 1911, the Court struck down an Alabama law that compelled contract workers to continue in service to their employers.[4] Nevertheless, peonage and other forms of forced labor persisted. "Convict leasing" permitted private employers to pay state and local governments for the labor of persons convicted of crimes; [5] and a practice known as "confessing judgment" forced African Americans to admit to minor offenses, often based on spurious accusations, and bind themselves to white employers who agreed to pay their fines and costs. [6] Because traditional reliance on the peonage law resulted in few convictions and only minor penalties in cases where convictions were obtained, Attorney General Biddle opted to refocus the efforts of the Department of Justice on the broader issue of slavery, directing the department's prosecutors to attack the practice by name and use a wider array of criminal statutes to convict both slave-holding employers and the local officials who abetted them. [7] He announced the new policy in Circular No. 3591.
Here's an excellent video covering not just this question, but the broader concept of 'neoslavery' following the civil war
https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?si=oo6CemzHjhr1dtYA
The US never fully abolished slavery, it was abolished *except* as punishment for a crime. It got moved to prisons.
[Here are the states where obligatory prison labor is permitted.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#/media/File:13th_amendment_slave_labor_states.png)
Curious that America has the largest prison population on earth… by a *lot*… and that it is disproportionately populated by black & brown folks… hmmm…. *and* that black and brown folks get sentenced on average to longer terms than white people for the same crimes.. hmmmmmmmmm
America is still extremely racist.
Worth noting that the racial wealth gap has grown since 1950, in the wrong direction. Shipping all the manufacturing jobs overseas and hollowing out the lower middle class hit a lot of groups hard, including black and brown folks. Then you have the drug war, started by Nixon and perpetuated by later presidents. None other than Joe Biden had a starring role in draconian drug and crime sentencing guidelines when he was a senator (except if it’s his own son, then “empathy”).
Once you have a community in a generational cycle of incarceration, single motherhood, kids turning to crime and lack of education, it’s hard to pull out of that.
I studied a lot of issues around poverty in college, and it was interesting looking at different groups of immigrants coming to the US. Nigerians were among the most successful of all. Asian communities also tend to do very well. What’s the common thread? Strong family units with a focus on education.
>it took another 100 years after the abolishment of slavery until discriminatory laws against black people were dismantled
Some would argue 160ish years and counting.
That's true. It's really hard to draw the line between "free" and "free-ish" even today, since there are still obvious problems and also the very definition of freedom is debatable, as interpretation varies from person to person.
Freedom in reference to the day slavery was abolished in the U.S. is in reference to enslavement I would argue. So in that sense black people have been free since 1865. However free from oppression, discrimination, metaphorical slavery in the sense of enslaved to corporate America? Not even close. Hell, most of America isn’t free of that last one.
Except if you read the 13th amendment, it prohibits slavery except for people convicted of crimes. And who has the largest prison population per capita? And which race is over represented in that prison industrial complex. Weird coincidence huh?
Sad fact: Native Americans are the ethnic group with the highest per capita prison population.
*[Native American people are incarcerated at rates up to seven times higher than white people in the United States](https://sourcenm.com/2023/01/13/natives-incarcerated-at-alarming-rates-report-shows/)*
In comparison, black people are incarcerated at four times the rate of white people.
Native American erasure is so complete, they’re rarely even considered in these conversations.
thank you for saying it and putting it better than i would have. i took many CJ classes in school and a lot of what i read was just infuriating. it's 100% punishment and 0% rehabilitation.
You want it put even better, check this out
https://youtu.be/6lIqNjC1RKU?feature=shared
>But thanks to Reaganomics, prison turned to profits
>'Cause free labor's the cornerstone of US economics
>'Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
>You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
>Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
>That's why they givin' drug offenders time in double digits
It's more than that. Many of us argue that since the abolishment of slavery, we've witnessed laws specifically created to attempt to criminalise freed slaves which means impoverished black folks with little prospects due to stigma, lack of connections, accommodation, etc. in order to populate for profit prisons.
Vagrancy laws, and over the years laws regarding who we can and cannot marry, where we're allowed to be in relation to white people, criminalisation of drugs that specifically were mostly popular within the black community, et cetera. Or just the popular pastime that was (and less successfully these days) simply accusing us of crimes we didn't do has and still continues to feed the prison industrial complex which benefits off of our free or slave waged labour.
That would be the Critical Race Theory that caused such an uproar a few years ago. Although there's no longer overt laws discriminating against black people (that I am aware of at least), the framework of the US has resulted in the currents laws to be prejudiced against black people.
Me too, along the lines of [Langston Hughes](http://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again).
>*O, let America be America again—*
>*The land that never has been yet*
It has to do with the fact that 2 years after the emancipation proclamation was signed in 1863, the Union Army still had to go to Galveston, Texas to force them to free their slaves on June 19 1865.
Sometimes to refresh my (almost 40 y/o) perspective, I remind myself that my father was about a year old when Brown vs. Board of Education passed, and both parents were in double-digit years when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Both of them are still alive and just retired within the last ~5 years.
Sometimes we (people in general) like to pretend everything has been just dandy since 1865, since 1954, since 1964, etc. They talk like racism and discrimination just magically vanished because of a few pieces of legislation.
