Let’s follow that up with ‘any state that has ever had legalized slavery is not eligible to participate in Presidential or Congressional elections’
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So nobody gets to vote in Federal elections? Every state has legalized slavery, even in the current day. It’s even specifically allowed in the Constitution:
Thirteenth Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place . . .
Do a crime, get convicted, and you can be sentenced to a prison where you will be forced to do work for little or no money, in slavery to the state for private or public benefit, just about anywhere in the country, even if it’s just laundry or making license plates.
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What a weak argument. There are southern states with explicit pro-slavery laws STILL ON THE BOOKS today (and who refuse to remove them).
Also, you ignore states that have in the past or recently clarified their ‘no exceptions’ stance? E.g. Rhode Island, Colorado, Nebraska and Utah.
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You missspelled “most of America”…
The more we pretend racism is ONLY a southern issue, the longer these problems WILL persist. But it’s just easier for some to pretend like their states are somehow free of the original sin of enslavement in some way, and that it’s just us “ignorant” southerners that are the problem… It’s not helpful.
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Your words “Do a crime” don’t represent a necessary component or expression within your equation.
It isn’t whataboutism when it is a real world example of legalized slavery within the same jurisdiction.
If you don’t think the 13th amendment and America’s radical incarceration rates, particularly among specific groups, rate as slavery, then you’re incorrect and wrong in that.
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Which ones?
Actually, it’s at the heart of the argument that actual legal slavery is still tolerated nationwide. The misdirection that it’s a “southern” thing is a good way to disguise that it’s a national problem; to relegate it to “those backwards folks, not our problem.”
But, OK. Aside from as a punishment for crimes, which states, exactly, still have some other kind of pro-slavery law on the books?
Here’s a helpful starting point–a list of states that mention slavery in their constitutions:
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Thank you for the dictionary definition, thereby proving my point for me; that isn’t what Mindysan was doing.
Accusing people of posting in bad faith is frowned upon here, I’m told.
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Only if you are completely unfamiliar with prison slave labor, which is active all over the US right now. Private prisons send prisoners to work for no pay (to the prisoner, at least) at private companies, often doing extremely hazardous work. This is in the context of the “War on Drugs” which was intentionally designed and implemented to incarcerate Black people; and succeeded. Black people are incarcerated at >5 times the rate of White peoplein the US. There’s also the very low accuracy of the US criminal justice system in convicting the actual perpetrators of crime and the fact that, even with direct exonerating evidence, inapropriately convicted prisoners rarely get released or pardoned.
Tl;dr yes, slavery is alive and well in the current United States.
You’re also advocating for disenfranchising the states with the highest Black American populations. That’ll show those racists! /s
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OK, next on the Docket:
Remove Tax Exempt Status for any Religion that has “previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.”
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Considering what many states do to criminalize being Black, and especially young, Black and male, it is not whataboutism at all. It’s just slavery under a different name.
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As many people in the Black community have been trying to tell society for ages now; for instance, the school to prison pipeline is a real thing, and it disproportionately traps POC.
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