Recent years have seen increased concern for victims of human trafficking, with public service messages and billboards designed to alert the public to identify potential victims. Anecdotal reports suggest that human trafficking — often seen as forced sex work, but also including other forced labor — may be on the rise. Clearly anyone forced into work of any kind needs and deserves protection, and our efforts on their behalf must continue.
Louisiana’s human trafficking law makes it a crime to “recruit, harbor, transport, provide, solicit, receive, isolate, entice, obtain, or maintain the use of another person through fraud, force, or coercion to provide services or labor.” (LSA R.S. 14:46.2). That’s the point of bans on human trafficking. Everyone acknowledges that no one can be allowed to force others to work against their will.
What’s the difference between slavery and human trafficking? Not much, at least on paper. Slavery isn’t defined in Louisiana law, but dictionary.com defines “slave” as “a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant.” We all know that without looking it up. Everyone knows that a slave is someone owned and controlled by someone else, forced to work against their will. And that’s how we define “human trafficking.” They’re the same thing, in definition.
Let’s look at the former slave market as it would be seen now: a market in human trafficking. People were kidnapped, transported, sold, and forced to work against their will. Anyone who does that now is a felon under Louisiana law. Yet our system of chattel slavery was designed to support slave traffickers and their collaborators. Slaves were beaten, tortured, and killed for trying to escape. Current trafficking victims have greater access to laws that may aid them, which their slave predecessors were denied.
True, slavery as we commonly picture it was abolished more than 150 years ago. The Louisiana Constitution prohibits it, as it must. But Louisiana once allowed this activity and many became wealthy from it. Nowadays, becoming rich from human trafficking isn’t condoned, it’s a crime. In our past, profiting from slavery was a point of pride, and our laws supported it.
Yet some legislators now want to require communities to maintain monuments glorifying those who both endorsed human trafficking and fought a war to preserve it. I doubt anyone would praise monuments to those currently engaged in this activity, which we rightly forbid and abhor. So let’s be honest: do we want monuments to human trafficking? Or will we acknowledge that human trafficking is wrong now, was wrong in the past, and should be condemned as the law now requires?
Keeping monuments to slavery sends a hypocritical message. Human trafficking is a crime. We know it’s wrong. If we wouldn’t glorify those who do it now, we shouldn’t glorify those who did it in the past. We owe all victims, past and present, that much respect.
