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Even though the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, there still seems to be slavery around he world. Human trafficking has held the US back from being completely free from the end of slavery. People are still being bought and sold all around and even in America and some are even sex slaves. Just like back then, African Americans were sold to people for work and were treated like dogs. Human trafficking allows for the people in these groups to have a steady income from selling and buying others. Realizing that there are still people in this world that have to relay on others to do their dirty work and think that it is okay to use people like this is showing how people don't want to move on from slavery and they don't care about anything else but themselves.

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Prior to the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was a very common and accepted aspect of American society. Indeed, slavery was practiced unabashedly for hundreds of years.

During this period, it would not have been uncommon to encounter slaves working openly on farms and plantations in many parts of the country. Anyone who's vaguely familiar with the history of the United States is aware of this fact.

In 1865, however, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, making it completely illegal. Yet, slavery is still alive and well in America today, only it's not as obvious.

Human Trafficking Keeps Slavery Alive

Human trafficking is a global problem, and the US is not immune to its effects. As the FBI puts it:

It's sad but true: here in this country, people are being bought, sold, and smuggled like modern-day slaves.

Indeed, victims of human trafficking are forced to do abhorrent work in deplorable environments. They are subjected to beatings and starvation. Many find themselves working as sex slaves.

What's more, this disgusting crime against humanity provides a steady source of income for organized crime groups and terrorists around the world.

To put this into context, here are some key figures:

- It is estimated that human trafficking and forced labor is a $150 billion industry. - In the US, it's estimated that 100,000 children are forced into prostitution each year. - Globally, it's estimated that there are around 30 million victims of human trafficking. - 55 percent of all the victims are women or girls - 5.5 million of all the victims are children.

When the issue of human trafficking is discussed by law enforcement or the media, prostitution and sexual slavery are often the primary focus.

It's true that sex trafficking is a huge problem, but it often overshadows another horrendous consequence of human trafficking: forced labor.

Forced Labor Is A Hidden Form Of Modern-Day Slavery In America

There are thousands of immigrants working as forced laborers in the US, and many of them actually entered the country legally.

They come here believing that they have found a lucrative job and an opportunity to obtain a green card. In reality, they have been lied to and end up getting trapped and forced to work with no pay.

This is a form of modern-day slavery, and it's occurring right under our noses.

Ima Matul is from the Phillipines, and in 1997, she fell victim to labor trafficking in the US. When she was 17 years old, she was offered a job as a nanny in America and she jumped at the opportunity. Consequently, she ended up being enslaved for three years.

When she arrived, her traffickers immediately seized her passport, making it impossible for her to leave. According to Matul, her captor often threatened her, which is a large part of the reason she didn't attempt to leave:

She was threatening me, saying that if I ran away, the police would arrest me because I didn't have my passport, and that I'd be thrown in jail where I'd be raped.

Thus, she worked with no pay, seven days a week. When she finally learned English, she wrote a letter to a nanny at a nearby house asking for help. Fortunately, she gained her freedom.

Her story is very representative of what happens to the majority of labor trafficking victims.

Victims Pay To Come To The US, Enter Legally And End Up Forced Into Slavery

A new Urban Institute-Northeastern University study offers an intimate analysis of this issue, highlighting 122 individual cases. According to the report, "labor traffickers use violence, threats, and lies to force people to work against their will."

The report found that 71 percent of the victims had entered the US legally on temporary visas. By the time they escaped their traffickers, however, 69 percent of the victims were unauthorized to be in the country.

Here's what happens: Victims are baited with the promise of a good job. When they arrive, their travel documents are seized. Even if they have a visa, their captors hold the documents until they expire, and then threaten to have them deported to keep them in fear.

Most labor trafficking victims find themselves doing domestic work, but a large number are also working in agriculture.

Furthermore, many victims pay a "recruitment fee" to their captors prior to traveling to the US. On average, this fee comes to $6,150.

Most of these people are coming from extremely poor countries. Giving away that kind of money means putting their families in immense debt, or perhaps even bankruptcy.

What's more, it's evident that law enforcement does little to address this issue. This is partially because it's very difficult to prove that someone's actively engaged in labor trafficking. Yet, as Dara Lind notes for Vox on this subject:

Law-enforcement officials are pretty skeptical of 'illegal' immigrants who claim to have been victimized. When police get called to traffickers' houses or workplaces, for example, they often trust traffickers over victims. In one case, a farmer shot at a trafficked farmworker who was trying to escape. When the police came, they arrested the farmworker for being an unauthorized immigrant.

