Questions on Slavery Today

A. Define the term glut on page 2.

Glut (n) = excessive/abundant supply of something

B. Evaluate this article's lead using the criteria we established in class.

“Slaves are cheap these days.” It leaves the why out of it à doesn’t explain why slaves are cheap or why it is such a worrying issue.

C. Create a visual organizer for some of the statistics cited.

- 27 million people are enslaved right now (more than any other amount in world history)

·      3^rd revenue earner in organized crime after drugs and arms.

- 14000-17500 people are trafficked into the US every year

- debt bondage is the most common form of slavery (traps from 15 to 20 million people)

- Slaves used to be worth $40,000 à they can be bought for $30 now in the Ivory Coast

- 80% of the people trafficked across national borders are female

·      70% of those females end up in the slave trade

D. How has the United States government tried to stave off human trafficking? Cite examples. Are these measures fair? Why? Why not?

The increase of trafficking in the U.S has been answered with new laws such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000, a confirmation of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime which began in 2000, and an increase in the information shared between nations to fight trafficking. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act has a purpose to “combat trafficking in persons…to ensure just and effective punishment of traffickers, and to protect their victims.” While the UN Convention was more of an agreement between countries which had a similar purpose. These methods seem fair because they try to promise safety for the victims as well as punishments to those who traffic, to top it off, they were planned and discussed on a global scale, which makes them more useful over all.

E. Why does Leach use Deng's story ?

Leach uses Deng’s story to exemplify slavery today and make it more real in readers’ heads. It is an appeal to pathos from the author, where she tries to make the readers feel sympathy for a slave in this time and open their eyes in a more brutal way to the fact that slaver is in fact real in our lifetime.

F. Compare this understanding of slavery to the antebellum slavery in the United States according to Douglass.

This understanding of slavery seems a lot bleaker than it was in the United States during Douglass’s time because slaves are worth even less than they were before (this implies that they can be more easily bought around the world and that they need to be exported on a mass scale in order for the traffickers to make any kind of profit), and because it isn’t even noticed around the globe. Slavery now is centered more around women and children with emphasis on the sex trade, while before it was more centered around working. Certainly slavery is more restricted now than it was before: it is illegal in every country and most people around the world are morally opposed to it while in Douglass’s time it was a wide culturally accepted phenomenon.