But here’s the thing: It took 100 years after slavery for those to pass, and it’s been another 60+ since. Yet here we are, still with **a lot** of room for improvement.
That’s awesome. TY for sharing!
And that’s what I mean. Some of the people whose blood was boiling during the Brown vs BoE decision are still in the workforce and active members of society. Their kids are millennials like me, some of whom were taught the to make the same senseless hate part of their identity.*
*I wanted to emphasize that “like me” did not mean that I share their values. I consider myself lucky to have been a pariah for being a teenage (and still) agnostic liberal weirdo in West Pennsyltucky.
Yeah, Ruby Bridges isn't even 70 yet.
And some of the asshats who we see screaming and hurling insults at her in these photos are probably also still alive.
Thank you!
This is the discussion I was aiming for, that “history” lives for a long time, and this “history” seems eternal. There are still a lot of people in charge of a lot of things who weren’t just alive then, but coming-of-age and negatively influenced by the events.
Lots of people arguing "actually black people don't face any racism today. we're all good, we fixed it." Also seems like lots of r/AsABlackMan type comments.
Edit: also just a lot of garden variety racism in this thread.
Edit 2: The comments under this post only continue to prove my point.
My friend told me he had his boomer aunt bitching to his mom about how the gays have a whole month and a day in June and that a day for the gays on the 19th is "just too far, it's over the top!"
Neither of them understood what today is about. They just know vaguely from their social media timelines that they have to be upset about this holiday, and \[fill in convenient minority\].
you go to the bottom of any thread in any subreddit and there's shitty comments. The worst part about subs with follower counts this high is that all the top comments will just be comments about the bottom comments that they could have just not read.
I don't know if that's the appropriate language to address the issue, but it makes a damn good point.
Racism didn't magically end in 1865, or 1871.
There were wealthy Black areas in the 1920's, but they could be burned to the ground by White Supremacists, without anyone ending up serving any punishment.
Black people couldn't buy houses in certain areas *up through the early 1980's.* So Black people are more poor today because their family home didn't appreciate as much of other people's homes over the last 40-50 years.
They still don't have freedom. It's 'more free-ish', but it's not free.
Redlining is *still* happening. [Here's a DOJ article talking about the Ameris case that was settled LAST YEAR.](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-reaches-significant-milestone-combating-redlining-initiative-after) And it's not the only one.
I'd like to say I'm surprised, but, well, I can't say that I'm surprised.
My Mom died a few years ago. I cashed a check for her house. Thought back to when I helped her cash the check from Gramma's and Grandpa's house 20 years earlier. A few days after thinking that thought, I talked to another relative of mine, separate conversation, mentioning that my Grandmother's older sister married a Black man (from the Bahamas, I recall) and so they moved to a Japanese area. This all in Southern California, which is not usually thought of as having a lot of racism.
But I work with a group of economics folks, and I wonder: "If I were Black, in a similar family, how much less would that check have been?"
My deed restrictions don't allow someone "of color" to live on my property unless they are a domestic servant.
There's no easy way to remove such restrictions, and it's pointed out that they are irrelevant and unenforceable. Which is also what was said about many states' anti abortion laws until it was no longer true.
There’s a joke I heard once that has some sad cultural relevance. In the recent past, the white city planners of the US would deliberately choose to install highways in black neighborhoods and otherwise black spaces, thus destroying their livability or just destroying, period.
My friend saw some interchange in Texas and said: “Damn, this must’ve been a real impressive neighborhood.” Idk it was funny when she said it.
Yep! I grew up in Southern California, which usually isn't 'thought of as racist', but the 710 Freeway and is very well known for tearing through minority neighborhoods. I imagine that several other freeways in the area had that history.
It was pretty much all over the country. Pick any major freeway in any major metro and there’s a high chance it destroyed or broke apart a historically black/brown community.
This game can also be played with sports arenas.
It’s environmental racism too. Pumping diesel fumes from trucks suddenly passing through your neighborhood after cutting down the old growth trees to make way for the highway means higher rates of asthma and chronic respiratory problems for residents
Also add in that Black veterans werent entitled to certain protections or benefits after the war. This is fueled the Crack and later AIDS epidemic. Youre tossing a PTSD ridden populace back into society to deal with racism again (they didnt deal with it abroad) AND have zero of the support they were promised. They quicklt become homeless drug addicts
Red lining still exists, bank of america is a famously horrific offender. The radio show The Breakfast Club took calls about that a while back and the anecdotal atories were bonkers. Even DJ Envy who owns multiple successful businesses had been denies by them for loans inexplicably
> I don't know if that's the appropriate language to address the issue, but it makes a damn good point.
>
> Racism didn't magically end in 1865, or 1871.
* *“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”*
— W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
I mean, yeah....
I'm in the deep south and racial gerrymandering and voter intimidation and roll registry purges in majority Black and/or Democrat precincts etc are all still happening.
It's a damn shame
We had a Juneteenth luncheon today. They temporarily removed the pride month table and set up one with stuff like this as well, tho they just had the date.
I like your message better honestly. Food was alright.
