Modern Day Slavery

I completely understand people’s inability to grasp the concept of slavery and how anyone could have thought it was okay to enslave another human. There were probably a number of reasons that slavery continued to be accepted: maybe it was because the slaveholders (as well as their peers) thought that slaves were not human or because the slaveholders felt they were superior to those of a darker race than them.

Regardless, I think it is very easy to retrospectively examine the institution of slavery and question the morals of everyone living during this time period. However, slavery still exists today in different forms, and people still call themselves morally righteous. Oftentimes, human trafficking, specifically women being enslaved as prostitutes by their pimps (slaveowner) is a very brutal reality in the world, especially in India and some African countries. In the future, people will look back at this illegal, yet widely practiced institution and question our morals - how could we let this version of slavery exist and still call ourselves moral people? (To be clear, I am not referring to legal prostitution. I am referring to the deceptive practice of luring in young, poor girls and kidnapping, harshly abusing (both physically and sexually) and exploiting them for the rest of their lives, not ever allowing them to return to their homes or families.)

I think that different factors play a role in the continued institution of slavery. First of all, people are ignorant to what is actually happening around the world, as well as in their own nation or state. The brutality that occurs to these women and girls is so beyond our recognition that it is truly hard for us to imagine what is actually happening to them. While I am not trying to undermine slavery that existed amongst men and women transported to from Africa to the United States, I believe that people who did not own slaves may have been ignorant towards what was actually happening. Ignorance is bliss, and too often, people prefer not to know the brutal and real truth. That, or they simply do not believe it. I see this in people (and myself) today. It just becomes so hard to believe that something so brutal could be true. But as sad as it is, just like slavery existed in America in the 1800s, it exists in 2013 around the world.

In addition to ignorance, the idea of “out of sight, out of mind” played and plays a big role in the continued existence of slavery. For people without slaves in America in the 1800s, they did not have to deal with the moral issues being questioned, and they could live their own lives comfortably and without having to worry about what was happening with the rest of the nation. This idea was probably especially relevant to those living in the North and Midwest area, where slavery was not as prevalent as in the South.

Similarly, the modern slavery that I discussed earlier is much more prevalent across the world and not in our own backyard. Thus, it is completely “out of sight, out of mind”. People have to go about their daily routine in order to survive and cannot solely focus on slavery, especially when they believe there is nothing they can even do about it.

I experienced this clichéd idea after I read Half the Sky, which addresses the issues of modern slavery. Right after reading it, I was very concerned and wanted to do the most that I could to help these people. However, as the weeks went on, I seemed to put this brutal topic to the back of my mind, even beginning to think that maybe the problem was beginning to diminish, which it obviously was not! The sad reality is that if something does not constantly and consistently surround someone, it is not likely that they will take action.