Jezebel: Slavery

Police Terribly Sorry About Not Discovering Sex Torture Dungeon

Erin Gloria Ryan — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 14:30:13 EDT

Police in Luoyang, Henan province, China have discovered an underground dungeon where a man forced women to have sex for money and perform in pornographic movies. In all, six women were enslaved for periods of 2 to 21 months, and two of them were eventually murdered. The operation went on for two years without police discovering what was going on. They're really sorry. More »

Italian Vogue Unconvincingly Blames 'Slave' Earrings On Translator

Irin Carmon — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:50:00 EDT

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Here is what Franca Sozzani, editor of Italian Vogue, has to say about her magazine featuring "slave earrings," with a bizarre caption about "women of colour": "It is a matter of really bad translation from Italian into English," according to a statement. More »

Michele Bachmann May Care More About Your Uterus Than Taxes

Irin Carmon — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:15:26 EDT

Don't let the repetitive coverage of Michele Bachmann as an increasingly mainstream, or at least ubiquitous, candidate fool you. She's a telegenic opportunist, yes, but there's no evidence that she is still anything but an extremist, strongly motivated by what's benignly known as "social issues." More »

The Truth About Those Allegedly Intact Slave Families

Irin Carmon — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:05:00 EDT

The language about slavery and marriage in the far-right pledge signed by Michele Bachmann wasn't just wildly offensive, it was also just plain wrong, as historian Tera W. Hunter explains in a Times op-ed today. Ignoring how slavery actually tore apart families is, she writes, "part of a broad and deliberate amnesia" that is not only rooted in pro-slavery tradition, but actively trying to deny a legacy of injustice in the present. More »

Debunking The Myths About Race And Abortion

Irin Carmon — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:25:51 EST

Rick Santorum recently said he found it "almost remarkable for a black man" to be pro-choice. The anti-choice linking of abortion, slavery, and genocide has always involved a cocktail of distortion and condescension. So what to do about it? More »

The Girl Store Wants You To "Buy A Girl Her Life Back"

Irin Carmon — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:03:00 EST

We get that this campaign is intentionally provocative, using the loaded language of purchasing girls to break through donor fatigue. But is it too raw to be repurposed for good, especially with all the baggage of aiming this at Westerners? More »

Oldest African-American Woman Dies at Age 113

Lauri Apple — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 11:15:00 EST

Shreveport, Louisiana resident Mississippi Winn, the oldest African-American woman in America, has died at age 113. She never married, which suggests she was wise long before reaching old age (LOL). More »

Common Products Made With Child Labor

Margaret Hartmann — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 10:33:00 EST

Using new government data, the Huffington Post has ranked 13 products by the number of countries that use child labor to produce them. The goods include coffee, cocoa, tobacco, cotton and rugs. More »

Look At This F-cking Hipster

Anna Holmes — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:50:00 EDT

[West Hollywood, May 1. Image via Flynet]

"A Confederacy Of Dunces"

Anna Holmes — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:20:00 EDT

Gail Collins: "People, what's our bottom line here. The governor of Virginia has decided to bring slavery into his overview of the history of the Confederacy. Good news, or is this setting the bar a wee bit too low?" [NYTimes] More »

NY Times Reporters Trace Michelle Obama's Family History

LatoyaPeterson — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EDT

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After reading the NY Times' just-published "In First Lady's Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery," I felt conflicted. There is a lot to absorb. A lot to sift through. Michelle Robinson Obama's ancestry is complicated, glorious, and quintessentially African-American. More »

United States Senate Apologizes For Slavery, Segregation

Megan Carpentier — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:40:00 EDT

Today, in a building built in part by slaves, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and segregation. It is the first time the Senate has done so; the House did so last year. [CNN, CNN, White House] More »

S. Korea Creates "Safe" Spaces For Female Drivers • Real Life Judge Judy Charged With Rudeness

Katy Kelleher — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:20:00 EDT

• South Korea has started painting off certain, extra-roomy parking spaces with pink flowers to denote that they're for unskilled drivers only... i.e. women. • More »

Prosecutors announced today that Josef Fritzl,...

Maria — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:20:00 EST

Prosecutors announced today that Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter in his basement for 24 years and fathered her 7 children, has been charged with the murder of one of his children who died in infancy. He has also been charged with rape, incest, false imprisonment and slavery. Fritzl is the first Austrian to be tried on a slavery charge. He is expected to go to trial in early 2009. [AP] More »

Hadijatou Mani was sold into slavery at...