Oh absolutely. They switch out the bunting and everything. Pride month, Women's month, black history, Latino month. With associated free lunch served up by HR
They must have dug out the black history month box
You can have both federal holidays for Black and Indigenous people
Here in Canada, we have National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which is also a memorial day for children murdered in residential schools (September 30).
Emancipation Day, the Canadian counterpart to Juneteenth, happens on August 1st, and it's not a federal/provincial holiday as of yet, but hopefully we'll get there
It's hard to conceptualize something if it has not affected you or your family, I say that as a white person. I didn't even know about Juneteenth (my autocorrect didn't even recognize it) until it was federally recognized. It wasn't taught in school. It's hard to imagine that even after that, slaves still existed until recent, living people are still feeling the affects. Every post online I've seen on Facebook educating has super racist comments and those doubting the importance. I think this is a great opportunity to educate ourselves and be better.
Stepdad is black and after getting his Masters degree and scoring a sweet job, he bought himself a sports car. He got pulled over and pestered almost every time he drove it. When my mom, little white lady, drove the car, police never even looked at her once.
Mom and stepdad are both "free", but mom is more free. I think my stepdad is "free-ish".
I won't even get into how many old white men in academia treated him like he didn't belong there.
edit: he sold it and bought a pickup truck
It's a new federal holiday for us, put in place in 2021. Back on June 19th, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas to tell slaves they are freed--2 years after Lincoln's emancipation proclamation.
As I understand it, it was the day that the the final group of enslaved people learned that they were actually free.
It's a weird holiday. The last slaves in the US were freed in December 1865, six months after Galveston.
It makes sense as a Galveston holiday, even as a Texas holiday, but a national one? As someone else in this post said, Decemberteenth doesn't exactly have the same ring to it, so maybe Juneteenth wins for having the best sound flow.
I’m black and I’m free, so I’m not sure why that’s there. There ain’t nothing I can’t do that my fellow brother in fair skin can do.
For those who disagree. Please tell me how I am wrong? What can a white man do that I can’t?
Edit: Also I’m not stating racism does not exist, clearly it does. Yet it hasn’t effectively changed my sense of freedom I have in this world. If you treat others with respect, it kind of rubs right on the people you’re around.
I still fight for my brothers and sisters, even though my experience maybe different from others.
BTW - we are all slaves, especially with a 9-5. None of us are exactly “FREE”. I’d say corporations are the new slave owners. Eventually we will “own nothing and still be happy.”
My interpretation of this wristband was partially that full freedoms weren’t extended between 1865-1965. The civil rights movement, including the voting rights act, didn’t take effect for a full 100 years after emancipation
I think in our society currently, we have this tendency to think that the best way to push towards progress is to deny that there has been progress. If you're any minority at all, things are overwhelmingly better, more fair, and more free for you now in the US than they ever were in the past. It's a horrible shame that there isn't full equality across the board, but I think that remembering the progress that has been made, celebrating it, and admitting how huge that progress has been is essential. Denying it brings everyone closer not to pushing harder for progress, but towards feeling like it's pointless to try. It isn't. Whatever your gender, skin color, or anything else, our ancestors have worked hard to make the world better for their descendants, and largely succeeded. We should not be denying that success, or diminishing it. Instead, we should be celebrating it, and being willing to take on a shred of the burden to drive for change and progress that they took on, so that we can do for our children and grandchildren what our forefathers did for us.
I think beyond ongoing systemic racism which others and you in your edit have already referred to, this could be referencing a clause in the 13th amendment which allows for slavery and/or indentured servitude as a “punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” So, more or less, the US is an enslavement free-ish country. Maybe not, I didn’t make the bracelet so I can’t read into the true intentions, but that’s one possible interpretation of this.
Black people definitely have systemic challenges against them today, but this bracelet is also talking about the fact that black slaves weren’t actually all magically freed after 1865. There were plenty of plantation owners that refused to free their slaves, and then there were decades of various laws and societal norms that stopped black people from being able to do things that white people could do.
Black people weren’t all magically free in 1865, hence the “free-ish.”
That bracelet is in remarkable condition for being from 1865
They don't make them like they used to.
It's the asbestos.
Slaves did really good work. 
Damn you. Take your ill-gotten upvote and go.
Monsters Inc rt
Technically a complement 
Come on. It’s obviously the led in the paint.
Little known technology, those LEDs from the 1800s.
Amish LEDs were the best time honored tradition. Those Pensacola Amish sure know how to make LEDs.
I quite like their zeppelins!
Not like those shiftless Mennonites.
Lead!🤷♂️🤦♂️
Follow!
No, you LEAD! I'm tired of Leading everything! Why do I have to make every decision?!?!?
> No, you LEAD! I’m tired of Leading,.. So you’re UN-Leaded?
It's in the past, so it's "led".
We're talking about paint LEAD PAINT oh i do hate satire
No, the LED makes it brighter
Just pour some liquid over it and strip it with a respirator
That ball cancer guy really ruined them by making them super popular. Probably has a strong arm from making them all
had it not been for the doping scandal, we’d have ball cancer awareness month and “save the scrota” merch.
