Oppression Through the Ages

As a people who were born free, futures ripe with opportunities and choices, it’s hard for most in American society to truly imagine slavery. It’s a horrific concept that is ingrained into childrens heads and then thought of as only an idea in a history class, but sadly, the past doesn’t seem to always stay in the past. Many forms of slavery that share a plethora of traits with slavery found back in the times of the civil war, are still very prevalent in the world today, domestic work and exploitation being a very huge problem in several countries.
In the now advanced world, slavery should be an issue of the past, however there are several causes that allows slavery to still be a problem. One main cause of modern day slavery is that “[in many countries] domestic work is not only accepted socially and culturally, but is also regarded in a positive light” ("Domestic work." International Labour Organization). Cultural beliefs of gender roles and the benefit that comes from domestic work makes it a very popular career in several countries, such as Indonesia and China. Other causes of this widespread travesty include “poverty and its feminization, social exclusion, lack of education, gender and ethnic discrimination, violence suffered by children in their own homes, displacement, rural-urban migration and the loss of parents due to conflict and/or disease” and also debt bondage ("Domestic work." International Labour Organization). Another main issue is that those who are victims of domestic exploitation are being tricked into servitude by their employers. After being told to sign a document in a foreign language, they are then told that the document stated that if they wish to leave they would have to pay the employers a large sum of m...

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...ampaign towards creating and ratifying a modern day anti-slavery bill.
Slavery has yet to stop existing, and although many steps have been made towards eradicating domestic slavery, the problem is still very prevalent in the world today. It could be easy to just ignore the problem and forget about it until hopefully someone else solves it, but that is exactly what people have been doing for thousands of years. The apathetic view towards slavery is exactly what allowed slavery to exist in America for so long and is exactly why slavery still exists in the world today. All humans have a right to be free and for those unaffected by oppression to sit back and let others be enslaved is not only selfish but unspeakably cruel. It's time society put a stop to modern day slavery by spreading awareness and fighting the evil that has presided on this earth for far too long.