The incarceration system is modern day slavery because it was born from civil war, dismantling of slave labor, and the institution of “black codes”.
Jails were initially run by local law enforcement, whereas modernized incarceration-systems function as plantations: transporting inmates and indentured servitude for criminal offenses/crimes.
Because this all is a root from the passage of the 13th amendment, I believe private and government “security facilities” and “punitive” correction arms of our criminal justice system, in simple terms, just transformed how we view the black body— with intense surveillance, devaluation, and violence.
Intense surveillance began with black codes that are historically known as loitering laws. Because freed Black folks were landless, and without monetary security they were immediately charged in Southern states under vagrancy laws. Devaluation began during the torment of slavery and evolved into “leased convent” otherwise known as ‘slaves of the state’. This lack of humane treatment of the black body, and removal of humanity within the black experience exist today through this same engagement.
This leads me to violence.
Since their human trafficking to America, African persons have never been free of persecution on an institutional nor social front. The West African Slave Trade 16th to the 19th century “forcibly removed millions of African descendants, devastating the population, economy, and social fabric. Europeans fueled further instability” through deceptive trading, dismantling existing politics, and colonization warfare.
America has consistently proven that Black men and Black women have yet to evade being perceived as inferior. This can be seen immediately after the civil war through Jim Crow Laws, 1960s federal initiatives aimed at urban disorder, and decades-long policy shifts (notably the 1980s War on Crime) that specifically campaigned for mass incarceration, mandatory sentencing and the militarization of police.
This history is the root cause of devaluation over the Black Diaspora, and the catalyst for modern day Intersectional-Marginalization.
What do Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, and the 1980s War on Crime era have in common with the Black Live Matter Movement? The Black body at its center. However, some project racialized violence against the black diaspora while the movement aims to rectify injustice and mobilize Black independence from brutality.
Racism is not merely a social construct within the black experience; it is a historic continuum of disenfranchisement beginning in our mother land and currently through political, economic, and social positionality in America.
The overlapping paradigm within black diasporic anthropology, internationally and domestically, has kept black folks positioned in the margins. Outgroups have always questioned black lives— our community purely wants to establish we are here, and demand space for our value.
Acknowledgement: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author, not necessarily Our National Conversation as a whole