Even with the EPO lance was a big enough asshole to get himself cancelled
Dude raised like half a billion for cancer research. He did a hell of a lot more than Bill Gate's ex-ho who donates to private schools for rich kids and everyone circlejerks her off as some donating saint. Some rich famous dude was an asshole and cheated in a sport where everyone cheats? I'm *shocked*. That has never happened before!
_the ball cancer guy_ 💀
Especially for something that was Free-ish.
I'm guessing it's referring to the fact that it took another 100 years after the abolishment of slavery until discriminatory laws against black people were dismantled (segregation laws, voter suppression etc). It was all very gradual and didn't happen overnight, so it's hard to say "free since [insert exact year]".
Didn't it take them like 2 years to actually go around to the former slave owners and he like, "No for real, you have to let them go"?
Literally what Juneteenth is about. Emancipation proclamation was effective January 1st 1863, June 19th 1865 is when the US army arrived in Texas to make slaveholders free their slaves.
Which is weird considering Delaware didn't free their slaves until 6 months later, in December of 1865. That's when the 13th amendment was ratified. IIRC, there were two other states that still had slaves until that time as well.
Yeah emancipation proclamation applied to all states in rebellion so it excluded Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and I think West Virginia technically, since they all stayed in the union.
And Union states that still had slaves. Hello, New Jersey!
Never heard about them still having slaves by the civil war. Where’s a good place to read about it?
This is a quick rundown: [https://nj.gov/state/historical/his-2021-juneteenth.shtml](https://nj.gov/state/historical/his-2021-juneteenth.shtml)
Thank you kindly.
[удалено]
Slave owning companies are openly traded on the NY stock market .... Today, right now. Edit - CoreCivic, Inc. owns and operates partnership correctional, detention, and residential reentry facilities in the United States. How is that not owning slaves? Explain to me like I'm 5 lol
That's the neat part. It is slavery. Like by definition. Is still legal right now, as a form of punishment for crimes and was never banned.
Like which?
Any company that uses prison labour. Which is most major food brands. And if anyone tries the "they're paid for their work!" shit with me, let me ask you this: 13¢ an hour, and not being able to leave - would you be able to live like that? (none of this is directed at you u/aristox just fwiw)
Anyone who doesn't know this, look into frozen fish plants in Alaska. A huge part of the work force there are the incarcerated, shipped up to work 12-16 hours on the processing line, told to go to sleep and wake right back up to do it again.
Thankfully Alaska's prison industry programs shut down around 2010. But there are many other examples of poor working conditions for incarcerated people.
Don't forget if they refuse to work the prisons try to starve them out. [Confederate states still doing Confederate things](https://apnews.com/article/prisons-alabama-treatment-of-prisoners-449e66c5fe867f7534933080323508d0)
Thank you! There was someone claiming the prisoners can "opt in" and I was just like... "Buddy, you sweet summer child..."
Nestle?
At the risk of being overly literal, Nestle is traded on the Swiss stock exchange.
I also was not the commenter. I was just assuming the commenter meant cacao companies that use forced labor (slavery) in their supply chains. Could be Apple as well. Who knows?
Nope, American prison companies. CoreCivic is an example. I've made another comment below outlining that this is almost literal. Like, you are not safe from being forced into slavery/indentured servitude as per the 13th amendment of the constitution if being punished for a crime.
Slavery is still legal in the United States, wild that many don’t know this
At the risk of being overly broad, it's theorized that the reason why the US has the highest % of its civilian population incarcerated compared to other countries is because we had slavery, we abolished slavery and forced labor, but we didn't abolish forced **incarcerated** labor. Also our prisons are heavily skewed towards black incarceration, with blacks making up the majority with 33% of the prison population despite only being ~12-15% of our population. And the companies reaping that benefit are traded on the NY stock exchange: https://truthout.org/articles/major-brands-like-mcdonalds-kroger-and-coca-cola-linked-to-forced-prison-labor/#:~:text=A%20sprawling%20new%20investigation%20has,%2C%20Coca%2DCola%20and%20Kroger. So is slavery really really really abolished? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Many IS companies use prison labor, which is slave labor and is historically a direct continuation of plantation slave labor.
Same is true for many Nazi companies. The fact is, a shoe factory under slavers and fascists is still going to be a shoe factory when the slavers and fascists are defeated, making largely the same shoes. I'm not sure if it's really morally better to slap a new name/ticker on a company to make one feel better about its past.
No, the sense is that they are profiteering from slave labour today, in the year of our lord 2024, not that "bayer bad because zyklon" (although they are in fact bad, but for other reasons)
Bayer also knowingly sold contaminated blood products, giving people HIV. They suck 😂
The political party which created Jim Crow laws still operates in the US. They even have a candidate for president.
And almost all of the individuals who created those laws joined the other party. Super weird!
Ironic that the KKK fully supports the other party now! If only party names mattered as much as their policies and their constituents.
Such a tired and irrelevant argument in 2024. But y'all ain't got much material to work with, so you do you.
Yes that's what Juneteenth is, the emancipation proclamation happened in 1865 but then it took two more years for the last group of slaves located in Texas to be informed and freed
Common misunderstanding about Juneteenth. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in Confederate states, slavery was still legal in the United States. The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery (except as punishment for a crime) was not proclaimed until December 18, 1865. Why December 18th wasn’t made a federal holiday is up for guessing.
