[ad_1]
Aside from that, Kanye West did what Kanye West did best on Sunday afternoon: he completely confused and indignant a lot of the Internet after commenting on a very sensitive topic without explaining.
The issue in dispute this time: the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery.
West had just made an appearance in "Saturday Night Live" – which did not air West's acclaimed Trump speech at the end of the series while wearing a red MAGA hat. On Sunday, he jumped on Twitter to extend his support for MAGA again, posting a tweet that showed him wearing the red hat. In this document, he called for the abolition of the 13th amendment.
Needless to say, the context was confusing.
"It's good and America is back," he wrote. "We will not outsource more to other countries. We are going to provide jobs for all those who are released from prison, while we are abolishing the 13th amendment. Message sent with love.
outrage follows. Abolish the abolition of slavery? Huh?
West said: He just wanted to say that we should amend the amendment, not abolish it. "The 13th amendment is disguised slavery. . . which means it's never finished. . . We are the solution that heals. "
So let's ask this question maybe risky: what exactly was Kanye trying to say?
He is likely to refer to what is called the "exception clause" of the 13th Amendment, as many speculated on Twitter. This is the part of the amendment that literally allowed slavery and involuntary servitude to continue throughout the country, in the plantations and in the barbed wire of the prisons. Scholars and prisoner advocates claim that its impact is still being felt today by prison work.
The full text of the amendment reads:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime the party of which has been duly condemned, will exist in the United States or in any place within their jurisdiction "(emphasis added).
The amendment was the first of three amendments to the post-civil war reconstruction package, aimed at extending constitutional rights to African-Americans and former slaves, including citizenship and equal protection at home. 14th and the right to vote in the 15th. (The 14th Amendment recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, but it was muted, in part because it took more than a century of black oppression before it was over. had a serious impact, according to the researchers.)
The 13th amendment was partly proposed because of fears that the Supreme Court could overturn Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
But the 13th Amendment's exception clause was a "handy trick," said Dennis R. Childs, an associate professor at the University of California at San Diego and author of "Slaves of the State." : the black incarceration of the group to the chain ". the penitentiary.
Prisoners have been protesting this clause for decades. In August, prisoners from 17 states launched a three-week strike to protest the requirement to work for meager wages in unsustainable conditions, all due to the 13th Amendment's exception clause. Last year, prisoner advocates launched a march against Washington in which they called for the "end of slavery in prison."
And perhaps the most popular, in 2016, the 13th Oscar-winning documentary, directed by Ava DuVernay, traced the leasing exception clause after the Civil War – forcing prisoners to work for current system of mass incarceration and penitentiary work.
"There is a reason why this was written in the law," said Childs. "They had to have legal cover for [re-enslavement], and the best way to do it was to use [African Americans’] poverty, landless, unemployed – collective dispossession – and the Jim Crow legal system as a pretext for re-enslaving this population ".
At the time Congress was debating the amendment, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Republican anti-slavery, vigorously opposed the pursuit of slavery in the criminal justice system, urging that the committee Judicial Committee of the Senate revises this part. But no one seemed to hear it.
As Sumner pointed out during ground debates in 1864, the exact language of the 13th Amendment can be attributed to the North West Ordinance of 1787 which prohibits slavery in the Northern Territories -West, except in case of crime. But why comply with the code of human indecency of the last century, wondered Sumner.
"Now, unless I am mistaken, these words imply that men can be enslaved as a punishment for crimes for which they have been duly condemned," he said. "There was a reason," I said, at that time (1787), "because I understand that in some parts of the country it was customary to condemn people or condemn them as slaves for life. and it has not been proposed to ban this habit. But nowadays, slavery is a distinct, well-known thing, that requires no word of distinction outside oneself. "
"In my opinion [the words in the exception clause] are completely surplus, "he said. "They do not do well there, but they absolutely introduce a doubt."
He proposed a new language, but the Senate Judiciary Committee did not want it. This is the 13th amendment proposed by Sumner that has never been:
"All persons are equal before the law, so that no one can detain another as a slave: and Congress will have the power to make all the laws necessary to make this declaration everywhere. in the United States and in its jurisdiction. "
[Bodies believed to be those of 95 black forced labor prisoners from Jim Crow era unearthed in Sugar Land after one man’s quest]
According to Mr. Childs, when states began using the 13th amendment to re-enslave those convicted of crimes for a number of years, they auctioned them off to the highest bidder. Notably, in the southern states, tens of thousands of people, almost all of them black, have been leased by the state to plantation owners, private railroads, coal mines, and landowners. road building groups. – often to punish minor offenses such as vagrancy or theft.
"The 13th Amendment's exception clause allowed the convict hiring system to flourish and develop, and it has become the most prevalent form of imprisonment in the south," he said. said Robert Perkinson, a teacher at the University of Hawaii who has studied the convicted hiring system. widely. "Thousands of people have lost their lives in the process and this has been extremely beneficial for state governments. This was an important part of setting up the Jim Crow segregationist system. And this served as a basis for severe and punitive imprisonment that tragically became the dominant form of US imprisonment until the 21st century. "
As the documentary "13th" explains, many researchers, including Perkinson, have referred to this leasing system as the birth of mass incarceration and the "prison industrial complex." "The production of goods for private companies, such as furniture or registration plates, is one of the main factors of mass incarceration.
West himself criticized this in his 2013 album "Yeezus" titled "New Slaves": "Meanwhile, the DEA / teamed up with CCA" – a private penitentiary company – "They tryna lock / They tryna create new slaves / See that it is that private jails / get your room today. "
But as for his latest explosion of cryptic Twitter on the subject?
DuVernay, for one, said on Twitter that she would bite her tongue.
"I consciously choose to tweet about herbal burgers and not about the current statements regarding the 13th amendment of a certain MAGA supporter," she said. "Respectfully, please do not @ me, I can not do anything for him.
[ad_2]
Source link
