Indians Are Jerks (Slavery Update)

That pretty well sums up what I learned about Indians in this story about the wife of one of the New Delhi rapists. When you consider that India is one of the formerly third-world nations that most effectively capitalized on its British colonial heritage and modernized, it's shocking to then realize that the type of casual cruelty with which this woman's neighbors and family treat her is really the norm in non-Anglo societies. We hear similar stories out of Muslim, Asian and African nations all the time.

The teachings of Jesus have echoed down through the ages here and taken root even among the atheist segments of our society. We are viscerally horrified that a family would let their own daughter starve, that they treat their women as second class citizens. I know seemingly kind, humane Indians in the U.S. It seems that they are that way only to the extent that they have renounced Indian ways.

Update: What was that I was saying about Indians being jerks? In the news today, Revealed: India is home to nearly half of world's 30 million modern day slaves, and the story pretty well upholds my thesis that non-Anglo cultures, in general, suck. Other big offenders: China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Haiti, Nepal.

For comparison purposes, the slave population of the U.S. in 1860, just before our civil war, was just under 4 million. But India has approximately 15 million enslaved people today.

The report itself is supposed to be at http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/ but I get an "Error establishing a database connection" when trying to access the site. Brought to you by the team that created http://www.healthcare.gov, no doubt.

By the way, I'm inherently skeptical of almost all the numbers from these types of organizations. I noted in the original news article that it mentioned that all the countries with the lowest rates of slavery were European, except for New Zealand, so that got me wondering what sort of slavery population we have in the U.S.
 
The organization that produced the report is http://www.walkfree.org/ and they call out the Florida tomato industry as "ground zero" for U.S. slavery. Whoa, I thought. Must be pretty bad, huh? And a quick google of "slavery florida tomato farms" would certainly lead you to think so. But the more you drill down, the more the narrative falls apart.

Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of VT was apparently very concerned with the situation (Florida is a county in Vermont, right?), and his site has the most informative article I've found so far: Sixth Immokalee slavery case suspect arrested, from January 18, 2008. How many slaves did this indictment involve? Twelve. But that was 2008. Walk Free is calling Florida "ground zero" for slavery now. Must still be a lot of unprosecuted slavery there, right? Um, no, not so much. Also interesting to note that all the indicted people are Hispanic.

Watch this video starring Lupe Gonzales, organizer of the CIW, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and a Guatemalan illegal immigrant (The illegal part is never explicitly mentioned, but it's implicit in the entire situation. If these were legal workers, they would have had numerous legal protections against exploitation). Try to bear with the sad violin music:

Interviewer: Are there cases of slavery now? Or no?
Gonzales: (translated from Spanish) Right now, no. But the most recent one is still in court. Because now here everybody knows about the coalition.

So, the U.S.'s "gound zero" for slavery in 2013 has no slaves. Right.

The documentary goes on to show that what's going on now is basically a workers movement for illegal immigrant rights and working conditions. This explains why Sanders was so interested.

While being tortured with sad violins, I continue to watch the video. Picking tomatoes in the hot Florida sun is very hard work. I think I would have guessed that on my own. Man, the work sucks, the pay is low, her trailer is crowded. Maybe she should go back to Guatemala? No, not so much:

Interviewer: Why did you come to Imokalee?
Gonzales: I didn't know I would be picking tomatoes. I came to Florida, arrived in Immokalee ... and there was a lot of work, but I never expected the work to be this difficult ... to earn a "misery." This is where I live (Me: shots of pretty standard mobile home that is very common in Florida and in my area). It is very hard to live in Immokalee. This is supposed to be the "living room."
Interviewer: And how many people [live here]?
Gonzales: Nine people. (Me: Previously she said she earned anywhere from $20 to $50 per day. Let's take the low end, $20. If all nine are farm workers, working five days per week, then they're bringing $900/week into that trailer. Plenty to pay any imaginable rural Florida rent with plenty left over for food.)
Interviewer: Why did you leave Guatemala?
Gonzales: Because there's a lot of poverty in Guatemala. (Me: I shouldn't have to spell it out, but poverty in Guatemala is something considerably worse than nine people in a modern single-wide with clean running water, functioning utilities, and plenty of food to eat. Oh, yes, I should mention that Ms. Gonzales could stand to miss a few meals. She's obese.). You don't earn enough money to raise a family. I was looking for other job opportunities. Sometimes, you never know where you'll end up. Maybe somewhere worse. (Me: Really? You're worse off? Please go back to Guatemala.) At times, I ask myself "Why did I come if the job is worse here?" Because the pay is better. (Me: Yes, I thought so.) So I can send money to my family. (Me: She's not just earning enough to live on, she's earning enough to send some back home!)  ... so my children can study ... so they have better opportunities to grow, to excel in life. (Me: Wow, sounds like you came to the land of opportunity! Yet, somehow, you're still here filming a video complaining about how hard you have it.) That is why we sometimes try to find other job sources. It's a big sacrifice, because I have a daughter in Guatemala. If I knew that life here would be harder ... perhaps I would have stayed in Guatemala (Me: Didn't we just get finished with: better pay? Nobody's stopping you from going back, honey.) But now that I'm here ... I need to push forward.

So, that's ground zero for slavery in the U.S. -- migrant farm workers making more money and living in better condtions than they would in their home countries. Maybe the folks at Walk Free should be spending their time in Guatemala or Mexico -- the countries these migrant workers are abandoning -- if they want to really do something about the plight of poor people in bad conditions.

It does make one pause and wonder if the slavery narrative is as trumped-up everywhere as they are in the U.S., but I'll leave that as an exercise for someone else who wants to fact-check liberal do-gooder organizations. Because Indians are jerks, I kinda believe they're guilty as charged.

Update 2: I was finally able to download the report. The methodology seems OK. I think that at the fringes some of their numbers are probably a little inflated, but they're probably in the ballpark in relative and general terms. Conclusion: Non-Anglo countries suck.