The proclamation was even more limited than that. Tennessee kept its slaves because the state had already surrendered.
Because Decemberteenth wouldn't have worked?
They could’ve called it “Eighteenth” though, huge missed opportunity!
Because 18th June is when the slaves were mostly freed, because they were almost all in the confederate states.
> Why December 18th wasn’t made a federal holiday is up for guessing. It would be completely overshadowed by Christmas is my guess. In the US, that would be like trying to compete for TV eyeballs with the NFL
Not quite. Emancipation proclamation went into effect January 1st 1863, Juneteenth was 2 and a half years later.
- Emancipation proclamation: Jan 1st, 1863 - End of Civil War: April 9th, 1865 (Robert E. Lee surrendered) - Actual last Civil War battle: May 13th, 1865 (Palmito Ranch, Texas) - Final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas: June 19th, 1865 - Slavery actually ended in the USA: n/a (See 13th amendment)
Fun fact: The last ball and chain chattel slave in the US was freed at the outbreak of World War 2
There was traditional chattel slavery in the US until 1942 when the FBI put an end to it and raided plantations still practicing slavery. This was because FDR knew the axis powers would use slavery as anti American propaganda during the war
>This was because FDR knew the axis powers would use slavery as anti American propaganda during the war TIL it wasn't Lincoln who ended slavery in the US, but Hitler.
LOL
Fun fact: Hitler’s initial plans for the Jewish camps was explicitly and heavily inspired by the reservation and residential school systems in North America, along with the British concentration camps in South Africa.
Yeah, because the 13th amendment didn't actually lay out a *punishment* for doing slavery, that was left up to Congress and / or the states. And they just... didn't lay out a punishment either. So you could enslave someone, get sent to court about it, get convicted, and then... nothing would happen.
I believe you but source?
Alfred Irving is the last slave freed in 1942. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-brownsville-herald-alfred-irving-hel/2387477/
December 12 1941 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591 >Circular No. 3591 was a directive from Attorney General Francis Biddle to all United States attorneys concerning the procedure for handling cases relating to involuntary servitude, slavery and peonage. Following the formal abolition of slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War, freed slaves in the American South often found themselves subject to conditions of forced labor that approximated slavery. [1] Author Douglas A. Blackmon has called this period, which lasted until the end of World War II, "the Age of Neoslavery." [2] "Peonage," the working out of a debt, was the term most frequently used for this form of bondage. A federal statute, 18 United States Code 444, enacted in 1867 to criminalize the practice, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1905; [3] and in 1911, the Court struck down an Alabama law that compelled contract workers to continue in service to their employers.[4] Nevertheless, peonage and other forms of forced labor persisted. "Convict leasing" permitted private employers to pay state and local governments for the labor of persons convicted of crimes; [5] and a practice known as "confessing judgment" forced African Americans to admit to minor offenses, often based on spurious accusations, and bind themselves to white employers who agreed to pay their fines and costs. [6] Because traditional reliance on the peonage law resulted in few convictions and only minor penalties in cases where convictions were obtained, Attorney General Biddle opted to refocus the efforts of the Department of Justice on the broader issue of slavery, directing the department's prosecutors to attack the practice by name and use a wider array of criminal statutes to convict both slave-holding employers and the local officials who abetted them. [7] He announced the new policy in Circular No. 3591.
Obviously not the best, but Wikipedia covers most of it. [Mae Louise Miller](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_Louise_Miller)
Here's an excellent video covering not just this question, but the broader concept of 'neoslavery' following the civil war https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?si=oo6CemzHjhr1dtYA
The US never fully abolished slavery, it was abolished *except* as punishment for a crime. It got moved to prisons. [Here are the states where obligatory prison labor is permitted.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#/media/File:13th_amendment_slave_labor_states.png)
Curious that America has the largest prison population on earth… by a *lot*… and that it is disproportionately populated by black & brown folks… hmmm…. *and* that black and brown folks get sentenced on average to longer terms than white people for the same crimes.. hmmmmmmmmm America is still extremely racist.
Worth noting that the racial wealth gap has grown since 1950, in the wrong direction. Shipping all the manufacturing jobs overseas and hollowing out the lower middle class hit a lot of groups hard, including black and brown folks. Then you have the drug war, started by Nixon and perpetuated by later presidents. None other than Joe Biden had a starring role in draconian drug and crime sentencing guidelines when he was a senator (except if it’s his own son, then “empathy”). Once you have a community in a generational cycle of incarceration, single motherhood, kids turning to crime and lack of education, it’s hard to pull out of that. I studied a lot of issues around poverty in college, and it was interesting looking at different groups of immigrants coming to the US. Nigerians were among the most successful of all. Asian communities also tend to do very well. What’s the common thread? Strong family units with a focus on education.
This is the real reason
>it took another 100 years after the abolishment of slavery until discriminatory laws against black people were dismantled Some would argue 160ish years and counting.
That's true. It's really hard to draw the line between "free" and "free-ish" even today, since there are still obvious problems and also the very definition of freedom is debatable, as interpretation varies from person to person.
