Not so. If by your definition Slavery = unfair wages - I dissagree. Slavery = servitude. If Slavery = servitude then all who are gainfully employed are slaves i.e. "wage slaves". If Slavery = bondage, then all who are oppressed and forced into involentary labor, then tell me whom is a slave today in America?? Definitions are important. Words are important. You must define what you mean so that those with whom you are communicating can fully understand what you are saying. You can't pour a different meaning into a word that does not mutually exist between languages and cultures. A vegatable is still a vegatable in any language ontologically speaking. You can't say vegatable and then turn around and say "I meant to say rabit"? So to clarify: Slavery: Noun: Slavery 1. The state of being under the control of another person. 2. The practice of owning slaves 3. Forced labor i.e. Work done under "harsh conditions" for little or no pay. Synonym: Bondage i.e. "The state of being under the control of another person". So by definition migrant workers and illegal immigrants are NOT SLAVES by any stretch of the word. They have choices. They are not forced into "forced labor". They are not under the control of another person. I rest my case. Have a wonderful day.
"Whites have NEVER supported Urban schools" .. Oh boy, that explains why 2/3 FAIL to graduate HIGH-SCHOOL.. Computers don't explain why 2/3 FAIL TO GRADUATE HIGH-SCHOOL. You need whitey's little nod of approval to attend class? keep using your crutches, you'll get real far that way ... "You never show up to class ? IT'S WHITEYS FAULT!" typical race-baiting clown .... sickens me to even talk with these types "Remember, Eminem and 8 mile?"... No, I don't crawl around in the pen with pigs ...
By my definition, they are slaves in that they voluntarily undertake all but the physical portion of the hideous practice. To that extent, they are slaves. No need to look to a dictionary meaning or a parsing of words. These people are basically "owned" and "in bondage." They are cowering in the shadows (and desert) afraid to make any sizable move for fear of punishment. For many who are here "illegally," that means being sent back and/or possibly jailed. By that very nature they have NO RIGHTS nor should they, IMHO, other than the rights of humans. That does not include the right to be gainfully, legally employed in America by the way. And they are mental slaves also. Mental slavery is the worst kind in today's world. They truly fear being sent back to Mexico in many cases. A fear that allows them to be fiscally, and in some cases physically, abused. For many of them, that weekly monthly check back to Mexico is doing the work of several able bodies in their country. But that still does not make it right. Noble? Maybe. But nobility has a cost. For many, it is a slavery with a special certification of the new millennium terminology. Accepting work that Americans won't do! The jobs that the poor, lowest classes of the civil people who live in the land would not take for they don't pay enough to sustain a living. Jobs that we are lead to believe by their very nature are beneath a respectable human to take at the current rates of pay. Slaves did the work that the masters would not do. Does that statement have an erie ring of familiarity to it? Not work that they could not do, but work that they could initially make, and later coerce, the poor, the uneducated, the downtrodden to do. And they didn't have to pay ANY health care benefits. There were no eight hour work day rules. No vacation time or sick days. There was no child labor protection. They didn't have to provide any hospitable work/living conditions. Well excuse me, but isn't that what this congressional concern is all about right now? Personally, I fear that we will probably have to agree to disagree on this one. But that's ok for me. I don't need to see shackles and whip marks to know that this, for me - Is a mild and seemingly acceptable form of slavery! A sort of necessary evil for some levels of prosperity and personal luxury that is intended to save a consumer $$ in America.
Your still not dealing with fact that years of oppression in this country have led to this degeneration of society. Your also not dealing with the fact that the inner city schools don't have the same budget and advantages that the suburban schools have. Ofcourse the inner city kids don't want to go to school. Would you? Right now in Washington D.C. we are having 98 degree temperatures. In D.C. public schools (among the worst in this country) manyof the schools don't have air condition, the walls are literally crumbling around them. Many rooms have no ventilation. No computers or access to technology. Poor curriculum. Nobody cares. As for Eminem and 8 mile. He makes more money than you or I so I guess that would make you the pig? My point in making that comparison was to illustrate how whites fair much better than blacks in any economical situation or geographic area. People are much more likely go hire a white guy than a black guy. Eddie Murphy proved it when he dressed up like a white guy. Ice Cube proved it with his show "Black & White". You can continue to deny that racism does not exist in America but your only deluding yourself.
