Slave Owner’s Mentality
 
Why do I keep slaves? To start with, it is way too expensive to purchase the contract of an indentured servant, or worse still, to pay the wage of a free man. Slavery is the only economical way that I can grow tobacco or cotton. Everyone knows this. Besides, when one of my slaves has a child, I can train him or her from birth to be a good loyal slave. I need the continuity that only comes with a reliable workforce of slaves. I also have more control over my slaves. If they disobey or run away, I can beat or even kill them and it is legal under the laws of our nation. If I tried that with an indentured servant or free man I would be arrested. Economically speaking, it costs me considerably less to own a slave than to contract a free man.  The price tag for an African male is around $27.00 while the salary of a European laborer is about 70 cents per day.* So I am money ahead in only forty days. Besides eight of our first twelve presidents were slave owners. You can’t have a much better recommendation than that. Now, I know that I might have to face possible rebellion or insurrection from my slaves if I mistreat them, but I have found that a firm hand and swift punishment of all infractions keeps my slaves working at peak efficiency.
 
This talk of immorality and unfairness that we hear from the goody-two-shoes in our community is misguided as well. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites and ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained..." would hopelessly destabilize society. We can’t have that. We need an unwavering commitment to the founding principals of our great country to ensure the long-term wellbeing of all our propertied citizens. To abolish slavery would be an attack on America itself. Besides, “Black Africans are … heathens and, like Native Americans, could undercut the (Christian) religion of Europeans.”** So economics, practicality and the continuation of a strong Christian nation easily outweigh any petty objections to the time honored practice of slavery.

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Is there anything wrong with the above arguments? If you were a plantation owner in Mississippi in 1854, you would probably think not. So, what is wrong with the arguments given by the slave holder? In the year of our lord 2005, there is much to disagree with. We now believe that slavery is inherently wrong, both morally, ethically and spiritually. So, what has changed?
 
The principal difference in attitude is one of acceptance of the practice through the systematic refusal to acknowledge moral and ethical principals. People of faith, then and now, knew that slavery was immoral and unethical. Abolitionists were active a century before the Declaration of Independence and up until the Civil War. Their views were well represented in the discourse of the time. But the adherents of slavery,  turned a blind eye to any moral or ethical argument when such arguments might affect their “bottom line.” They used elaborate justifications, and ignored arguments that didn’t agree with their desires to continue the practice of slavery.
 
Did the slave owners know any better or were they just a product of their time? The evidence of the untenablility of their position is clear. Slavery is and was an abomination and anyone with an open mind would agree, whether they lived in 1780 or in the present. The keepers of human enslavement chose to practice slavery for their own personal gain. The great shame of our country is that we ignored this evil, and simply looked the other way for eighty-four years after celebrating our independence. The slave owners were supremely culpable, even though the vast majority went to their grave without facing any punishment for misery that they caused.

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 This brings us to the present. We think we live in more enlightened times, but what are some of the immoral and unethical practices that still take place in the United States that are condoned by the majority of Americans? We can start with America’s relentless attack on weaker countries whose resources and cheap labor we seek. We must hang our heads at the 40,000,000 Americans living in poverty. We have the most expensive, least effective health care in the industrial world. Our insatiable desire to have more, more, more for less, less, less has lead to the virtual enslavement of millions of people in the third world. We think that it is our right to have cheap gas and we attack and bully the oil producing counties, as if it were our oil that happens to lie under their soil.
 
We look the other way every time we shop in Wal-Mart. We look the other way every time we purchase products produced by child labor, or in prison factories, or under other brutal conditions. We look the other way every time we pass a homeless person. We look the other way every time a child goes hungry. We look the other way every time we support the President, but ignore the consequences of his actions.
 
We stand on no moral high ground when we decry the slavery of America’s past, as long as we continue to tolerate the immoral and unethical practices of our corrupt government and the transnational corporations it stands for. If we want to “cast the first stone” at the deficiencies of others, we should look first at our own.
 
Johnny Peaceseed

 
* Slavery during the 16th to 18th centuries

 ** A great short history of slavery in America

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