The Month of August: Slavery in History, All the Way To Today
Another month, another topic. Man, time flies!
We're officially in the last month of Summer, and I am desperately hoping that the heat will ease up so we can go outside without feeling like we're going to die. I am not a fan of the hot months.
Can we get Autumn year-round? That'd be great. It's not even that cold now that we've got Climate Change ripping us a proverbial new one.
Anywho, this month's topic has nothing to do with the global average temperature. Rather, we're going to be talking about history and its impacts on the modern world.
Specifically, we're going to be talking about the history of slavery, and what the practice looks like now.
Slavery didn't end with the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States, in spite of what many of us were raised to believe. Not only did it not end the global slave trade in other parts of the world– it didn't even end slavery within its own borders!
Over the past few years, the war on 'Woke' has taken North America and the UK by storm, and one of the largest battlegrounds has been fought over what's known as CRT, or critical race theory.
My own writings on the issue of housing segregation, Sacrifice Zones and police brutality would qualify as CRT to many of these political figures.
Anything that discusses the systemic injustices perpetrated and perpetuated against racial minorities is a problem, as far as the right-wing is concerned.
They especially hate hearing about the issues left in the wake of American slavery, and they routinely lie about how bad it was, and how bad the modern-day problems still are.
And since I love raining on their racist parade, I figure it's as good a time as any to discuss the elephant in the room. The American Overton Window – go on, take a shot – is heavily influential in Canada as well, so dismantling some of the mythology is crucial ahead of our own elections.
The Culture War doesn't respect the border between our two countries, sad to say.
So, starting with our first episode of Unfiltered on Friday, we're going to chat about CRT and how Florida's governor is trying to rewrite the history of slavery with a positive spin.
After that, we're going to talk about modern-day slavery and child labor around the world, what it looks like and how we profit from it without even knowing. And then we're going to talk about how we culturally minimize struggle because 'other people have it worse.'
We're going to talk about racism as it appears in the politics of the United States and Canada, and then we'll round off the month with our final Weary Missive edition where we talk about the 13th Amendment and prison labor.
Buckle up, guys. It's going to be a rough one. If you aren't a paid subscriber you'll miss out on a couple of these discussions, but I hope to see you around for the rest!
Solidarity wins.
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