I discovered that people go to great lengths to ‘prove’ racism or systemic racism exist. It’s really not that hard. Think of this: What is the most historically white racist institution in America aimed against black Americans? Slavery of course. When I read the 2022 article in the Washington Post of all places for my research, it said that Louisianans had just voted to keep slavery in their state constitution, using the same language as in the 13th. WHite Louisianans (maybe some others) voted about about 62 percent “NO” on the ballot to end “slavery or involuntary servitude” and black Louisianans voted “YES” on the ballot to end it at about 38 percent. See, simple, whites voted to keep institution slavery. There’s got to be nothing for systemically white racist.
Slavery. That is the word, and the word “involuntary servitude” means to work without volunteering or give your service to someone else for their benefit and not yours. For 500 years, all slaves have been prisoners. That is the nature of slavery, to be a prisoner of someone else or some other institution. But not all prisoners are slaves. Usually it is only the Black Americans, and since no one cares about the poor ones, no one listens to them. Here’s what Dante Jones, 41, said he wished he could vote for Prop 6 on 5 November: “We’ve got legalized plantations … They say they want us to be citizens, they want to rehabilitate us, but then they don’t do anything that allows that to happen. Technically, by the constitution, we’re slaves and they can whip our backs.” [from the Guradian article]. No one cares to listen to Black Americans in prison when they speak truth. It’s not even truth to power, it’s just Truth.
Dante is not being facisous but literal. The permission structure of the 13th allows for slavery. There was no Constitutional permission structure to enslave before that; instead, it came from the British, and while Southerns fought and resisted to keep that legal permission structure devised by an autocrat, because autocracy allows the government to alienate a person’s natural rights under certain conditions, democracy does not, since no citizen’s natural rights can be alienated under any conditions, hence the founders called them in opposition to the autocrat unalienable rights. By 1804 most all northern states had taken away this permission and ended or abolished slavery permanently, with a few caveats.
The problem is people. Americans are trained to see that America is united, not perpetually divided. They don’t see the North as working hard to overcome slavery and abolishing it in law, while the South opposed them persistently and with great vigor to keep slavery alive and maintain the worst, most draconian, anti-democracy laws in the world. By 2810, there was legally two different nations. One above the Mason-Dixon Line abolished slavery (with a couple caveats) by law, and that meant all blacks could vote. In the South they headed away from democracy by law, plunging deeper into autocracy.
But since the narrative since the end of the civil war has been controlled by whites trying to constantly reunite the nation, especially Northern ones who want to preserve the illusion they “won,” the brainwashing increased until everyone became robots and said “slavery ended.” British slavery ended, but Constitutional American Slavery began. Instead of planters holding contracts, it was the states in the South. I have acquired them. That is how they leased these enslaved black Americans captured by sheriffs. That’s how for 190 years black hands have been picking cotton on the same plots of land here in Texas that they were doing on when acquired before 1834 from the Mexican government. I heard an interview with a Latino guy after he served as a convict in Texas and picked cotton and said something like, “I can’t believe I was enslaved and slavery is real.”
The cotton is then sold from the states to Cargill, the biggest privately owned agricultural company in the world ever. That’s in America. The sell almost all America’s cotton to China and a few other countries. But because they are “middlemen” and the state of Texas and Louisiana pick the cotton and work the slaves, they are immune from prosecution. They went to the Supreme Court along with Nestle and ADM in 2021 after a case worked its way up from 6 black slaves, African children who were smuggled across international borders by literal slave traffickers. The children lost. It turns out there are 1.56 million enslaved children, according to the USDOL ILJ division, working to pick cocoa in Ivory Coast and Ghana. The farmers sell all those cocoa beans to those three companies, again middle men, to make chocolate bars we eat. But because again, they are middle men, they are not held to account because of the Alien Tort law.
So yes, bother Dante found out from California voters, by a 54 NO to 46 percent YES margin on November 5, 2024 to end slavery or “involuntary servitude” in California. So much for being liberal. The white super-supremacist systemic racists of both parties in that state got the words “slavery or” to be dropped from the ballot measure of Prop 6, just leaving the more innocuous phrase yet semantic equivalent “involuntary servitude” on the ballot measure. Dante was like, “Slave” its slave. I’m a real life slave. 54 percent of the voters were like, Good, stay that way. How can you find better proof of white systemic racism that? The problem: no one believes these poor humans in slavery. I watched all the videos of ex-colored slaves testifying on the WorthRises videos on YouTube and was horrified and saddened. I left comments letting them know I was sorry to hear this and commending their bravery at speaking out. When I asked others to do the same, no one did. No one wants to listen, of any color it seems. There was more outrage in the 1850s than in the 2020s.