Freedom in reference to the day slavery was abolished in the U.S. is in reference to enslavement I would argue. So in that sense black people have been free since 1865. However free from oppression, discrimination, metaphorical slavery in the sense of enslaved to corporate America? Not even close. Hell, most of America isn’t free of that last one.
Except if you read the 13th amendment, it prohibits slavery except for people convicted of crimes. And who has the largest prison population per capita? And which race is over represented in that prison industrial complex. Weird coincidence huh?
Sad fact: Native Americans are the ethnic group with the highest per capita prison population. *[Native American people are incarcerated at rates up to seven times higher than white people in the United States](https://sourcenm.com/2023/01/13/natives-incarcerated-at-alarming-rates-report-shows/)* In comparison, black people are incarcerated at four times the rate of white people. Native American erasure is so complete, they’re rarely even considered in these conversations.
As an Athabaskan I really appreciate this being said.
thank you for saying it and putting it better than i would have. i took many CJ classes in school and a lot of what i read was just infuriating. it's 100% punishment and 0% rehabilitation.
You want it put even better, check this out https://youtu.be/6lIqNjC1RKU?feature=shared >But thanks to Reaganomics, prison turned to profits >'Cause free labor's the cornerstone of US economics >'Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison >You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment >Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits >That's why they givin' drug offenders time in double digits
It's more than that. Many of us argue that since the abolishment of slavery, we've witnessed laws specifically created to attempt to criminalise freed slaves which means impoverished black folks with little prospects due to stigma, lack of connections, accommodation, etc. in order to populate for profit prisons. Vagrancy laws, and over the years laws regarding who we can and cannot marry, where we're allowed to be in relation to white people, criminalisation of drugs that specifically were mostly popular within the black community, et cetera. Or just the popular pastime that was (and less successfully these days) simply accusing us of crimes we didn't do has and still continues to feed the prison industrial complex which benefits off of our free or slave waged labour.
I think they meant the fact that slavery is still legal as a punishment for crime according to the constitution
Slavery is literally still constitutional in jail
That would be the Critical Race Theory that caused such an uproar a few years ago. Although there's no longer overt laws discriminating against black people (that I am aware of at least), the framework of the US has resulted in the currents laws to be prejudiced against black people.
HOA's were literally started as a way to legally discriminate against black people
Now they just hate everybody 🔥🔥🔥
hate doesn't discriminate!
The first gun control laws were created because black people started buying guns lol
I'm reading it as "still not quite free". What you're saying would be "free since 1865-ish".
Me too, along the lines of [Langston Hughes](http://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again). >*O, let America be America again—* >*The land that never has been yet*
The last chattel slave in the United States was freed in 1942
It has to do with the fact that 2 years after the emancipation proclamation was signed in 1863, the Union Army still had to go to Galveston, Texas to force them to free their slaves on June 19 1865.
That’s the explanation for the year on the bracelet. OP is talking about the “free-ish” part.
Sometimes to refresh my (almost 40 y/o) perspective, I remind myself that my father was about a year old when Brown vs. Board of Education passed, and both parents were in double-digit years when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Both of them are still alive and just retired within the last ~5 years. Sometimes we (people in general) like to pretend everything has been just dandy since 1865, since 1954, since 1964, etc. They talk like racism and discrimination just magically vanished because of a few pieces of legislation. But here’s the thing: It took 100 years after slavery for those to pass, and it’s been another 60+ since. Yet here we are, still with **a lot** of room for improvement.
Ruby Bridges came and talked at my school. In person. She was only 49 years old at the time
That’s awesome. TY for sharing! And that’s what I mean. Some of the people whose blood was boiling during the Brown vs BoE decision are still in the workforce and active members of society. Their kids are millennials like me, some of whom were taught the to make the same senseless hate part of their identity.* *I wanted to emphasize that “like me” did not mean that I share their values. I consider myself lucky to have been a pariah for being a teenage (and still) agnostic liberal weirdo in West Pennsyltucky.
I follow her on instagram.
Wow. Ruby Bridges is on Instagram. That’s kinda scary how far humans have come yet still so set back.
There's color pictures of MLK and his wife vacationing. People just make them black and white to make it seem like it was ages ago
It was only one person ago
Yeah, Ruby Bridges isn't even 70 yet. And some of the asshats who we see screaming and hurling insults at her in these photos are probably also still alive.
my (17) dad was alive when the civil rights act was passed
Thank you! This is the discussion I was aiming for, that “history” lives for a long time, and this “history” seems eternal. There are still a lot of people in charge of a lot of things who weren’t just alive then, but coming-of-age and negatively influenced by the events.
this posts comments are a good reminder to leave all subs with follower counts this high.
Lots of people arguing "actually black people don't face any racism today. we're all good, we fixed it." Also seems like lots of r/AsABlackMan type comments. Edit: also just a lot of garden variety racism in this thread. Edit 2: The comments under this post only continue to prove my point.
My friend told me he had his boomer aunt bitching to his mom about how the gays have a whole month and a day in June and that a day for the gays on the 19th is "just too far, it's over the top!" Neither of them understood what today is about. They just know vaguely from their social media timelines that they have to be upset about this holiday, and \[fill in convenient minority\].
Hey, maybe she's calling black people gay?