In essence, labor traffickers are disgusting individuals who enslave helpless immigrants through fear and coercion. Moreover, they are getting away with it the majority of the time.

Sex trafficking is terrible, but one positive is that most people are aware of it. This means that it's more likely to get addressed. Labor trafficking does not enjoy the same amount of press, even though it's also a massive problem. Simply put, in order for this to stop, this issue needs continued exposure.

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Slavery Still Exists In The US, You Just Can't See It

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Prior to the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was a very common and accepted aspect of American society. Indeed, slavery was practiced unabashedly for hundreds of years. During this period, it would not have been un...

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Everyday, racism effects our society. This article talks about how racism, even if people don't mean to, is still used even by people like police officers or lawyers. In Baltimore when a black man was mortally injured while in police custody. This caused a huge uproar all around America. Protests were going on around everywhere with people having signs that say "black lives matter". People were outraged with how others of higher authority were taking this situation and weren't taking it seriously. The writer of this article explains how she wishes for others to stop using violence for trying to fix the problems of society because they don't know any other ways to. I remember how people from my school and other schools went down to Portsmouth or Boston and joined in on the protests and helped out with making others voices heard.

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"Unfair racial stereotypes have taken root in the hearts of people"

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Roots of American racism exposed again to remake a 1970's TV show 

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Roots of American racism exposed again to remake a 1970's TV show 

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The show "Roots" back in the 1970's was all about portraying history on slavery a experienced by the generations of African Americans. This show would change the way people think  about African Americans and would influence interracial empathy. There is still racism all around America, for example, the Oscars lacked Black nominees in the acting categories for the second year in a row. In a way this has a connection with Huckleberry Finn, how everyone who's read of it or has heard of the book is reminded on how African Americans were treated back then and how there is still racism. The return of this show will be an awakening to Americans that will show us how we haven't resolved the race issue. There have been positive changes since back then and continue to grow everyday. Our first black president, Barack Obama inspired people all around the world that that can do anything that they put there mind to and that it shouldn't matter what race you are.

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With NH being a state that is predominately a white state, white people don' know what white privilege is because it they've grown up not having to worry about being followed around a store when they walk in or fearing your life when being stopped by a police officer. In 2015, the president of Endowment for Health invited white leaders to participate in a Leadership Learning Exchange for Equality. This was supposed to educate these leaders about what privilege and race. While I was reading this article, I was amazed how how people are so unaware of how they are so privileged because of their race. Being apart of a school that is 92% white, it's hard to be educated with other races even though we do gave people of other races in our school, almost all of my classes are just white kids. I wish their was more diversity in our school, so when we get to be older, everyone is used to being around others and being educated with race and white privilege.

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The Confederate Flag isn't just a Southern problem

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The Confederate Flag isn't just a Southern problem

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Growing up with a brother who is a "redneck", I have experienced a lot with what he believes and hearing my moms fight with him about how what he believes is wrong. One conversation that was brought up in my house was the Confederate Flag. My brother of course thinks that it isn't a big deal to have it waving around because he thinks that it doesn't have to with slavery, like it originally stood for. Just like in this article, the writer Charlotte Wilder, tells us the story of when she experienced a man in a huge truck with the Confederate flag waving in the back. With America being for diverse and having the Confederate flag being taken down everywhere, this man having the flag waving in the back of his truck completely defeats the purpose of having everyone being thought as equals and putting slavery in the past. I do understand that there are people in this world who still think the Confederate flag should still be stood for slavery but that doesn't mean that it isn't right and even for the people who think that it stands for American still shouldn't have it hanging up.

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A recent display in Maine made that clear.

One of the men strummed a ukulele and hummed into a kazoo. The other, who also sported a grey beard and a hat that stayed on with the help of a string tied under his chin, played a guitar.

"I saw above me that endless skyway / I saw below me that golden valley /This land was made for you and me,'' he sang.

They provided the soundtrack as customers at the Camden farmer's market in Maine milled about, sampling locally made cheeses, picking up bunches of turnips, and seeing how many boxes of strawberries they could carry at once. It was the Fourth of July, and the market was awash in the red, white, and blue of people's festive outfits.

