Offense

[Mark Graber]

Seems to me there is a pretty obvious answer to this one.  The core
institution forbidden by the 13th Amendment was justified in part by
claims that persons of color were not fully human, that on the
evolutionary scale, they were in between certain animals and white
persons.  Granted slavery may exist in other forms, but given the
history of the post-civil war amendments, there seems a rather clear
inference that people may not be treated like animals.

Mark A. Graber

>>> <DavidEBernstein at aol.com> 08/08/06 6:23 PM >>>
Like Eugene, I'm not sure I get this.  The 13th Amendment doesn't
prohibit 
the enslavement of African Americans.  It prohibits the enslavement of
anyone.  
To my knowledge, to the extent 13th Amendment prosecution come up
nowadays, 
they almost always involve immigrants, who are almost always either
Asian or 
Hispanic.  In fact, just the other day I was reading about a case of a
Saudi 
Arabian family somewhere in the Western United States that was enslaving
their 
maid, who was from an Asian country, maybe Indonesia.  Even in past
days, around 
the turn of the century, many of the peonage prosecutions under the
authority 
of the 13th Amendment involved Italian immigrants.  Given that the 13th 
Amendment is in no way race-specific, that it has not been applied in a 
race-specific way, and that slavery has existed throughout human history
and has not been 
confined to persons of African descent, I don't see how it can be
"racist" to 
analogize the status of animals to the status of slaves.  Dehumanizing
and 
degrading to humans of all races, yes, but racist, no--unless of course,
there 
Mark had a racist intent, which I presume is not the case, and there is 
certainly no evidence of that.  Yvette says that it's subliminally
easier to make 
Mark's argument because of the historical association of blacks with
slavery, but 
that's pure conjecture--someone with the name of Stein might just as
easily 
"subiminally" associate slavery with his ancestors in Egypt.

In a message dated 8/8/2006 6:04:47 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
7barksda at jmls.edu writes:
I do want to say that I was not trying to shut Mark up. If he had not
posted, 
then the issue would never have been raised - I think that it was good
that  
the issue was raised so that we could have a discussion about it. My
objection 
was not so much to his throwing out the argument, as it was to the
argument 
itself - which as I keep saying, I think is racist.  

yb