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ENC 1102

07 February 2023

Reading Response 3

“You have to see this, slavery is woven into our daily lives”, This is a quote from my

English teacher from today in class. She was referring to the material in chapter 6 of the book

The Slave Next Door and she wasn’t wrong. This chapter was very eye-opening and has me

looking at everything I own and wondering about its origins. Many things like our clothes are

made overseas, and the words made in china are on basically every piece of clothing we own.

Well over there in 2007 India there are manufacturing factories that are embroidering clothes for

the company GAP, around this time this style was very popular so lots of shirts were being made.

Then all that year and the next factories like theses were discovered and raided by the antislavery

group Free The Slaves, and what they found was horrible. Hundreds of children were found

enslaved working long hours without being paid, the text also says they were given “...threats,

and beatings.”. There are factories like this all over Asia(and developing countries), where

children are taken captive and forced to work. Another example of this is what happens in

Bangladesh. The author tells us first that America is one of the largest importers of seafood and

spends billions on it a year, he does a good job of setting us up and getting us to wonder if there

is slavery involved with the food we eat as well. He then tells us the story of what happens in

Bangladesh, here they would kidnap kids, and sell them for $15 dollars into slavery on fish

camps. I believe that author includes this number to show us just how little these kids' lives
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matter to other people. These kids were taken to little islands where they lived and were they are

forced to process fish for 18 hours a day. On top of this the book says “The slaveholders

sexually abuse the boys and beat them regularly” and that “If they sicken or are injured and die,

they are thrown into the ocean”. Reading this was absolutely sickening, you start to think, how

cold does someone have to be to beat and rape a little boy the throw their lifeless body into the

ocean like they were never even there. The slaveholders would also string together rafts up to 20

miles from the shore and they would put boys on there just to fish and clean fish all day long,

and when they came to collect, they would beat them to make them work faster. This camp was

raided but this was just one small camp on one small island and no one know how many more

there are out here. And it also doesn’t help that over $5 billion of revenue was generated in the

year 2006 for Indonesian fish exports and most of that went to America, showing that there is

definitely money to be made and thus continuing the cycle.

When taking a look back at china they are creating slaves in a much more creative way.

China will take these prisoners and turn them into free factory workers. This reminded me of

what happened to African Americans after the 13th amendment. Slavery was outlawed in

America, but there was one exception, once you have become incarcerated you will have become

a slave of the state, and this method of arresting black people on petty crimes and using them for

free labor is exactly what china is doing. In China, people are being arrested and not going to

trial and being put directly into prison, but these aren’t publicly known as prisons, they are

“factories” and that's how they get away with it. This allows the government to arrest whoever

they want and suppress its own people. This really stuck with me for 2 reasons, one because of

the similarities between America and the early years post-13th amendment. This last reason is
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because of this quote “How, for example, can a desk lamp be made from wires, glass, metal, and

electrical fixtures, assembled, packaged, shipped across the Pacific Ocean, and then shipped

within the United States and stocked onto shelves and still generate a profit for the company

when it sells for only $4”. The reason that this was so important to me is that at the beginning of

the fall semester, I went to Walmart and saw a lamp for $4 and thought the exact same thing, that

lamp is lighting up my desk as I type this. I couldn’t believe that I had contributed to something

like this, it is crazy.