Slavey Then And Now :: essays research papers

Slavery: Then and Now When we think about slavery many things come to our mind. There are many different ways one can describe slavery. If you were to look it up in a dictionary it would say that a slave is â€Å"one who is owned and forced into service by another,† this was the definition given in the Webster’s Dictionary. But then again if you were to look it up in the Oxford Dictionary the definition given here is of one who is an â€Å"obsessive devotee.† On the whole slavery can have different meanings to different people. The meaning of slavery has a different meaning today than it did years ago. As Alex Haley wrote, slavery was difficult to explain years ago because it was going on at the time. Today when someone says the word slavery more than half of the people would think of plantations and people being forced to work the land and being mistreated. But what do you say to a little child who comes up to you and asks you want slavery is? In today’s society we can take the word slavery and put it to the modern days. Would one say that slavery only existed years ago when plantation owners would buy people to force them to do hard labor and mistreat them, or would one mention about the slavery that goes on in today’s society? What about the people who are forced to do hard labor like many years ago? Many people do not realize it but indeed we do have modern-day slavery. What is today’s modern day slavery? There are several things that can be put into today’s slavery. This is one problem that is often over looked in today’s society. It may not have as much impact as it did years ago, but if we stop and think about it, this problem is still as harsh and crude as it was years ago. I would think that up to some extent the problem has grown now because it is in fact often overlooked. For example in Sudan, as a result of an Islamic vs. Christian civil war, women and children that are mostly black and Christian are captured in raids. They are later sold as chattel slaves in â€Å"modern day slave markets†. Now the question that I have is, â€Å" Does a human life have a price?† Well according to these people it does, and the price that they decided to put on a human life has been as low as fifteen dollars.