I too have been working, but since 11. And I honestly believed I understood hustle. That is until my 15th birthday. The following summer the parents sent me down to grandma's for a month in the summer. I got there in time to have grandfather tell me that for the next three weeks I'd be working the job with him for that time and that I'd be paid what my dad was paid back in the day. Now I was not too concerned. You see since 11, every summer I ran a lawn care service in the neighborhood for money for special stuff at the start of the school year. You know, the things that mom and dad said their hard earned dollars were not going to be spent on. At it's peak (I was 14) I handled 32 yards on the block and had two buddies as employees. That's actually what got me the big head and got me sentenced to Mississippi the next year. You see, my dad grew up working the farm. He always had these hard times stories of opening the farm in the morning before school and closing things down EVERY night. Mom picked cotton as a kid. How hard could that be? Didn't sound like too tough jobs to me at 14. And I told them both so. I told them how kids had it hard in the modern city and that they should be thankful that they didn't have to grow up there. All they had to do was feed some animals and pick a few bales of cotton. Neither job seemed too intense (For those of you who know, get up off the floor. Hey, I was city kid who had been to a farm, not worked one). Long story short, those three weeks on the farm were literally hell. Feeding chickens, slopping hogs, putting the cows to pasture, harnessing the mule (?, why can't I drive the tractor), gathering the eggs, watering and feeding ~ hell everything. And then we worked, I picked peas, beans, corn, pears, peaches. Thne we shelled and prepared it all for storage. And after all that, we had to put the damn animals away. And then re-feed everything ~ again! And all that was seemingly needing to be done every day. Seven days a week! And what did I get for it all? Blisters everywhere. Sore feet, back and muscles that knew one condition, hurting. All for $0.50 a day. The same amount that grand dad allowed dad to keep from his earnings as a kid. A rate that I had agreed to just to prove to dad that I could do just as well if not better than he did. At the end of the three weeks I couldn't get my butt back to the city fast enough. To this day, my parents and I have such laughter in remembering and sharing that telling summer of my youth. Needless to say, the grade point average consistently hit the top from then forward. Hopefully your hustle was as effective and humbling in your learning process as mine was. The strive for me to achieve was never more cemented than through experiences like that in my youth. And I've had a million of 'em! Seemingly?
And for me, you too are denying a significant point. Our people have never had a level playing field. My folks, who had very little in the way of material advantages, DECIDED that they would commit to better. That they would do what it took to make sure the kids got and achieved better. They planned their moves and made the long term sacrifices. Now before you go there, I have several relatives from single parent homes who also made the decision to do better. There were men in the family who just, left. And never returned, worried or cared. And their children too made the difference. The family pulled together. Cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents made the difference. No government plays there. And they too were young and unwed. They had little if any education. Many of them put themselves through G.E.D programs, night school, nursing school, trade schools, etc. They didn't blame the system for its failures. They played the cards that they were dealt. And they achieved! They took the cheap labor, the hard dirty jobs. The unskilled labor need was the lifeblood of the people. And they hustled two and sometimes three jobs. Many had two full-time jobs. I can't tell you how many of my relatives worked at the mill, the auto plant, the meat packing plant, the post office as the main job and had a little hustle on the side. And the achievement came. Not at the pace of their white peers/counterparts, but they came non-the-less. In our family, we were the first to have two brand new Cadillacs at the same time. Pop never graduated high school. Mom had only two and a half years of college. In the early years of their marriage, mom was a home body. That's what dad wanted. Liberation didn't kick in at our house until the Blacksploitation years. Mom loved Pam Grier! Said she should have stood up many years earlier. Got herself a job despite pop's grumbling and all. Couple of years later ~ two new Caddy's at our house! Air conditioning? What the hell was that? I'm old enough to remember when there was none at all. And we didn't call it a day from heat either. Ventilation was a hall fan. The teachers left the classroom door open so that sorry ass excuse for a breeze would come in. Air conditioning!! Air conditioning!!! Arrrrggghhhhh! Poor class conditions and materials? You're joking again right? We shared books!! In our school they