The Elephant in the Room: Why is slavery still allowed to Exist?

 

Above is a graphic that shows the nations who voted and how they voted on the resolution Ghana brought to the United Nations regrading the Transatlantic Slave Trade. "-" means the nation voted negative. "+" means that the nation voted yes. "x" means the nation was present but did not vote.  Notice a trend? The nations that benefited from that atrocity are the ones that did not vote for it. Curious. They do not seem to want to be accountable. But what is worse to me is that the nations that are documented to still enslave Africans today, live Libya, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, voted for the resolution. Why?

When the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution A/80/L.48 in March 2026, it marked a definitive shift in the global conversation on slavery. While the resolution passed with a significant majority, the voting board revealed a sharp division: the United States voted "No," alongside only two other nations (Israel and Argentina), while 52 nations (primarily European and G7 allies) abstained.

To understand this vote, it is necessary to look past the moral consensus—that the Transatlantic Slave Trade was a "gravest crime"—and analyze the specific legal and financial framework that the resolution attempted to establish.

The Context: A Resolution Beyond Remembrance

On March 25, 2026, commemorating the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery, the General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement as the Gravest Crime against Humanity (A/80/L.48).

Historically, UN resolutions on this topic focused on education, memory, and combating systemic racism. A/80/L.48 was different. Spearheaded by the African Union, the text's primary purpose was to move from symbolic remembrance to concrete reparatory action.

Decoding the Final Text: Why the U.S. Voted "No"

The full text of A/80/L.48 introduced several clauses that the United States deemed "problematic" and fundamentally incompatible with established legal principles. In its formal Explanation of Position, the U.S. delegation articulated several core objections.

1. The Legal Right to Reparations

The most contentious element of the resolution was its framing of reparations.

• The Text: The resolution emphasizes that "claims for reparations represent a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs" and calls for "inclusive, good-faith dialogue on reparatory justice," including formal apologies, restitution of cultural artifacts, and "compensation."

• The U.S. Objection: The United States specifically objected to the language that suggested a "legal right" to reparations. The U.S. representative argued that historical acts which were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred (inter-temporal rule) do not carry a modern duty for reparation.

2. Retroactivity and established legal frameworks

Nations arguing against the resolution, including the United Kingdom (which abstained), based their legal defense on the principle of non-retroactivity.

• The Text: The resolution designates the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement as a "crime against humanity."

• The U.S. Objection: Western nations argued that you cannot retroactively apply modern international legal definitions (like "Crimes against Humanity" or jus cogens violations) to events that occurred 400 years ago, before those legal categories existed. They argued that any framework for reparatory justice must be grounded in existing, consensual multilateral instruments, not novel interpretations that establish dangerous precedents.

Why Nations with "Modern-Day Slavery" Voted "Yes"

A significant point of contention raised during the debate was the apparent contradiction: nations that currently struggle to eradicate modern-day human rights violations (such as human trafficking or forced labor) voted overwhelmingly for the resolution.

This voting pattern is understood through three factors:

• Distinction of Definitions: Modern states have laws explicitly prohibiting exploitation. A nation can ideologically oppose the legal institution of historical chattel slavery (which this resolution addresses) while simultaneously failing to combat illegal human trafficking within its borders.

• Diplomatic Strategy: Voting "No" on a resolution condemning historical African enslavement is a severe political liability. Supporting the text allows states to align themselves with the African Union's agenda for reparatory justice on the global stage.

• Historical vs. Internal Accountability: The resolution explicitly focuses on chattel slavery and colonialism. By supporting it, some governments shift focus toward the historical accountability of colonial powers rather than their own current internal human rights record.

Summary

The definitive distinction between the "Yes," "Abstain," and "No" votes was not a debate on the inhumanity of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The 52 abstentions and 3 "No" votes (including the U.S.) were based on objections to legal terminology that would create financial or legal mechanisms for material repair, while the 123 "Yes" votes focused on the resolution's historic moral declaration and its call for a political framework of reparatory dialogue.

Quote of the Day: Malcom X

"Someone has to pay. Somewhere, somehow, someone has to pay." Brother Malcolm X

The "Levant"

 

An exploration of the Levant reveals why this ancient term is seeing a modern resurgence in academic, geopolitical, and energy sectors. By moving away from Eurocentric labels like the "Middle East," we can better understand the unique cultural and historical identity of the Eastern Mediterranean.

What is the Levant?

Derived from the French word levant, meaning "rising," the term refers to the "Land of the Rising Sun" from the perspective of Western Europe. It is the linguistic equivalent of the Arabic al-Mashriq.

