Slavery Then and Now

By Marites V. Bundoc

Disclaimer: This article contains details that might be disturbing to the young or the delicate sensibilities.

The time of overt slavery in the United States is gone but covert slavery is still very present in our communities. I want to talk to you today about the narrative of Olaudah Equiano, his and his sister’s experience when they were kidnapped as children from their village in Africa and sold to slavery. He was sold to different masters while his sister was separated from him and the pain of not knowing what happened to the little girl was unbearable for the young Olaudah. At last, he arrived with other slave children to the Americas; this was the eighteenth century.

An excerpt from his narrative says:

“O ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you – Learned you this from your God who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you? Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends and toil for your luxury and lust of gain? Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed for your avarice? Are the dearest friends and relations, now rendered dearer by their separation from kindred, still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery, with the small comfort of being together, and mingling their sufferings and sorrows?”(1)

This is a poignant part of Equine’s narrative on the inhumanity of slavery – he and the other slaves were often shackled, the ones on the ships of slave traders suffered the unbearable stench of the “pub for excretions” – which made the children sick (2, chapters 1-3). And those that made it to the shores and were sold to white masters sometimes endured maltreatment and abuse from the hands of their masters.

While this happened three centuries removed from our time, it is still happening today in the form of human trafficking. According to the Anti-Slavery International, human trafficking is “obtaining individuals by coercion, fraud, force, or other forms of compulsion intending to exploit them for financial gain.” People are deceived into accepting unsafe employment proposals and stuck in forced labor on construction sites, farms, factories, or they are groomed and forced into sexual exploitation. It entails only being hired to work in private residences, becoming imprisoned, abused, and exploited behind closed doors with no escape. It is a terrible crime that horrifies the individuals it impacts. It may take place within our communities or beyond borders (3).

Equiano was deceived into believing that he was being taken into his village in Africa but in fact, he was being shipped to England to be a slave against his will. The same principle applied then and applies now: supply and demand. Traffickers today understand this principle and there is great demand for commercial sex and cheap labor, as well as for arms and drugs, and there are people they can coerce or exploit into victimization in this market-driven criminal industry (4).

Millions of people worldwide are trafficked annually, affecting any community’s ge, ethnicity, gender, or nationality. Traffickers may resort to violence, coercion, fictitious promises, or love connections (5). Bottom line: people’s greed for monetary gain drives them to engage in these animalistic and horrendous acts against their fellowmen.

How bad is this phenomenon today? The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime estimates that 50% of victims are trafficked into sexual exploitation and 38% for forced labor; 68% of those trafficked for sexual exploitation are women, 67 % of those arrested for trafficking are men, and 33% are women. Of trafficking victims, 46% are women, 34% are children, and 20% are men (6).

The horrors of sex slavery as witnessed by Equiano that white clerks in the ships committed, were all too inhuman; they are still rampant today:

“While I was thus employed by my master, I was often a witness to cruelties of every kind, which were exercised on my unhappy fellow slaves. I used to have frequently cargoes of new Negro slaves in my care for sale; and it was almost a constant practice with our clerks, and other whites, to commit violent depredations on the chastity of female slaves; and there I was, though with reluctance, obliged to submit at all times, being unable to help them. I have known them, … some Christians … to satisfy their brutal passion with females not ten years old (7).”

Whether then or now, the tragedy remains the same: man’s Machiavellian desires to gratify themselves at all costs – is truly a devilish proposition of epic proportions.

Notes/Sources:

[1] Equiano, Olaudah. “From the Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vasa, the African, Written by Himself.” edited by Robert et al., _The Norton Anthology of American Literature_. 9th ed., vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. p. 383.

[2] Anti-Slavery International. https://www.antislaverynational.org. Accessed January 7, 2024.

[3] Ibid.

[4] National Human Trafficking Hotline. “What Is Human Trafficking?” https://www.humantraffickinghotline.org. Accessed January 7, 2024.

[5] US Department of Homeland Security Blue Campaign. “What Is Human Trafficking?” https://www.dhs.gov. Accessed January 7, 2024.

[6] UNODOC. “What Is Human Trafficking?” _The United Nations for Drugs and Crime_. https://www.antislavery.org. Accessed January 7, 2024.

[7] Equiano, Ibid. pp. 392-3.

P. S. Say “NO” to detaining slavery victims!