Black labor exploitation persisted in new forms beyond slavery’s legal end.

Evidence

In the post-Civil War era, emancipated black men and women comprised an enormous reservoir of labor at a time when planters—and industrialists—could no longer rely on slavery, as they had done in the past. This labor became increasingly available for use by private agents precisely through the convict lease system, discussed earlier, and related systems such as debt peonage. Recall that in the aftermath of slavery, the penal population drastically shifted, so that in the South it rapidly became disproportionately black. This transition set the historical stage for the easy acceptance of disproportionately black prison populations today. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 253 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

The formal endings of slave systems of production in the nineteenth century marked the beginnings of a profound reorganization of the capitalist world system. In Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, through the deepening penetrations of monopoly capitalism and the impositions of hegemonic colonialisms, slaves were displaced as a source of cheap labor power by peasants and migrant laborers. In Africa, whereas the slave trade had dislocated the reproductive cycles of certain social formations along the coasts of West and southern Africa, the “new imperialism” of monopoly capitalism demanded a more destructive form of appropriation and exploitation. The colonial state parasitized the peasants of the continent’s agrarian hinterlands, transforming traditional economic sectors from the project of reproduction into the source and support of forcibly recruited labor and the sites of cash-crop monoculture and the extraction of minerals and raw materials. To the extent that wage labor expanded in Africa, its level of support was limited to maintenance and not reproduction of labor. In the New World there were also changes. The systems of reconstitution of Black communities were, as well, assaulted by forms of forced labor: peonage, share-cropping, and less than subsistence farming. Moreover, Black workers were subject to displacement from productive land and to publicly and privately organized campaigns of terror and intimidation. Ineluctably, resistance was propelled toward new forms, new consciousness, and new ideologies. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Black convicts could be exploited because they were still perceived as slaves. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 80; Black labor exploitation continued in new forms after slavery’s legal abolition; Racial repression shifted form with each change in Black labor exploitation (+3 more)

Related

• Racial repression shifted form with each change in Black labor exploitation (similarity 0.95)
• Post-slavery prisons reabsorbed emancipated black labor through the convict lease system (similarity 0.90)
• Black convicts could be exploited because they were still perceived as slaves. (similarity 0.89)
• Abolition of slavery coincided with capitalism’s reorganization toward new labor forms (similarity 0.89)
• Post-emancipation labor systems trapped former slaves by law and poverty. (similarity 0.87)
• Post-emancipation forced labor pushed Black resistance toward new ideologies (similarity 0.86)
• Black labor exploitation continued past emancipation through colonial and wage regimes (similarity 0.84)
• Capitalist interests that built the slave system later turned and destroyed it (similarity 0.83)
• The prison disciplined convicts into an industrial labor force (similarity 0.83)
• Racial repression shifted form in lockstep with Blacks’ changing labor roles under capitalism (similarity 0.83)
• Depression and slavery-era crises both fundamentally transformed capitalist relations (similarity 0.82)
• The prison boom was a way to concentrate and manage a capitalist human surplus (similarity 0.80)
• Prison abolition has a long history but remains culturally unthinkable (similarity 0.79)
• Post-1877 racial division of labor was engineered to stabilize capitalist wealth (similarity 0.79)
• Alabama’s prison population flipped from ninety-nine percent white to majority black after emancipation (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Black labor exploitation continued in new forms after slavery’s legal abolition #corroborates (1.00)
• Post-slavery prisons reabsorbed emancipated black labor through the convict lease system #exemplifies (0.80) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 253
• Racial repression shifted form with each change in Black labor exploitation #expands (0.60)
• Abolition of slavery coincided with capitalism’s reorganization toward new labor forms #corroborates (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434
• Post-emancipation forced labor pushed Black resistance toward new ideologies #expands (0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434