Geographically, the Levant encompasses the region south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the Arabian Desert to the east. Modern nations within these historical boundaries include:

• Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan

• Israel and Palestine

• Cyprus and the Hatay Province of Turkey

Why the Term is Reappearing

Though the name has been used for centuries—originating with 15th-century French and Italian traders—it has recently returned to the forefront of global conversation for three primary reasons:

1. A Neutral Geographic Alternative: Unlike "Middle East," which was coined by the British military in the 19th century, "Levant" describes the region based on its own geography. For historians and researchers, it provides a stable name for a cultural and ecological zone that predates modern colonial borders.

2. The Rise of ISIL: The "L" in the acronym ISIL stands for "Levant." As news agencies covered the group's activities, they reintroduced the term to a global audience to explain their aim of establishing a caliphate across the historical "Greater Syria" (Bilad al-Sham).

3. The Levantine Basin: The discovery of massive natural gas deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean has led to the official designation of the "Levantine Basin." This term is now standard in energy and financial reporting.

Comparing Regional Labels

Understanding the Levant requires distinguishing it from other common terms:

• The Levant: 15th-century origin; used for archaeology, ecology, and energy. It is considered a stable historical context for data and research.

• Middle East: 19th-century origin; common in general politics but criticized for being Eurocentric.

• Near East: 19th-century origin; primarily used in the context of ancient history, such as the study of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

[Image comparing The Levant, Middle East, and Near East]

A Legacy at the Crossroads

The Levant remains one of the most significant regions in human history. As a core part of the Fertile Crescent, it is the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For millennia, it has served as a land bridge between Asia, Africa, and Europe, creating a rich melting pot of language, cuisine, and culture.

For those managing historical datasets or automated workflows, "The Levant" offers a persistent tag that remains accurate even as political borders and country names shift over time.

The Hierarchy of Bondage: Defining Chattel Slavery in a Global Context

Slavery is not a singular, monolithic experience. It is a spectrum of human exploitation that has existed in nearly every major civilization across history. While the word "slavery" evokes a general image of forced labor, the legal codes, social mobility, and sheer scale varied dramatically across different eras and geographies. In understanding this complex history, we must start with the most extreme manifestation of this system: Chattel Slavery.

To understand why the American system of slavery is remembered with such particular horror, we must understand how it relates to other global systems, why some constitute chattel bondage while others do not, and how it was both uniquely horrifying and shockingly similar to other extractive trades.

Defining Chattel Slavery

"Chattel" is a legal term derived from the same root as "cattle." It refers to personal, movable property. Therefore, Chattel Slavery is a specific system of bondage where an enslaved person has no legal personhood. They are not a "servant" or a "debtor" with rights; they are legally classified as an object.

The fundamental characteristics of chattel slavery are:

1. Personhood Stripped: The individual is the absolute legal property of the owner, to be bought, sold, traded, inherited, or even destroyed at will.

2. Hereditary Status: Bondage is almost always passed automatically from the parent (usually the mother) to the child, creating a permanent, multi-generational slave caste.

3. Total Dehumanization: It frequently relies on a robust ideological framework—often based on racial, ethnic, or religious hierarchy—to justify the permanent, sub-human status of the enslaved.

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A Global Survey of Bondage: Who Practiced Chattel Slavery?

While many societies practiced forms of forced labor, not all met the strict definition of chattel slavery. Below is a comparison of major historical systems:

Examples of Chattel Slavery (Permanent Property)

• The Transatlantic Slave Trade/American Slavery: Yes. This represents the most industrialized, racially coded form of chattel slavery in history. Enslaved Africans were legally defined as property for life, and their status was explicitly passed to their children based on race.

• The TransSaharan/Arab Slave Trade: Yes, legally. Legally, slaves captured in West Africa, Europe, or the Mediterranean were bought and sold as chattel. However, as we discussed previously, the Islamic social context often offered more paths to integration and manumission (freedom) than the American system.

• Ancient Greece & Rome: Yes. Roman law was clear: a slave (servus) was an object with no rights. They could be executed by their masters without penalty. While manumission was common, a slave was, fundamentally, movable property.

Marginal or Complex Cases (Hybrid/Paternalistic Systems)

• The Bible (Old Testament/Mosaic Law): Complex/No. Biblical law differentiated strictly between Hebrew and foreign slaves. Hebrew slaves were primarily debt slaves, meant to be released after six years. Foreign slaves, however, were held more permanently and could be inherited. While Mosaic law provided unique physical protections that were revolutionary for the ancient world, the permanent status of foreign slaves leans toward chattel principles.

• Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon: Marginal. These societies often practiced state-imposed forced labor (corvée) on the entire citizenry for building pyramids or canals. While "chattel" slaves captured in war existed, they often had legal standing to own property, marry free people, and even testify in court, giving them more personhood than in Western codes.

• Islamic World (Abbasid/Ottoman): Hybrid. While the legal status of the slave was chattel, the implementation was unique. Systems like the Mamluk (military slaves) allowed enslaved men to rise to become the political elite and even Sultans. Conversion and manumission were heavily encouraged.

Systems Defined by Context (Caste, Feudal, Penalty)

• India: No. While bondage existed, it was heavily tied to the caste system. The relationship was often more akin to permanent, hereditary serfdom where individuals were tied to the land or to a specific jati (sub-caste) duty, rather than being movable property.

• China: Complex/Contextual. Slavery was often a state punishment for crimes or a desperate response to poverty (selling children). While "domestic slaves" were hereditary, Chinese law generally provided more codified protections than chattel systems, viewing them as subordinate family members rather than objects.

• Japan: No. In pre-modern Japan, forced labor was largely managed through strict class structures. Slavery, as an overt institution of human trafficking, was largely abolished by the late 16th century under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, shifting toward fixed-term indentured servitude.

• Current Saudi Arabia: Illegal, but prevalent in practice. Slavery was formally abolished in Saudi Arabia in 1962. However, the modern Kafala system—which ties migrant workers' legal status to a single employer—often creates conditions of forced labor, passport confiscation, and debt bondage that modern human rights organizations categorize as modern-day slavery, though it is not de jure chattel bondage.

• Current Liberia: Illegal, complex history. Liberia was founded by freed American slaves, who tragically established a tiered society that exploited the indigenous population. Today, while chattel slavery is illegal, the country faces significant challenges with human trafficking and forced child labor, a legacy of regional conflicts.

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Conclusion: The Unique and Universal Horrors of the American System

When contrasting the American slave system with the historical spectrum of bondage, it stands out as uniquely destructive in its legal and social totality.

How American Slavery was Unique

The unique distinctiveness of the American chattel system lies in two innovations: industrialization and racial castes.

1. Industrial Agriculture: Unlike ancient systems where slaves were symbols of domestic wealth, American slavery was designed for mass-market commodity production. Slaves were the cogs in an industrial machine, treated not as humans to be paternalistically managed, but as units of capital to be "worked to death" for maximal efficiency on sugar or cotton plantations.

2. Permanent Racial Caste: In Rome or the Islamic World, a freed slave's descendants eventually merged into the general citizenry. In the Americas, slavery was legally defined by skin color. Freedom was not the end of bondage; it was the entry into a permanent secondary caste. This ensured that the descendants of the enslaved would remain economically and socially marginalized centuries after emancipation.

How American Slavery shared the brutality of the Sub-Saharan Trade

While the American system was unique, we must challenge the idea that its brutality was distinct from other extractive trades. A powerful argument can be made that the exploitation faced by enslaved Africans in the Americas shared every key atrocity of the Sub-Saharan slave trade, including castration and total exploitation.

• Exploitation: The American system perfected the extraction of labor through unmitigated violence. From "breeding programs" designed to grow the capital assets of the plantation to the physical and sexual torture used to maintain total compliance, the exploitation was absolute.

• Castration: While not practiced on the industrial scale of the Ottoman harem system, castration was absolutely used in the American system, both as a terrifying punishment for rebellious males and as a tool for the selective "breeding" of the slave population to ensure a "docile" workforce.

• The Trade: Both systems relied on the violent collapse of African societies. The Transatlantic "Middle Passage" was a mirror of the brutal death-marches across the Sahara, both designed to break the individual’s identity before they reached the auction block.

The history of slavery reminds us that "chattel bondage" is not a fossilized concept of the past, but the extreme edge of a spectrum of human exploitation that requires constant, vigilant opposition.

Sources for Further Reading

• On Defining Chattel Slavery: For the legal definitions and types of bondage, see the Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas. 

• On the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database: Voyages provides data on 36,000 voyages. https://www.slavevoyages.org/

• On Comparative Slavery (Ancient Rome vs. US): Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/

• On Medieval Islamic Slavery/Saqaliba: For sources on Slavic slaves, see The Chronicle of San Juan de la Peña. https://www.upenn.edu/

• On Modern Slavery/Kafala System: See reports by Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/

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Part 1: White people created chattel slavery; It is the worst and gravest crime against humanity, Black people. Yet white America refused to agree, stating it was legal. pic.twitter.com/SHfaztDl7y

— kevin blue (@kevinblue345) March 28, 2026