Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People - Essay Example

Slavery by another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People Introduction The main idea of the book was to bring to fore one of the less talked about critical issues in the American nation; that is the resurfacing of a new form of slavery. The neo-slavery has been reignited from the aftermath of the American civil war and consequently re-imposed on the African-Americans until the end of the Second World War. The author reiterates that any meaningful consideration in regard to the socioeconomic progress of blacks after the culmination of the Civil witnessed its reduction after 1945 (Blackmon, A.

Douglas, 2008), He acknowledges that modern-day black American parents are children of those who massively suffered in the inhuman system of white supremacy. Under the draconian laws enacted with the main intention of intimidating the black community, many of them were without any valid reasons arrested, charged with non-existent offences and heavy fines posed on them. Since most Africans were paupers and could barely afford the cost of bail, they were compelled to spend time in squalid conditions in the overcrowded American jails.

The inability to service the debts prompted hundreds of thousands of the blacks to be sold as manual laborers in farm plantations and other places such as the coal mines. Other African Americans who were no behind the bars were rounded up by wealthy landowners and forcefully put to grueling servitude. It was pathetic to see how state officials were used by the government to lease imprisoned poor blacks to corporations, wealthy farmers and entrepreneurs. Such companies encompassed U.S. Steel Corporation which had a big appetite for cheap and massive labor.

Many of the black communities offered their labor with without adequate compensation in addition to brutal treatments they were subjected to such physical torture and beatings even many years after abolition of slavery(Blackmon, A. Douglas, 2008), As detailed by Blackmon, neo-slavery system took advantage of the federal policies and legal loopholes that did not advocate for the criminal prosecution of the whites for their persistence in holding blacks against the common good and their wills. The fruits of the forced labor were evident as the state offers of the southern government treasuries were stuffed by millions of dollars.

The new form of slavery was an ideological concept to scuttle any political formations by African Americans who were interested in the politics as a career. The book based on numerous accounts obtained from original documents as well as individual accounts, reveals the forgotten stories of slavery and how the victims and latter their descendants journeyed into realms of human freedom after the proclamation of emancipation and sadly back to forced servitude. It also lays bare the stories of unsuccessful fights by black Americans against the re-introduction of trafficking of human labor, and the end of the cruel system as the second world war was nearing, credited to the fears of White Americans that enemy propaganda would overwhelmingly label them as the most racists people in the world.

Slavery by another name is therefore an interesting detailed account of crime against the fundamental respect of humanity that was carried by White Americans against their black fellows and the legacy of white supremacy and racism that is still rampant in the modern-day world. The book is therefore an account of how the then American system made laws to exploit the blacks for the prosperity of the American nation as it is very obvious from the records obtained by the author that the American government permitted the evil acts hence the intimate connections to the then American nation to modern-day power and wealth (Blackmon 6-425).

Work CitedBlackmon, A. Douglas, Slavery by another name: the re-enslavement of Black people in America from the Civil War to World War II, Doubleday, 2008.