collected the school dictionaries at the end of the class periods so the other rooms could use them. The teachers had to request them in advance from the school library for us to use. My parents made sure at the beginning of the school year, when mom was stockpiling supplies, that we each had our own dictionary, slide rule, compass, notebook, lunchbox, pens, pencils, pencil sharpener, ruler and book bag (of our own choice, anybody remember the thermos inside the box?). Every parent did a good part of that back in my day. The new parents learned it as they came in contact with the veterans. They learned parenting on the fly. In the sixties, my parents dedicated themselves to making sure we had what we needed. I remember when we got that set of World Book encyclopedias. You got a set of Childcraft Workbooks to complement them. Mom wanted to make sure we had it all. The local grocer, Kroger, had a promotion where as you bought groceries you could get a discount on Funk & Wagonals (I think that's right). You bought one or two volumes per biweekly shopping trip. Damn I'm old! Poor buildings? When it rained hard at our grade school, the janitors placed buckets in the halls and classes to catch the water. In the winter they tacked plastic around the windows to combat the drafts. Our gym floor as tile over concrete! Our school over crowding was dealt with by bringing in mobile trailers. And with all that, our attendance figures put todays clowns to shame! You know, rather than complain aloud, sounds like the youth today need to do more listening!
People are much more likely go hire a white guy than a black guy. Perhaps that because 2/3 of this past class of black-males FAILED TO GRADUATE HIGHSCHOOL. THEY'RE FAULT, NOT MINE. Now we have a couple more decades to listen to these irresponsible fucks complain about being discriminated against.... CLUE: YOU DON'T HAVE A HIGHSCHOOL DIPLOMA. Right now in Washington D.C. we are having 98 degree temperatures. In D.C. public schools (among the worst in this country) manyof the schools don't http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/23/school-spending.htm Oh OK .... DC, one of the highest per student spending IN THE F*CKING WORLD .... Here's a hint, your idiotic excuses are no longer listened to by anyone that matters ... You're pathetic, worthless and weak ...
Here's the thing about law and order. I believe that rule of law is the first step towards prosperity for the little guy. I lived in a community that was overrun with LA gangsters because their parents could get the cheap housing and get out of the ghetto. They brought their kids to get them out of the gangs and the kids brought the gangstas. We had hell on earth, I was afraid to leave for work because I wanted to defend the house really. The town got some volunteers to take questionaires around and find out the addresses of all the households on every block where people said the problems were stemming from. Then the town got volunteers on those blocks to observe and report on activity from those houses. The Sheriff's came in on Fridays and Saturdays and haressed the little bastards no end and then they arrested the drug dealers and used the observe and report records the town had gathered to arrest everybody that was not supposed to associate with a known criminal. Crime was driven to the zero level in a matter of a few weeks. In the black community, you have all these activists that hate the police and scream racism over every shoplifting arrest. They are Liberals for sure, and they have gotta be the biggest retardant to rule of law possible and they are the main thing keeping blacks down along with Jesse Jackson. I work in a company with 2000 employees and plenty of black neighborhoods nearby. There must be all of 5 or 10 black people working there. Why hire a black person when it is an opportunity for Jesse Jackson to come in and nick you for hundreds of millions later on? They use background checks for hiring and so many blacks have arrest records, that is one method of skirting any quotas or perceived quotas, and since blacks can't have law and order in their communities and schools, there are not that many qualified ones. It all starts with rule of law and that is anathema to Liberals.
Now now, let's play nice. No name calling. I can see that I must have hit a nerve. Here it is. If your blaming the individuals for their problems then that would mean that the majority of inner city people are worthless right? If most inner city folks don't have high school diplomas why is that? If most inner city folks are on crack, why is that? If D.C. as you state has the highest budget to fund the public school system, why are the school buildings in shambles? Why don't they have what they need? Where is all of the money going? If only a few minorities make it out of the ghetto, why is that? Why don't MOST make it out? If minorities are not the only disfunctional family ethnic type, why does this breakdown of the family effect them so much? What makes inner city minorities so bad? BTW, I'm in the small few that actually made it out and have achieve great success beyond any of my ancestors wildest dreams. Why is that?