Buying a Slave for Myself

I'm a white guy. It's not something I'm proud of, or ashamed of. That would be like being proud or ashamed that you have an ear. It was just part of the introductory offer I got when I started out.

As a white guy, of course, I've always heard a lot about slavery. You hear nowadays that it is actually making a comeback in some places. I have never personally had any involvement with it, but eventually my curiosity got the better of me. So I have made arrangements with a guy to get myself a young black female. I'm not sure where she's from. He gave me some background information. It sounded exotic. Evidently her breed comes from somewhere abroad -- not sure where.

I know, some people are going to be angry with me for even mentioning the possibility of slavery, much less getting involved with it. But I say, look at it this way. I give her a home; I pay a small fortune to feed her, shelter her, take care of her, and help her get a good start in life here; and I help her get away from a place where, from what the guy tells me, she was truly miserable. She's not getting such a bad deal.

And what am I getting? The main thing is companionship. I live alone. It would be nice to have someone to talk to and go for walks with. I don't really need much help, although there are a few minor chores around the house she may be able to assist with. She can keep an eye on things and maybe give me more of a feeling that my house is a home. Really, the biggest benefit for me is to have a chance to help another living creature to enjoy some of the benefits that I have been fortunate enough to enjoy in my own life.

"Companionship" may not sound very convincing to some people. But now that I'm paying attention to the subject, I have begun to introduce myself to other guys who have their own slaves. They look proud, and sometimes the slaves do too. I think it's really a matter of, you know, you take care of them, they'll take care of you.

There's always the chance she may run away at some moment when I'm not looking. I don't believe in keeping your slaves tied up, though, so that's just a chance I'll have to take. I've heard that, sometimes, even after they do run away, they quickly discover that life out there ain't so easy, and they come back home after a day or two. The trick, I think, is just to take care of them and make them happy, and then they're likely to stay put.

So anyway, the deal is all set. She's going to come home with me tomorrow evening. I've already got some food and other things for her, and I've set up a place where she sleep. If she wants to sleep in my bed, I may let her; but if she keeps me awake, she'll have to go to the other room. We'll go for some walks, and I'll begin training her on how I want her to behave. Then, on Tuesday, I'll be taking her to the vet for some shots, and we'll be a happy twosome.

* * * * *

I got the idea to write those words today, while I was in the park. I saw someone with a dog, and I felt that I'd like to have a dog again. My ex-dog was an older guy, and he cost my ex-wife and me a fair amount in veterinarian bills. I thought to myself, now, isn't it odd that we would spend that money on a dog, instead of spending it on a human being? So I was just wondering, what would it take for a human to be as appealing as a dog, for purposes of receiving these funds that dog-owners spend? Not that nobody should have dogs. Our dog was a very honorable creature. Dogs deserve to exist too. But it does seem imbalanced, that we would keep millions of dogs alive while people die. Just giving the money to charity is not the answer. That's not a comparison of apples to apples. The charity swallows your money, probably does something good with it, but it's not part of your daily life. You don't get steady, repeated gratification from it. The dog -- or, I suppose, an actual human slave for that matter -- now, there's an investment that does provide some gratification. The dog and the slave are comparable in terms of control, too: either way, you don't have the guff and backtalk that you get from a spouse or an adopted child or some other kind of expensive person that you might invite into your home. Not to mention that, if times get tight or you just get tired of the arrangement, you can unload a dog or a slave. Or a spouse too, I guess, but not as easily. Obviously, human slavery is constitutionally prohibited in the United States. So we don't call it slavery when workers live in a company town that they can't afford to get out of, or when their employers pay them less than a living wage, or when debts or social traditions prevent them (because of their family's reputation in their town, or because of their intellectual level, or for myriad other reasons) from ever rising to a point where they are out from under someone's thumb. We certainly didn't call it slavery when the Union Army walked into Mississippi in 1865 and told those people, "OK, you're free now -- have a nice life!" That, we have been taught, was liberation. But as we are now reminded in Iraq, sometimes liberation is not quite that simple. Making it a reality may actually require a very long-term commitment. I can't help wondering whether a less ideological, more factual education about such subjects would have facilitated wiser American decisions in places like Vietnam. We grew up with oversimplified, black-and-white concepts of slavery, tyranny, and freedom. What we learned was that, if someone owns you in a legal arrangement, that's slavery. Otherwise, you're free. But whether you're on a plantation, in a concentration camp, coping with an arranged marriage, or working on an assembly line, you may come to discover that slavery has many shades of grey (indeed, many shades of white and black). One difference between a household slave and a slave located at the other end of the paycheck is that, with the household slave, you might be exposed to them on a daily basis. You will probably observe things about them as people, and likewise in return. The guy who runs a drill press, by contrast, is often just a part of the machine; the owner need never even meet him. He could live; he could die; it is of no concern. So it would be an outrage for me to own a person like I would own a dog. It would be, moreover, an *illegal* outrage, not like the kind of outrage where someone's boss owns them in a way that's different from (and perhaps worse than) the way in which he owns a dog. At any rate, if I want to help a desperate person like I would help a dog, in a way that gives me face-to-face encouragement every day, it seems I must go to work for a charity on some other continent. And right now, I don't believe I can do that. Certainly America's millions of dog-owners aren't about to do it. I suspect, therefore, that there is probably a lawyer, somewhere in the U.S., who could make a persuasive argument that legalized slavery would provide the best response to the real-life circumstances of that desperate person and me. I would like to hear that argument. I would also like to hear the rebuttal, especially if it contended that the form of "slavery" prohibited by the Constitution extends to any exercise of coercive power over another human being. That, to me, would be an interesting debate.