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Disposable People: Modern Day Slavery Essay

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I was in complete and utter shock when I began to read Disposable People. The heart-wrenching tale of Seba, a newly freed slave, shook my understanding of people in today’s society, as well as their interactions between each other. I sat in silence as I read Seba’s story. “There they [Seba’s French mistress and husband] stripped me naked, tied my hands behind my back, and began to whip me with a wire attached to a broomstick (Bales 2).” I tried to grasp the magnitude of the situation. I tried unsuccessfully to tell myself that this couldn’t happen in modern times, especially in a city such as Paris. How could this be happening? In the following pages of Kevin Bale’s shocking account of the rampant problem of modern day slavery, I learned …show more content…

They didn’t know how this catastrophe still continued today. Although this didn’t help me deal with what I was feeling with, I now knew that I was not the only person who was misinformed.
I then decided to ask my parents about the book, since they might have known more about this problem since they had more life experience then I had. As it turns out, they were misinformed as well. As we discussed the issue, it became apparent that their collective knowledge of slavery was very limited as well. They thought that child labor and below minimum wage salaries were slavery, which they are not. When I told them what was actually happening in different parts of the world, they assumed the same feelings that I had, outrage at the inhumanity, sorrow at the ordeals that these people had to endure, and a feeling of helplessness concerning the abolition of modern-day slavery.
The elimination of modern day slavery is nowhere near actualization at this point. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of knowledge about this problem. Out of the 6 people I talked to, one knew very little about this problem, and 5 knew absolutely nothing about it at all. The main consensus, at least in the United States, is that slavery ended long ago. This book boldly denounces that theory, but not enough people know about this book. The end of slavery begins with the education of people who may not even know that slaves still exist. The

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