Margaret Hartmann — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:30:00 EDT

Hadijatou Mani was sold into slavery at the age of 12 and for the next 10 years she was forced to do hard labor, beaten, raped, and imprisoned for bigamy when she tried to marry a man other than her master. Yesterday an international court ruled that the government in Niger must pay Mani the equivalent of $19,500 for failing to protect her. Analysts estimate that there are 40,000 slaves in Niger and say the country hasn't done enough to enforce anti-slavery legislation. Niger's neighbors Mali, Mauritania, Chad, and Sudan are also known to turn a blind eye to slavery. “This will help free other women all over the region," said Romaa Cacchioli of the ASI. "People in Niger now know that if a slave can take the state to court and win, then they too can confidently stand up for their human rights.” [Times of London] More »

Dear McCainiacs: Racism Should Not Be An Accepted American Attribute

Megan Carpentier — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:30:00 EDT

It was mentioned earlier today, but it probably bears repeating: there are some sad (and probably dangerous) racists who count themselves among John McCain's and Sarah Palin's supporters. From shouting out that Obama is a terrorist to hollering "Kill him!" at a rally when Obama's name is mentioned to telling an African-American member of the press corps to "Sit down, boy," there's a lot of ugly shit around this year that makes purple Band-Aids and flip-flops look like thoughtful political discourse. More »

John Edwards, Ted Stevens And Everyone Else Are Hypocrites

Megan Carpentier — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:00:00 EDT

If the National Enquirer weren't relentless hyping its as-yet pictureless story about John Edwards' baby, we could just spend the whole morning talking about Republican hypocrisy, the new poster child for which is Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens. Good old Interwebs Ted was indicted on corruption charges, so we talk about that, his ass-grabbing Alaskan colleague (hint: it isn't Senator Lisa Murkowski), Olympic-sanctioned censorship, late apologies, Al Sharpton on the importance of admitting one's mistakes, and John Edwards' hush money that isn't hushing everything. God, it's like everyone's a hypocrite but me and Moe, and that might just be because nobody knows yet. More »

Buying A Child Slave Costs Less Than An iPod

Margaret Hartmann — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Ugh. ABC News Correspondent Dan Harris went undercover to see how long it would take to "buy" a child from the moment he walked out his Manhattan office. Ten hours later he was in sitting by a hotel pool in Haiti, casually negotiating with human traffickers to buy an 11-year-old girl for $150. In this clip from Good Morning America earlier today, Harris explains why many parents in rural Haiti see selling their child into slavery as an act of love. More »

The Weekly Standard is not exactly the place...

Moe — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:40:00 EDT

The Weekly Standard is not exactly the place we'd normally expect to find a lesson on the historical and ideological unity of the movements to end institutionalized racism and sexism, but times are weird and last week's issue of the conservative journal looked at the lives of both abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the anti-Islam feminist activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. From the biracial background to the teetotaling to the claims that he got "elitist" in his old age, the life of Douglass could probably more easily be said to parallel Barack Obama's, but then it wouldn't be the Weekly Standard, it would be some 8th grade term paper. The point is, both crusaders get some pretty rad sentences in. Click the cover for inspiring quotes! [Weekly Standard] More »

Terrifying Campaign Against Sex Trafficking Compares Women To Cattle

Jessica G. — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:20:00 EDT

In this brief commercial, a young woman is tossed around a dark dystopian room, crying while being herded around like a prize sow at a cattle call. I think most people know that sex trafficking is bad, so I guess I would have liked a little more substance to the ad: how do you identify traffickers? How do you help? Where do you give money? If the ad's purpose was to raise awareness about sex trafficking, then it was successful in that way, but I guess I wanted a little more info to go along with the potent imagery. More »

Pat Buchanan Thinks You Should Be More Thankful For Slavery, Barry Obama

Moe — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Pat Buchanan is entreating the black people of America to be more grateful to America bringing them here in "slave ships." I mean, they got welfare and methadone maintenance and forced Christianity and eventually the right to consider themselves fully human! Where is the gratitude, black people? And no, that is not my word; it's all Pat's. And the news of the day does not get much more uplifting. Remember that guy who founded that (ingeniously named, I might add) anti-Hillary 527 Citizens United Not Timid? Speaking of cunts he outed Eliot Spitzer because they fuck some of the same ones, which is to say those of high class whores, and also he has a tattoo of Richard Nixon. Cunts are a theme today actually, because the Washington Post spent 24 hours following the 24-hour news cycle on the day Jane Fonda said the word "cunt" on TV, an exercise that seemed profoundly depressing, and speaking of depressing 4,000 Americans have officially given their lives to the Iraq and the only uplifting thing is that Peggy Noonan found Obama's speech uplifting. She actually sat there and thought, Go America, Go. Was it the first and last time in our adult lives any of us will have that thought? Hint: Likely! Megan Carpentier of Glamocracy and I depress one another after the jump. Happy Easter folks! More »