- Prisoners are "slaves of the state" - Refuted argument
- Forced Labor is slavery. - Refuted argument
I would first like to commend my opponent for his well established and well thought out rebuttal. However, these bullet point shown above are not my main ideas.
My main ideas involve disparity, injustice, and discrimination that has been raging on the peripheral of those who not the oppressed.
Some people are under the impression that oppression of blacks just doesn't exist.
My main ideas was that slavery still exists, it doesn't exist in the form of import cargo, trade, buy, and sell auctions and ultimate personal ownership. It has changed over time.
Initially, states passed discriminatory laws to arrest and imprison large numbers of Black people, then leased prisoners to private individuals and corporations in a system of convict leasing that resulted in dangerous conditions, abuse, and death. While states profited, prisoners earned no pay and faced inhumane, hazardous, and often deadly work conditions. Thousands of Black people were forced into a brutal system that historians have called “worse than death."
"eji.org"
Your second point's basis is flawed. You are mistaking human trafficking and slavery to be the same;
I concede to this argument, for the reasons that have been already argued till all debate clubs were blue in the face, ( sorry I can't site any source of corroborating evidence supporting any blue faces.)
However. I would rather make the point that realizing that something more profitable for some and over the years have been historically speaking, horrific treatment of people. I.E. Attica in New York, Angola of Louisiana, etc...
A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2022 found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11bn annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour.
That revenue mentioned above doesn't even account for the money that's generated through federal budgets etc... The concerns people should have with the prison system are far too great for mention here. However, anyone interested in making their head explode visit
I digress. The real reason to instigate this debate
Is that in this country you are 5 times more likely to be imprisoned if you are black then if you were white. 40% of the U.S prison system are black. While blacks only represent 12. 2% of the total population of the U.S.
Those numbers are not just.
Nor can they be excused, ignored, or dismissed.
Zoning laws leading up to about one or two generations ago openly discriminated against all non whites. Even after the law changed the verbage changed from "Negro" and "white" to "poor" and "not poor". Anyone who lives anywhere in this country can see the segregation even to this day. Intentionally cutting budgets to those neighborhoods. Intentionally driving the value of real estate in to the ground so that no business that hire will build. Limiting employment, education funding, limiting infrastructure, funding for parks and beautification almost to non existence. Perpetuating more and more violent crime, homelessness , hunger, drug addiction and mental illness in those areas.
That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to targeting minorities for cheap labor.
I couldn't possibly itemize all the injustices.
However, let me leave the readers with two parting thoughts.
1. A woman with the name Jane Elliot in 1968 following the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. conducted an experiment some might remember from phy 101 called "the blue eyes, brown eyes experiment." If you are not familiar I would encourage a quick search on YouTube. However, she lead a demonstration that I found particularly profound. This demonstration wasn't about feeling like the roles were reversed. This was about choosing to switch.
She stood in front of a group of white college students in an auditorium and asked "If you, as a white person, would be happy to receive the same treatment as black citizens do in this society... Stand."
Spoiler Alert! No one stood.
Which means, that they are completely aware that there is a problem, and they know they wouldn't want it for themselves, yet are willing to except it for others.
2. The quote was part of a 1994 interview with John Ehrlichman, who served 18 months in prison for his central role in the Watergate scandal. He was a top white Aide. Regarding Nixon's war on drugs.
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
In closing, The history of slavery leaves little to establish a connection from Ancient Egypt, and stigma that was created by the African Slave trade to the Americas. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until Systema naturae in 1735, in which the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus proposed a classification of humankind into four distinct races. European, American, African, Asian. In 1890, the first census you could choose if you were white or black. Changing the way the world looks at the color of skin certainly deserves it's unique designation in history.
Defining what indentured slavery, slavery, involuntary servitude, or a pimp stable, is missing the point of the Americas other unique designation. The highest number of incarcerated prisoners per capita than any other country in the world.. by far. The minority of 12% making up almost half of that prison population is the point that regardless of what name we associate with injustice, the people experiencing it first hand never deserved it. Therefore, reparations for false imprisonment, defamation of character, lynchings, unjust killings, led in the water, etc.... are still owed to them. What are they guilty of, for the most part (exceptions included) was to commit crimes of survival. When the conditions preset for them were designed for them to fail. Yet they persisted, and assimilated. I don't believe anything I have said regarding the injustices committed against minorities in this country can not be Refuted.
Thank you
This much talking about a debate is fine. The only problem is when people intentionally harass voters.
The preciseness of the resolution made it hard to uphold. You needed both to support that slavery is still legal (you indeed showed a loophole), and that specifically African Americans somehow prove that. To this, pro was able to cast sufficient doubt that they are slaves today.
A debate just on if African Americans were still used as slaves by the prison system in the 20th century, you would have plenty of historical cases to cite (particularly proven wrongful imprisonments).
https://info.debateart.com/style-guide#writing-a-strong-resolution
...
As for the treatment of African Americans by our justice system: It is utterly deplorable.
Sadly, many Americans fall into the fallacious thinking that because the justice system abuses them, they must deserve it. A video of a cop literally murdering someone isn't enough to sway that type of person.
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3415-derek-chauvin-was-not-a-racist
This is my second debate, so I don't know what the etiquette is on commenting after arguments become closed. I accept the results based on the arguments given, and want my post comment to be inadmissible, and not considered evidence in this debate. However, after the debate was over, I came across a term I was unaware of. "Punitive Labour" this term describes labour as a punishment for a crime more accurately than "slavery" does. Both pro and con made the arguments that the prison system today is not like slavery that implies ownership over another person. My point, keeping the the 13th Amendment as is, is technically keeping slavery legal. The intention of the word "except", not only has the direct intention of making slavery legal, but implies that the institution now owns you if you commit a crime, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. That is the unintended consequence of the exception clause in the 13th amendment. There are 3 words both the pro and con agree on definition.
Slavery: ownership.
Except: Accepting when conditions met.
Punitive Labour: Work as a punishment for a crime.
If we can agree on these terms being defined accurately. Then we must agree with the premise that slavery is still legal is established and proven.
My intention is not to win a debate or save face. Instead I feel strongly about the issue. I believe that in my heart the exception clause is why the massive disparity of blacks being incarcerated 5 times the rate of white in the U.S even though they represent a sliver of the population. 12.2 %, which is the reason for intentional impoverishment, segregation, crack being distributed by the CIA, the incredible increase in heroine sales during Vietnam, the L.A Riots etc... The prison system is extremely profitable for a handful of people.
I just finished my first debate. I think I won because my opponent forfeited round 3 and 4. It's still up for votes if your interested. My opponent has a win % 94 in 77 debates.
The first debate I initiated on one of these sites, was on if prison is more voluntary than not. The jokes I used haven’t aged well.
To be fair, I can see how Pro can pull a kritik that may decimate the topic itself, just maybe not the mainstream view of the topic.
I was more thinking someone would pull one on you.
I think i should further familiarize myself with concept of Kritik. But I believe that what the term is referring to is that my argument somehow will lead down a rabbit holes of it's no conclusions or even the old blame it on Canada technique. However I'm quite certain that my arguments and conclusion could be proven in court. I'm actually counting on it.
Ah, the old prisoners are slaves argument. Expect a kritik.
https://info.debateart.com/kritik-guide