Camden, Maine, has for a long time been what you'd think a small town in mid-coast Maine would be: Pretty white and pretty straight. Not that the community hasn't been open-minded. There just hasn't been as much diversity as you'd see on, say, any given street in New York City.

But the farmer's market, as small a moment in time and place as it was, felt promising. There were families of color, men holding hands with men, and women with their arms wrapped around each other, their children in strollers as they walked along. It felt like a more accurate mirror of the America in which anyone can now marry anyone else, and where calls to take down the confederate flag are met with cheers, not arguments.

I bought a few things and brought them back to my car, where I put them in the trunk, got into the driver's seat, and drove home. American flags waved from the lamp posts lining the main street by the harbor. Vintage cars sat by the side of the road after being trotted out for their annual drives in various Independence Day parades.

A few hours later, I drove by the farmer's market again on my way to a cookout at a friend's house. The tents were gone; all the farmers had packed up the straggling remains of their vegetables and driven the cured meats they hadn't sold back to where they were made.

As I neared my turnoff, a pickup roared down a side street, screeching to a halt at a stop sign. It was huge; one of those trucks where you don't realize its full scale until it's next to you and you can barely see the person inside it because they're so high up.

The truck had a huge American flag anchored in its bed, and beside it, attached to the opposite corner, an equally massive Confederate flag. It pulled out in front of me, tires screeching as it roared past.

Given the recent debate about the Confederate flag-the South Carolina Senate voted on Tuesday to remove the flag from statehouse grounds-there is no way to read a display like the truck's any way other than "I have hate in my heart.'' To fly it in the face of the Charleston tragedy is to essentially say you're on the side of the Dylann Roofs of the world, not the families who offered forgiveness after he murdered their loved ones. The guy who strapped the flag to the truck was basically extending a deliberate middle finger to the America that doesn't want to spread that hate. And offering a rallying cry to the America that does.

It's hard not to imagine who that guy was, or what was going through his head. All I could see before he sped off were two men in the cab, one wearing a cowboy hat, seemingly in solidarity with his Southern brethren.

Maine is politically divided. Parts, mostly on the coast, are pretty liberal. But a chunk of the population-36.3 percent- identified as conservative in a 2012 Gallup poll.

While the debate over the Confederate flag has centered on Southern states, it's not their problem alone. A few years ago I saw a whole tent filled with confederate flag memorabilia at The Union Fair, an agricultural fair and carnival in Maine that takes place each August. Confederate flags hang from doorways as you drive along Route 32, heading inland from the coast. In 2011, Governor Paul LePage-who was elected in the fall of 2010 by only about 37 percent of the state's population due to a three-way race-famously told NAACP officials to " kiss my butt.''

And yet, even though I know these sentiments exist, seeing them fly down the street toward me felt like an attack on progress, especially after seeing evidence of that progress a mere few hours earlier. It was a motorized, powerful reminder that we are still, in many ways, a country divided.

Even about as far north from the Mason Dixon line as it gets.
July 4th through the years:

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The Confederate flag isn't just a Southern problem

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A recent display in Maine made that clear. One of the men strummed a ukulele and hummed into a kazoo. The other, who also sported a grey beard and a hat that stayed on with the help of a string tied under his chin, played a guitar.

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No matter what race you are, people of other races will stereotype others for their race. In this slam poetry, Alex Dang was asked what kind of Asian he was and he said " What kind of Asian do you expect me to be?  Because anyway you slice that egg roll, I'm still pretty much whatever you want to see." After hearing that it made me think a lot about how this still happens frequently in society where people will stereotype other for what race they are. I've heard my brother say a Jewish joke and people laughing at it because it was funny. For some people, when they first think of a African American, they think of someone who' s from a ghetto and listens to rap music but that isn't always the instance for that person and other just assume that they're like that because of what they've heard instead of educating themselves with other races. In some ways, stereotyping is like judging a book by it's cover instead of reading it and seeing what it's actually about.

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Alex Dang (Ft. Alex Dang) - What Kind of Asian are You?

