California has Voted to keep Slavery Legal. Where do we go from here?

Tessa Balc is a fourth year journalism and political science major. She also serves as news editor for The Point. Tessa is originally from a suburb of Chicago, Illinois.

Proposition 6 appeared on the California ballot this election season, calling for the end of involuntary servitude in the state of California’s constitution. While the 13th Amendment of the United States constitution abolished slavery, it did not do so in all forms. Within it there is the clause that slavery and involuntary servitude is permitted as punishment for a crime. This proposition advocated to remove this exception to slavery within the California constitution.

In the most basic terms, Californians had the opportunity to decide whether or not slavery should remain legal. The people spoke with their ballot and chose to remain a state which enslaves its people. The irony of this measure is that the people who are directly impacted have virtually no say in the matter, as those convicted of a felony are disenfranchised within our political system.

The United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As we claim we are a “free” nation we have the highest number of our citizens in prison.

Within these prisons we have allowed a system of enslavement to continue; it has become a socially permissible form of evil which is justified through rhetorical dehumanization of those behind bars.

If our value as humans is determined by the worst things we have all done, if our country is determined by a complete lack of mercy and the fundamental belief that some are irredeemable, I believe we live in the dark, without hope and without a future. Especially as we hold a double standard to the treatment of those who commit crime from a position of power and presidential status.

Presently, we live within a nation that claims it has left the evils of the past behind while still depending upon them. California, an allegedly progressive state, puts human beings into forced labor. There is not a single context in which slavery has morally permissible qualities, period.

Where we should be focused on reforming individuals we aim to extract their labor, leaving them without the resources financially or practically to exist outside the prison yard. We shake our heads and question what went wrong when recidivism rates are way too high, as just under 50% of incarcerated people will be rearrested within a year of release and just over 80% will be arrested at least once within 10 years after their release. 

Our carceral system takes a paternalistic, condescending stance against incarcerated people in assuming our efforts to force them to work somehow have healing qualities. It’s as if taking away one’s agency inspires them to view the world as a place in which they have the opportunity to rise above barriers inherently present for some and not others. We expect them to learn that the world is a just place, where playing by the rules gets you where you need to go, except if you are in positions of power. In that case, you are allowed to bend your power to your own will. You’ve earned it. 

Proposition 6 appeared on the ballot without opposition or an argument submitted against it. The fact of it not passing presented itself as a confusing conundrum to supporters. An explanation offered by some was confusion on the part of voters, specifically the wording of the proposition, which mirrors the original constitutional language. The other end of this lack of information is on the part of those who tried to pass it, not presenting the public with enough information on what the amendment meant. I’m not sure what to be more disheartened by: the fact that our citizenry has not received the tools to educate themselves nor has the desire to, or that our primary source of information must come from the system already in power. 

While in recent years other states such as Colorado and Alabama have been able to repeal this clause, this is the second time Californians have refused to do so.

Have we grown apathetic to our neighbors? Have we dehumanized those within prisons so much so that slavery is in some sick and twisted sense, deserved? I can’t seem to wrap my mind around how this amendment was not passed.