Arizona communities would 'collapse' without cheap prison labor, Corrections director

[Belsnickel]

(07-19-2022, 02:58 PM)hollodero Wrote: I get the chattel part for sure; I'll have to believe the subsequent explanation. I do, for I know you know what you're talking about. It is, however, not that easy to do so, eg. when regarding that the US once put people of Japanese descent in concentration camps, long after slavery was abolished, or that native americans were almost killed off entirely, or regarding the cliché of severely disadvantaged Puerto Rican immigrants brought to me by flicks like West side story. But as I said, I accept your explanation, as I pretty much always do.

Obviously, discussing those instances and getting into the nuances far exceeds the capabilities of this message board. Things to keep in mind with this, though:

Japanese internment was a short, albeit horrendous period in history that did effect the Japanese American community. But, because of the narrow focus on the Japanese and the shortened timeframe in comparison, the systemic damage was not the same. As for Asian communities in general, they have never been a large enough portion of the population to be considered as much of a threat to the established political systems for them to be targeted like the black communities.

Our shitty treatment of the First Nations was quite truthfully worse than that of the Africans brought here. That is not something I will deny, nor will I deny our continued shitty treatment of them. Most people have no idea of the absolutely atrocious conditions they live in on reservations to this day. The one redeeming part for reservation life, however, is self-governance. Their under-representation in our criminal justice system is due in large part to the self-governance of reservations and their ability to take care of their own. I know quite a few reservation natives and have heard how this system tends to work.

And lastly, the Puerto Ricans. Well, I am not going to deny that situation, either. After all, I am one often on here talking about their status as second-class citizens, at best, because of their lack of representation in our government. Honestly, we don't even need to look at the Puerto Ricans living on the mainland to see the oppression that our systems places upon them. But here again, because they were always coming here as paid laborers and not as chattel, the effects are not the same. There are laws put in place that target them and other Hispanic communities in places where they are present. I see it here in some of the zoning ordinances and whatnot. They also were not a presence during the heyday of these laws. They weren't the threat to the establishment at that time. So we see more instances of it, now.