Think of the motivational structure behind not only black “slavery or involuntary servitude” but also black disenfranchisement. It isn’t a “remnant” but a current system to maintain the tools of wealth generation and political power. If you look at book like The Disengagement of Ex-Felons by professor Hull you can see just how systemically deep the laws have developed in taking away the voting rights from Black Americans, as well as latinos. These laws spread nationally through state legislatures since the 1970s and 80 outside the traditional Jim Crow southeast. Starting about 1982, Black Americans in particular were targeted and arrested on mass, with some of the most draconian punishment laws ever. The motive? The state and federal government processed so many arrests without trial and forced plea deals that they ended up using this as a pretext to strip away the voting rights on a state by state basis of Black Americans in all but 2 states by 2005. Only Maine and Vermont let “duly convicted” felons vote at all time—in jail, on parole, on probation.
That’s means the first 4 Civil Rights bills that were made to protect voting rights of black Americans (1957, 60, 64, 65) all fail because white run state governments refused to comply, until finally there was a break though after 65 but the white resistance and poll blockage didn’t stop. It never has. Worse, the white resisters (known as conservative democrats before August 1964 and conservative republicans afterward until today which is more specific than “oppressors”) were able to continue the convict leasing system (13th amendment) started in 1866 and continuing until 1934, when they spread it through the BOP UNICOR system. That means convict leasing is now in many states. In 2022, white Louisianans outvoted black Louisianans to keep “slavery or involuntary servitude.” That means black Americans are still picking cotton by hand, for over 175 years on the same piece of land, Angola. In November 2024 Californians voted 54 percent to keep “slavery or involuntary servitude”. Black prisoners testified in articles in the press about how they are forced to work as “slaves” because that is the word in the state and federal constitution.
The main problem I have with the article is not the sentiment, as I’ve read Baldwin and listened to him and know he has the same sentiment, but in the now outdated language and specificity in today’s context. Research the voting and listen to black Americans today like CRIPonite who gave his testimony on a video podcast I just saw on YouTube (I had never heard of him before last week but his voice is powerful in explaining the cotton picking slavery he was forced into in Texas) and those on the WorthRises videos on YouTube and their website. Look at the photos in the October 2024 NYTimes article and see that the 5 of the six forced laborers are black that the State of Alabama leases out to Ju Young, a company the makes parts for Hyundai using modern American slave labor. Renting out captured human labor.
The problem is not with the great review done here, as historical background is critical, but in the lack of research in today’s American since 1981 into how the new disenfranchisement state laws strip voting rights away from “felons”, forced them to work under legal labor contracts owned by the states, especially white southern ones but most of them still, for revenue at no pay or little pay. It’s inhumane but continual. These are not just oppressors, but most white male conservative and their allies, like Heritage Foundation. The 1980 Heritage Foundation report WAS successful in implementing this new system and assigning its advocates to Reagan’s administration who got to work on day one. The result was nationalized disenfranchisement and enslavement.
All the research is there (Twice the Work of Free Labor book, prof Hull’s book, American Prison, Slavery by Another Name, etc.) get into the tangibles of the new system and how it was built and tested un Nixon and then used by Reagan, Bush, Clinton until today. These are specific groups of living politicians and companies, think tanks and ultra wealthy, carrying on this live tradition that is not a remnant. I find that most people won’t listen to the testimony of black American (and brown Americans) “felons” who speak of the “slavery” they underwent or undergo because the system has inured people on the outside to not listen to them and not believe them, despite the powerful truth they experienced. I’ll always listen to Baldwin and his elegant summation of white male oppression of American history, but only in recent years started listen to the living black Americans who testify. They speak from experience, not just abstractions, with gruesome and mundane details of the forced labor system in Americans.