If you are tired of otherness being used as a political cudgel, it’s because you believe tolerance is the moral standard of a good pluralist society. This is why black conservative Candace Owens opposes reparations for “victims of anti-blackness” in America. She knows the servitude past of her race, but her politics isn’t informed by it. Rather, she is convinced forced servitude (chattel slavery) has been replaced by coerced servitude (identity politics).
In mankind’s history, forced servitude – chattel slaves, comfort women, indentured servants, political labor camps, press gangs and serfs – was a global phenomenon until 1761, when Portugal banned the importation of slaves. It wasn’t until 1981 that the last holdout (Mauritius) abolished slavery; therefore, the American view of forced servitude as strictly black slaves in the American South is a myopic history of primitive economies and human cruelty.
For example, did you know the last slaves in Pennsylvania, the model for other free states, weren’t freed until 1847? And, if you believe forced servitude and primitive economies ended in the 19th century, you’re wrong. Until 1945, Japan legalized comfort women (sex slaves). Until 1979, Cambodia had forced labor camps, where 1.5 million died. In 1997, Nike forced Vietnamese workers, who failed to meet production quotas, to run laps – often until fainting (source: Reuters). Don’t forget Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.
Reparations are the progressive idea du jour to punish America for past sins. As a legal matter, the terms of surrender didn’t included reparations and the CSA is bankrupt, meaning liability must be assigned to descendants of 5.5 million free whites and damages to descendants of 3.5 million black slaves (CSA population: 1860). 385,000 of 1.5 million adult white males owned slaves in the CSA, and 350,000 Confederate soldiers died; taking some of the liability to their graves.
The calculus is complicated by immigration and inter-marriage: should a white Italian-American or mixed-race American be taxed? And what about the white descendants of indentured servants, who comprised 45% of the colonial population? At least 45,000 were taken from England against their will, and all suffered the sea-voyage misery and death rates of their African counterparts. It was primitive economies and poverty – not just race – that prolonged universal human cruelty.
America should put its servitude history into context with other G20 (advanced industrial) nations:
- Abolished servitude before 1825 – Germany (1807)
- Abolished servitude between 1825 and 1850 – Mexico (1829), Australia (1833), England (1833), South Africa (1833), Canada (1834) and France (1848)
- Abolished servitude between 1850 and 1875 – Argentina (1853), Italy (1861), India (1861), Russia (1861), Holland (1863), USA (1865), Spain (1867) and Indonesia (1870).
- Abolished slavery between 1875 and 1925 – Brazil (1888), South Korea (1894) and China (1910)
- Abolished slavery after 1925 – Japan (1945), Saudi Arabia (1961) and Turkey (1964)
On a timeline, American abolition followed the Great Moral Awakening that swept Christendom in the 19th century. The history of servitude is simply that it existed and ended everywhere. To be sure, America’s history is stained by the Civil War and the discord of identity politics; but, as Morgan Freeman advises, Americans should stop talking about slavery and race. His logic is simple: those who always look back never see the way forward.