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So he said to me: "What kind of Asian are you?" / And I said back: / That's a loaded question. / What kind of Asian do you EXPECT me to be? / Because any way you slice that egg

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Ted-Talk : Does racism affect how you vote? By Nate Silver

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Ted-Talk : Does racism affect how you vote? By Nate Silver

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In this ted-talk, Silver talks about how for Obama's election, more around the southern areas like Arkansas didn't vote for him and partially was because of Obama's race. With knowing that this is still happening around the world makes be uncomfortable to know that people are judging one another by their race and are so against others because of that. Silver conducted a poll that would be given to the people of the states and they were asked if the race had anything to do with how they nominated their president and in Louisiana, 1/5 said that it had to do with the fact that he was African American. For me, I don't understand how people could think so poorly about a person because of their race that I would do something against them, I know that doing that is wrong and I do understand that people who voted against him have different views and they don't think they're doing anything wrong because of how they were brought up.

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Teachers often use TED Talks in the classroom to introduce a lesson topic or to frame a student discussion. Below are 10 TED Talks about race in America - curated by TED-Ed upon educator request - that teachers may find useful in the classroom:
Featured image: Angélica Dass/Humanæ
For more education resources from TED, sign up for the weekly TED-Ed newsletter here >>

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10 TED classroom resources about race in America

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Teachers often use TED Talks in the classroom to introduce a lesson topic or to frame a student discussion.

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The difference of how African Americans and white people are raised. African Americans are raised with caution and awareness but with white people, they don't seem to be raised with the same caution. Which I believe is true. And if the kids aren't taught these things then they don't know whats right and wrong and they have to figure it out themselves. Along with forgetting about their ancestors, families can no longer teach their kids about what they had to go through for their family to be here today and they may take those things for granted. I think that this history should be shared around because others wouldn't be educated on what African Americans had to go through and no to take their lives for granted.

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BECAUSE we have forgotten our ancestors,
our children no longer give us honor.

BECAUSE we have lost the path our ancestors cleared
kneeling in perilous undergrowth,
our children cannot find their way.

BECAUSE we have banished the God of our ancestors,
our children cannot pray.

BECAUSE the old wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing,
our children cannot hear us crying.

BECAUSE we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering,
our befuddled children give birth to children
they neither want nor understand.

BECAUSE we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within our
gates, an holds us up to the mirror of the world shouting,
'Regard the loveless'

Therefore we pledge to bind ourselves to one another, to embrace our
lowliest, to keep company with our loneliest, to educate our illiterate,
to feed our starving, to clothe our ragged, to do all good things,
knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters.

We ARE our brothers and sisters.

IN HONOR of those who toiled and implored God with golden tongues,
and in gratitude to the same God who brought us out of hopeless desolation, we make this pledge.

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The Black Family Pledge Poem by Maya Angelou - Poem Hunter

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BECAUSE we have forgotten our ancestors,our children no longer give us honor. BECAUSE we have lost the path our ancestors clearedkneeling in perilous undergrowth,our children cannot find their way. BECAUSE we have banished the God of our ancestors,our children cannot pray. BECAUSE the old wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing,our children cannot hear us crying.

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" The n-word is overused in rap music" , " because African Americans use the word, It's okay for anyone to use it." and " Thirty years from now, the n-word will be used by everyone". In the video with the two African American men talked about how the word was just given to people of other races to say it because it is in the popular songs. I believe that this is true because I've heard people who aren't African Americans sing it in songs and I feel like that shouldn't b said. The two old white men also talk about how it should go away and that it isn't needed to be said. Which I think should be true because I hear that word all the time and it really doesn't have to be.

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Explore perspectives.
Select three to see a custom video.

Start your own conversation

Add a question or use one of the submitted questions to start a conversation with your social network. (Note: The n-word has not been filtered from submissions.)

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n-word; donte stallworth; neal brennan; dave chappelle show; nfl; national football leagues bans nword; nfl bans the nword; nigger; nigga; nigger vs nigga; kkk; ku klux klan; jay z; oprah;

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The n-word: An interactive project exploring a singular word

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After the National Football League made the controversial decision to ban the n-word on the field this year, a team of Washington Post journalists explored the history of the word, its evolution and its place in American vernacular today.

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In this book, the author is mad that she didn't understand the book. Morrison explains how the way that people of color were treated was awful and disgusting. Morrison says that Huck should have a black father. She also thinks that Jim should've been Huck's father because the book wouldn't have been as well known. I believe that this author is just focusing on just the negative things that happen in the novel and the use of the n-word. Morrison also doesn't focus on the good throughout the book, just what happened that had made her uncomfortable. Just writing about the bad things on something and having others read that could have a negative affect for when people read this article. Changing other opinions about how some things are portrayed in this novel could lead to people just thinking about all of the bad that happened instead of the good