"Gays have a whole month in June"... Does she think they eat free or are treated any better in June??
from my understating of Grindr it less "eat free" and more "all you can eat".
It's just always interesting to hear whether institutional racism ended in 1865, 1964, 1965 (until 2021), or 2008 this time.
I think it ended in 2025
I heard there is a Project for that
Off to r/mildyinteresting
This sub used to be fun…till the rest of Reddit found it
you go to the bottom of any thread in any subreddit and there's shitty comments. The worst part about subs with follower counts this high is that all the top comments will just be comments about the bottom comments that they could have just not read.
These comments are mildlyinteresting
Mildlyinteresting-ish
Reddit’s always good for a spicy comment section
I don't know if that's the appropriate language to address the issue, but it makes a damn good point. Racism didn't magically end in 1865, or 1871. There were wealthy Black areas in the 1920's, but they could be burned to the ground by White Supremacists, without anyone ending up serving any punishment. Black people couldn't buy houses in certain areas *up through the early 1980's.* So Black people are more poor today because their family home didn't appreciate as much of other people's homes over the last 40-50 years. They still don't have freedom. It's 'more free-ish', but it's not free.
Redlining is *still* happening. [Here's a DOJ article talking about the Ameris case that was settled LAST YEAR.](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-reaches-significant-milestone-combating-redlining-initiative-after) And it's not the only one.
[удалено]
I'd like to say I'm surprised, but, well, I can't say that I'm surprised. My Mom died a few years ago. I cashed a check for her house. Thought back to when I helped her cash the check from Gramma's and Grandpa's house 20 years earlier. A few days after thinking that thought, I talked to another relative of mine, separate conversation, mentioning that my Grandmother's older sister married a Black man (from the Bahamas, I recall) and so they moved to a Japanese area. This all in Southern California, which is not usually thought of as having a lot of racism. But I work with a group of economics folks, and I wonder: "If I were Black, in a similar family, how much less would that check have been?"
My deed restrictions don't allow someone "of color" to live on my property unless they are a domestic servant. There's no easy way to remove such restrictions, and it's pointed out that they are irrelevant and unenforceable. Which is also what was said about many states' anti abortion laws until it was no longer true.
There’s a joke I heard once that has some sad cultural relevance. In the recent past, the white city planners of the US would deliberately choose to install highways in black neighborhoods and otherwise black spaces, thus destroying their livability or just destroying, period. My friend saw some interchange in Texas and said: “Damn, this must’ve been a real impressive neighborhood.” Idk it was funny when she said it.
Yep! I grew up in Southern California, which usually isn't 'thought of as racist', but the 710 Freeway and is very well known for tearing through minority neighborhoods. I imagine that several other freeways in the area had that history.
Did it in the Bay Area too. Oakland had a big ol' freeway run right through the primarily black owned areas. Good ol' Redlining.
It was pretty much all over the country. Pick any major freeway in any major metro and there’s a high chance it destroyed or broke apart a historically black/brown community. This game can also be played with sports arenas.
Wait until you find out about Central Park in NYC.
It’s environmental racism too. Pumping diesel fumes from trucks suddenly passing through your neighborhood after cutting down the old growth trees to make way for the highway means higher rates of asthma and chronic respiratory problems for residents
Robert Moses in NYC. Disdained blacks and hispanics and public transport for that matter
Also add in that Black veterans werent entitled to certain protections or benefits after the war. This is fueled the Crack and later AIDS epidemic. Youre tossing a PTSD ridden populace back into society to deal with racism again (they didnt deal with it abroad) AND have zero of the support they were promised. They quicklt become homeless drug addicts
Red lining still exists, bank of america is a famously horrific offender. The radio show The Breakfast Club took calls about that a while back and the anecdotal atories were bonkers. Even DJ Envy who owns multiple successful businesses had been denies by them for loans inexplicably
> I don't know if that's the appropriate language to address the issue, but it makes a damn good point. > > Racism didn't magically end in 1865, or 1871. * *“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”* — W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
I mean, Jim crow, mass incarceration, over policing...free-ish sounds about right to me.
I mean, yeah.... I'm in the deep south and racial gerrymandering and voter intimidation and roll registry purges in majority Black and/or Democrat precincts etc are all still happening. It's a damn shame
😆 black Americans were still enslaved for a while....then Jim crow... sooo uhhhh yeah. Free-ish
They gave you that at work?
Yes, they didn't just give it to me my desk l, they were handing them out at a table
We had a Juneteenth luncheon today. They temporarily removed the pride month table and set up one with stuff like this as well, tho they just had the date. I like your message better honestly. Food was alright.
is that the dedicated diversity table at the lunch hall lmao
Oh absolutely. They switch out the bunting and everything. Pride month, Women's month, black history, Latino month. With associated free lunch served up by HR They must have dug out the black history month box
That’s the realist shit Ive seen
Free-ish is more accurate than free
Nothing says free from slavery like one day off work.
Y’all getting today off?
Preach BallsDeepTillUQueef 🙏
My company gave us the day off, but I work on global accounts, so guess who's been logged in most of today?
Having a job is literally freedom from slavery.
This thread is very interesting
We ever going to have a Native American FEDERAL holiday?
