Vocaboly.com

[Ray Woodcock]

[From New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/education/13BROW.html?th]

Brown U. to Examine Debt to Slave Trade
By PAM BELLUCK

Published: March 13, 2004

PROVIDENCE, R.I., - When Ruth J. Simmons became the president of Brown
University nearly three years ago, one striking fact could not be
overlooked.

A great-granddaughter of slaves, Dr. Simmons was the first
African-American president of an Ivy League university. But the
240-year-old university she was chosen to lead had early links to
slavery, with major benefactors and officers of it having owned and
traded slaves. ...

Now, Dr. Simmons, whose office is in a building constructed by
laborers who included slaves, has directed Brown to start what its
officials say is an unprecedented undertaking for a university: an
exploration of reparations for slavery and specifically whether Brown
should pay reparations or otherwise make amends for its past. ...

[Not a bad idea. But let's be honest. Has slavery ended?

As you may know, we used Chinese "coolie" labor to build the railroads
across America in the 19th century. Guess what? The Chinese are
still our "coolies." You know all that stuff we're buying that is
"Made in China"? It's made by people who are earning a mere fraction
of a decent wage. "Ah, but we're paying them -- so it's capitalism,
not slavery." Would it still be capitalism if we slashed their wages
by 50%? 80%? Yes! But it would be slavery too.

Slavery, itself, was not exactly an anti-capitalist phenomenon; that
cheap labor was valuable. But it still had its costs of doing
business: then, as now, you had to feed those people to keep them
working.

Exploitation is exploitation, period. It didn't end when slavery
ended. Brown University should do what it needs to do about its
participation in slavery. But Brown and its peers should also do the
right thing for workers, in any nation and of any color, who, at their
own local costs of living, do not get paid a decent wage for a day's
work.

Remember, American jobs are going to China and India because those
people get paid far less. If America had insisted upon making sure
that workers around the world were paid a fair wage -- if it had held
multinational corporations to that rule during the past half-century
-- labor in China and India might not be quite so cheap now.

You can already see the headlines in the year 2150: "Brown University
to Examine Debt to Exploited Chinese Workers." Brown has no excuse
for being a slow learner.

Let's start, now, to do the right thing. Let's end the exploitation
of workers. Achieving that will take a very long time. But the
journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.]