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Slavery
Is No Relic
Recently,
a friend told me
that Barack Obama
was giving a major
speech addressing
slavery. But
unlike most of the
two million others
that watched it on
YouTube, what drew
me was not the
promise of a
mature discussion
of race or even
the spectacle of a
man throwing his
friend under the
bus. I watched
with the hope that
the senator might
call on the nation
to get past its
"original
sin," as he
rightly called
slavery, by
working against
its modern
incarnation. What
I heard was a
soaring and
intelligent plea
for racial
reconciliation. As
usual, however,
the discussion of
slavery was
stalled in the
past.
"Words
on a parchment
would not be
enough to deliver
slaves from
bondage,"
Obama said. He was
speaking of his
wife's
nineteenth-century
forbearers.
But
he might have been
speaking about a
young,
mentally-handicapped
woman that was
offered to me in
trade for a used
car in a brothel
in Bucharest. In
an attempt to make
her sellable, her
pimp had put
makeup on her
face, but when he
presented her to
me, the terrified
woman was crying
so hard that it
had smeared. Her
right arm bore
angry, red slashes
where apparently
she had tried to
escape the daily
rape the only way
she knew how.
Or
he could have been
referring to a
third-generation
quarry slave that
I got to know in
northern India. A
serial-killing
contractor
regularly beat the
man, and forced
his entire family
to work in a
quarry for no pay
beyond upkeep.
Or
he might have been
referring to our
failed collective
promise to a
nine-year-old
Haitian girl, whom
a trafficker
offered to me for
$50 on the street
in Port-au-Prince,
Haiti.
Or
he might have been
speaking about
another Haitian
girl, whom I met
as a
twenty-year-old
survivor. She had
been held as a
domestic slave and
sex slave for
three years
starting at age
nine. The place of
her bondage was a
$351,000 household
in suburban Miami,
amidst what
Senator Obama
called "a
land of big
dreamers and big
hopes."
For
them, the
Constitution that
meant so little to
Michelle Obama's
forebearers means
even less. For
them, the three
hundred
international
treaties banning
slavery and the
slave trade mean
nothing at all.
There
are more slaves
today than at any
point in human
history. United
Nations estimates
begin at 12
million and range
up to 27 million
real slaves,
worldwide. Yet
leaders like Obama
rarely mention
their plight,
because it doesn't
register on the
average American's
radar, because
slavery is
everywhere
illegal, because
it is hidden
behind the fraud
of traffickers,
masters and
corrupt government
officials. Real
slaves -- those
forced to work
under threat of
violence for no
pay beyond
subsistence -- are
everywhere and
nowhere.
In
2003, I set out to
find slaves and
their captors for
my book, A
Crime So Monstrous.
Whenever I visited
a new country, my
first challenge
was to find a
single slave.
After ingratiating
myself to the
right people,
often shady
characters, I went
through the
looking glass.
Then the slaves
were everywhere.
In the end, I
infiltrated
trafficking
networks and slave
sales on five
continents.
I
found that slavery
today is no less
monstrous than it
was 150 years ago.
A pimp in Istanbul
bargained with me
for the lives of
three young
Eastern European
women as if he
were selling
second-hand iPods.
In
Moldova, I found
villages
essentially
drained of young
women by
traffickers. A few
made it back, only
to face ostracism.
Most never
returned. One who
did survive
tearfully
recounted how she
had been tricked
into prostitution
in Turkey,
violently raped,
sold several
times, only to be
"rescued"
by Turkish police,
thrown into
prison,
repatriated, and
trafficked again.
A
mother living on
the Indian border
with Nepal broke
down in tears as
she described the
pain of giving her
son to a
trafficker in
order to save him
from starvation,
only to have him
disappear into
bondage, along
with thousands of
other children in
India's carpet
belt. I found the
slave trader that
had sold her son
to a loom owner
and I brought him
to her. In a
belated act of
contrition, he too
wept and pled for
the mother's
forgiveness.
When
that is the
reality of our
world today, we
may out of
instinct turn
away, preferring
only to think of
slavery at a
distance, as a
sepia-toned,
historic relic,
invoked to
buttress the
political argument
of Senator Obama.
But
slavery is no
relic. And future
generations will
judge us harshly
if we act as if it
is. This
Wednesday, Florida
became the sixth
state to formally
apologize for its
history of
slavery, joining
North Carolina,
Alabama, Virginia,
Maryland and New
Jersey. It was an
important act of
reconciliation.
But for those,
like the girl
enslaved in that
suburban Miami
house, apologizing
for the past does
nothing to
alleviate the
bondage of the
present.
To
date, none of the
presidential
candidates has
truly
"owned"
the issue of
modern-day
abolition. Senator
Clinton comes
closest. She met
survivors of sex
slavery in
Southeast Asia
during her
husband's
presidency, and
spoke out numerous
times against the
crime while in the
Senate. Senator
McCain has been
thoughtful on
modern-day slavery
and some of his
closest advisors
have strong
antislavery track
records.
Ironically,
the candidate with
the weakest
demonstrated
record on
modern-day slavery
is Senator Obama.
Though last year
he co-sponsored a
resolution
supporting the
National Day of
Human Trafficking
Awareness, such an
effort hardly
constitutes
ownership of the
issue.
Senator
Obama has inspired
millions of
Americans with his
message of hope.
My hope, and the
hope of other
abolitionists, is
that as president
he will finally
fulfill our
collective pledge
to bury slavery
once and for all.
E.
Benjamin Skinner
is the author of A
Crime So
Monstrous:
Face-to-Face with
Modern-Day Slavery
(Free Press, 2008)
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