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My Family’s Slave

theatlantic.com

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Re: My Family’s Slave

#161

Post by [deleted] »

Chaebixi wrote: post #132
obstinate wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think your advice falls into the "much easier to say (from a great distance) than do" category. What of it? You still don't allow people to remain in a state of slavery when it is within your power to free them with just a phone call to the police. It doesn't have to be easy to do to be unacceptable not to do .

> it is within your power to free them with just a phone call to the police Maybe not. Sounds like the situation was in another country. Who knows if the police there would care or not. And applying the term "slavery" to the story in the comment is jumping to a conclusion that provides more moral clarity than there may actually be. We don't know enough to say if the situation is that of a shitty employer or that of a…

[deleted]

Re: My Family’s Slave

#162

Post by Mz »

achou wrote: post #141

Truly remarkable story. One thing that struck me is that Lola did so much of the work of a traditional mother's role: raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even providing emotional support. The mother had to take on a traditional father's role in bringing home an income. And the actual father - well, he did neither role and seemed to just freeload, gamble, abuse, and finally disappear. All of the work in…

I have seen career women kind of jokingly say "I need a wife." I was struck by the fact that Alex's mother, whom some people here are vilifying, managed to have a serious career like a man because she had Lola at home to do all the "women's work." This is mostly being overlooked in discussion and I didn't know how to bring it up myself. I appreciate you remarking upon it.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#163

Post by xenadu02 »

shas3 wrote: post #51

Great read! Many Asian countries have the concept of live-in housekeepers. I think the 'best' (scraping the bottom, here) arrangement is in Singapore, where the government, laws, and law-enforcement ensure that immigrant live-in housekeepers are treated fairly- kinda like au pairs, etc. in the US. I knew someone in India who brought their live-in maid's sister to the US in some capacity (and AFAIK, paid her wages- sh…

Very true; a former coworker grew up with a "housekeeper" in HK. She told us stories about how her dad slipped the housekeeper extra pay and Christmas bonuses because her mother refused to allow it. She said her mom would have been irate if she had found out. To her mother such people were disposable servants not worth consideration.

I really can't understand such a mentality.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#164

Post by rsynnott »

lacampbell wrote: post #123
seppin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am wrong to think that this kind of thing is more acceptable in Asia than anywhere else?

It's more acceptable outside the west. Western cultures were the ones who decided slavery was a universal sin and had to be eradicated everywhere. There are still whole races of people kept as slaves in sub-saharan Africa, for example. And I mean outright slavery, no ambiguity about it. Abolitionism is a Eurocentric concept. Another example from Asia. Two people were kept as slaves for 14 years in a tofu factory. Thi…

It's worth noting that punishments for 'employing' unfree labour in the west are also often astonishingly small, when it's prosecuted at all. Despite there being a fair bit of it around few people end up in jail over it.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#165

Post by yardie »

praneshp wrote: post #155
jstewartmobile wrote: post #108

Most of the guys I went to engineering school with were Indians (Brahmins), and they'd frequently mention how the jobs here paid more, but they still wanted to go back to India because they'd have to treat their servants "differently" here. I just assumed it was a payroll issue. Perhaps I assumed wrongly.

Did you usually ask your Indian clasmates' caste? Or did they volunteer that information themselves?

If you're familiar with Indian culture you can kind of tell the caste from the surname.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#166

Post by venture_lol »

SCHiM wrote: post #124
Balgair wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanity is both so strange and so static. We got 'rid' of slavery in most of the world no later than a century ago. It was bloody and difficult to do, but we managed it. Yet, there are still people living as just the same as slaves century or more ago, in a world of space ships and the internet. Yeah, tech has helped, we don't have smallpox anymore and the mass famines have stopped recently, but the deeper gestal ps…

When you go searching for meaning, chase all the leads, trying to separate wrong from right. What you find is that beyond all the pop culture tropes, the outrage and terror about the latest and greatest paedophile revelation, evil greedy capitalists banker stories, murderous terrorists and backstabbing trophy wives and all the other stories about 'true monsters'. You'll find that all the monsters are just humans. Jus…

There are good people and bad people. There are monsters and humans even if monsters may have human shape and form.

There is good and there is evil.

One evil act does not absolve another.

Goodness lives forever and evil does not die either

Re: My Family’s Slave

#167

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Balgair wrote: post #83
shas3 wrote: post #51

Great read! Many Asian countries have the concept of live-in housekeepers. I think the 'best' (scraping the bottom, here) arrangement is in Singapore, where the government, laws, and law-enforcement ensure that immigrant live-in housekeepers are treated fairly- kinda like au pairs, etc. in the US. I knew someone in India who brought their live-in maid's sister to the US in some capacity (and AFAIK, paid her wages- sh…

Humanity is both so strange and so static. We got 'rid' of slavery in most of the world no later than a century ago. It was bloody and difficult to do, but we managed it. Yet, there are still people living as just the same as slaves century or more ago, in a world of space ships and the internet. Yeah, tech has helped, we don't have smallpox anymore and the mass famines have stopped recently, but the deeper gestal ps…

The past is still with us, it just isn't evenly distributed any longer.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#168

Post by 13of40 »

yardie wrote: post #165
praneshp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you usually ask your Indian clasmates' caste? Or did they volunteer that information themselves?

If you're familiar with Indian culture you can kind of tell the caste from the surname.

Don't know how contemporary this advice is, but this seems to be the guidance: http://www.hindubooks.org/scriptures/manusmriti/ch2/ch2_31_4...

Re: My Family’s Slave

#169

Post by jhulla »

Wonderful and deeply moving narrative.

Unfortunately through modern capitalism & the global supply chain we are all complicit in slavery.

The lowest cost of labor is zero or near zero. The challenge for miners/garment makers/manufacturers/industrial farms/etc. is to circumvent local laws & regulatory bodies while expanding their profit margins. Once past the local regulatory hurdle, the global supply chain adds successive layers of obfuscation and legitimacy until finished goods reach our homes. At that point, we can't tell anymore the amount of slave labor (or environmental externalities for that matter) that went into the product, so most people buy with little regard.

The solution is to strengthen regulatory bodies at all steps of the process worldwide with punitive damages to violators making the cost of circumventing labor laws greater than the benefit from exploiting poor/at-risk populations. This is an ongoing challenge for all governments worldwide - the difference is only of scale. Whether it is the plight of poultry workers in the midwest, slave fishermen in asia, trafficked women in Europe or indentured workers the world over, exploitation is an intertwined economic and moral problem.

As for Lola, I found it heartwarming that the author accompanied her home twice.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#170

Post by frandroid »

Chaebixi wrote: post #132
obstinate wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think your advice falls into the "much easier to say (from a great distance) than do" category. What of it? You still don't allow people to remain in a state of slavery when it is within your power to free them with just a phone call to the police. It doesn't have to be easy to do to be unacceptable not to do .

> it is within your power to free them with just a phone call to the police Maybe not. Sounds like the situation was in another country. Who knows if the police there would care or not. And applying the term "slavery" to the story in the comment is jumping to a conclusion that provides more moral clarity than there may actually be. We don't know enough to say if the situation is that of a shitty employer or that of a…

> Who knows if the police there would care or not.

That's not a reason not to call.

> We don't know enough to say if the situation is that of a shitty employer or that of a slaveowner, and our only source of information doesn't even know himself:

Well, if police were to check, all the "friend" would have to do is provide proof of salary and most everything would be fine if it was a mistake.

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