Off Topic > Off Topic
Thousands of ICE detainees claim they were forced into slave labor
DestroyerOfBlocks:
i'm not sure why people are reassured by the whole indentured servitude thing because historically its about as forgeted up as slavery
--- Quote from: http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Indentured_Servants_in_Colonial_Virginia#start_entry ---Servants ran away largely because their lives in Virginia tended to be nasty, brutish, and short. Although they often worked alongside their masters in tobacco fields, they usually lived apart and often under primitive conditions. They worked from dawn until dusk, six days a week through the growing season, which on tobacco and wheat farms could last from as early as February until as late as November. The mortality rate was very high, mostly due to what Virginians called the "summer seasoning," a time during which disease killed a majority of new arrivals. According to the Dutchman David Peterson DeVries, who visited Virginia in March 1633, immigrants died "like cats and dogs," while the sick "want to sleep all the time, but they must be prevented from sleeping by force," lest they die.
In the meantime, servants—whether seasoned or unseasoned—were treated as property subject to overwork and beatings. For instance, in 1624 Alice Proctor, whom Captain John Smith termed a proper and civil gentlewoman, arranged for her runaway maidservant Elizabeth Abbott to be beaten, and the punishment was so severe that Abbott died. George Sandys, the colony's treasurer, allowed his servants to starve and languish for lack of medical treatment, while in 1649 a mistress was charged with thrashing her "mayd Servant … more Liken a dogge then a Christian," so that her head was "as soft as a sponge, in one place" and her back was possibly broken. Other female servants were victims of loveual assault. DeVries worried that servants were not treated with appropriate dignity. "I was astonished to observe of the English people, that they lose their servants in gambling with each other," he wrote. "I told them I had never seen such work in Turk or Barbarian, and that it was not becoming Christians."
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IkeTheGeneric:
--- Quote from: DrenDran on March 06, 2017, 01:13:10 PM ---They're not dissenters, Ike, they're illegal immigrants.
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I was making a point on Matthew's handicapped line of reasoning, not making a statement on the topic itself. I fully understand that illegal immigrants are criminals through virtue of a law that makes sense contextually, I just think it's ridiculous to imply that legal actions taken against a party are always justified just because the aforementioned party are considered criminals in the eyes of the government.
Nonnel:
--- Quote from: DestroyerOfBlocks on March 06, 2017, 02:03:22 PM ---i'm not sure why people are reassured by the whole indentured servitude thing because historically its about as forgeted up as slavery
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because semantics matter more than the real issue
Tayasaurus:
Good old governments, defining what is morally good and what is morally wrong as usual. Don't you think its time to rewrite or downsize the damn thing?