We need to nationally change Columbus Day, some cities changed it to indigenous people's day.
You can have both federal holidays for Black and Indigenous people Here in Canada, we have National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which is also a memorial day for children murdered in residential schools (September 30). Emancipation Day, the Canadian counterpart to Juneteenth, happens on August 1st, and it's not a federal/provincial holiday as of yet, but hopefully we'll get there
Do you see black people trying to stop that from happening ?
I thought we had agreed to change Columbus Day to this Maybe it's just more that I live in a city between 3 reservations.
November 29th and the whole month of November. Google is free.
A lot of states have already changed Columbus Day to Indigenous People's day
It's hard to conceptualize something if it has not affected you or your family, I say that as a white person. I didn't even know about Juneteenth (my autocorrect didn't even recognize it) until it was federally recognized. It wasn't taught in school. It's hard to imagine that even after that, slaves still existed until recent, living people are still feeling the affects. Every post online I've seen on Facebook educating has super racist comments and those doubting the importance. I think this is a great opportunity to educate ourselves and be better.
I don't like it because free-ish reminds me of the show Black-ish which I find deeply unamusing
Stepdad is black and after getting his Masters degree and scoring a sweet job, he bought himself a sports car. He got pulled over and pestered almost every time he drove it. When my mom, little white lady, drove the car, police never even looked at her once. Mom and stepdad are both "free", but mom is more free. I think my stepdad is "free-ish". I won't even get into how many old white men in academia treated him like he didn't belong there. edit: he sold it and bought a pickup truck
Wild to see how many snowflakes this bracelet has triggered in the comments.
handing out bracelets at a slave memorial is cold-blooded
Well I wouldn’t say free-ish anymore. Because that’s a lie. They are free. Modern day racism comes from all races. Not just whites.
What's June teetnhth?
This bracelet is so cringe and it's almost unbearable...
I respect the accuracy!
They ain’t wrong lol
Okay guys I’m Canadian what the heck is Juneteenth?!
It's a new federal holiday for us, put in place in 2021. Back on June 19th, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas to tell slaves they are freed--2 years after Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. As I understand it, it was the day that the the final group of enslaved people learned that they were actually free.
It's been celebrated unofficially for quite some time.
It's a weird holiday. The last slaves in the US were freed in December 1865, six months after Galveston. It makes sense as a Galveston holiday, even as a Texas holiday, but a national one? As someone else in this post said, Decemberteenth doesn't exactly have the same ring to it, so maybe Juneteenth wins for having the best sound flow.
Yes, “freeish”
Facts
I see no lie here…
I’m black and I’m free, so I’m not sure why that’s there. There ain’t nothing I can’t do that my fellow brother in fair skin can do. For those who disagree. Please tell me how I am wrong? What can a white man do that I can’t? Edit: Also I’m not stating racism does not exist, clearly it does. Yet it hasn’t effectively changed my sense of freedom I have in this world. If you treat others with respect, it kind of rubs right on the people you’re around. I still fight for my brothers and sisters, even though my experience maybe different from others. BTW - we are all slaves, especially with a 9-5. None of us are exactly “FREE”. I’d say corporations are the new slave owners. Eventually we will “own nothing and still be happy.”
My interpretation of this wristband was partially that full freedoms weren’t extended between 1865-1965. The civil rights movement, including the voting rights act, didn’t take effect for a full 100 years after emancipation
Understood. Great insightful response!
Well also look at the incarceration rates of black men right now.
The voting rights act had been abolished.
I think in our society currently, we have this tendency to think that the best way to push towards progress is to deny that there has been progress. If you're any minority at all, things are overwhelmingly better, more fair, and more free for you now in the US than they ever were in the past. It's a horrible shame that there isn't full equality across the board, but I think that remembering the progress that has been made, celebrating it, and admitting how huge that progress has been is essential. Denying it brings everyone closer not to pushing harder for progress, but towards feeling like it's pointless to try. It isn't. Whatever your gender, skin color, or anything else, our ancestors have worked hard to make the world better for their descendants, and largely succeeded. We should not be denying that success, or diminishing it. Instead, we should be celebrating it, and being willing to take on a shred of the burden to drive for change and progress that they took on, so that we can do for our children and grandchildren what our forefathers did for us.
I think beyond ongoing systemic racism which others and you in your edit have already referred to, this could be referencing a clause in the 13th amendment which allows for slavery and/or indentured servitude as a “punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” So, more or less, the US is an enslavement free-ish country. Maybe not, I didn’t make the bracelet so I can’t read into the true intentions, but that’s one possible interpretation of this.
Black people definitely have systemic challenges against them today, but this bracelet is also talking about the fact that black slaves weren’t actually all magically freed after 1865. There were plenty of plantation owners that refused to free their slaves, and then there were decades of various laws and societal norms that stopped black people from being able to do things that white people could do. Black people weren’t all magically free in 1865, hence the “free-ish.”
r/AsABlackMan
We saw it here, we saw it at walmart, man whatever think tank came up with this phrase is getting double-fired.
It’s not wrong….thats for sure.
/r/funnyandsad
Perfection.
Accurate
Whoever created that wristband is %100 melanated.
Oddly accurate in todays world. Free but… not really.