Unanticipated consequences

In the wake of this United States' most momentous of our sporadic lurches toward greater justice and truer freedom, radical abolitionist Congresscritters passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1864 and thereby ended slavery. In so they thought. But the language they chose, inadvertently historian Eric Foner argues, set incarcerated persons up to be re-enslaved. An "Abolition Amendment" has been introduced in Congress this year to finish the job. Foner explains:

The Abolition Amendment would eliminate the Thirteenth Amendment’s “criminal exemption” by adding these words to the Constitution: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime.”.

.. When it came time during the Civil War to write an amendment abolishing slavery, Charles Sumner, the abolitionist Senator from Massachusetts, proposed wording based on the 1791 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. His colleague Jacob Howard of Michigan rejected the idea of using a French model. “Good old Anglo-Saxon language” was adequate, he declared, and Congress gravitated to the wording of Jefferson’s ordinance. 

Because of its very familiarity, the text of the Thirteenth Amendment did not undergo necessary scrutiny. The criminal exemption was almost never mentioned in congressional debates, contemporary newspapers or at antislavery conventions that endorsed the proposed amendment. 

... But with the overthrow of Reconstruction and the imposition of the comprehensive system of white supremacy known as Jim Crow, the prison population expanded rapidly. 

Southern states filled their jails with African-Americans, often former slaves convicted of minor crimes. They then rented them out as labor for the owners of railroads, plantations and factories, or required them to work on chain gangs building roads and other public projects, or inside prison walls for private businesses. 

The labor of prisoners became a significant source of revenue for Southern states. The system also took hold, but in a much smaller way, in the North. ... Conditions were barbarous and the supply of convicts seemingly endless. “One dies, get another,” became a popular refrain among those who profited from the labor of prisoners. ... With the expansion of private prisons, more and more inmates work for private contractors, sometimes in factory settings within prison walls. In recent years, many companies have used or benefited from the labor of prisoners. 

... the 13th Amendment shows that unanticipated consequences can be as significant as intended ones. The amendment, which destroyed the largest slave system the modern world has known, was deservedly an occasion for celebration. Especially given our heightened awareness of the inequities of our criminal justice system, it is high time the criminal exemption was eliminated, as the abolition amendment proposes.

This Abolition Amendment isn't going to become law anytime soon, but it's important that we understand that we need it.

•••

Another example of less-than-entirely expected consequences: the smart, annoying, contrarian pundit Matthew Yglesias has turned himself into a subscription Substack he names "Slow Boring." He's prolific and I find I learn from him.

But this email/blogging medium also provides space for self-indulgence. And this week he has been whining about social media backlash for promoting his current book on Joe Rogan's podcast. Rogan is apparently a wildly popular misogynist bro-talker who, like many of his breed, has an ant in his pants about gender bending and takes it out on transfolk.

Yglesias complains he's being subjected to "cancel culture" for going on Rogan's show. But also, his response is to lay out where he stands on trans rights as follows:

I support trans rights:
I am glad that transgender people won Civil Rights Act protections from the Supreme Court.
I’m glad Biden has committed to reversing Trump’s executive orders on trans health care.
I’m for open access to restrooms and frankly for the abolition of gender-segregating of bathrooms in general.
I’m looking forward to a new and more enlightened era on military service.

This isn't all warm and fuzzy -- it's not going mollify people who suffer directly from society's rejection of their non-standard gender identity and presentation. But getting a majority of us to this level of understanding of what right behavior looks like would create the context for a better life for millions of people. Maybe we can get to where a young friend doesn't find the job he had been promised had somehow disappeared when his prospective employer realized he'd transitioned. 

Formal tolerance and recognition is what comes first; only when we get this far can we live into deeper acceptance of the unfamiliar. 

Yglesias didn't like being called out -- but it got him on record. That's a good consequence. 

Photo from a contemporary video about Louisiana' Angola Prison.