I had five different stories about the defacto slavery that is thriving in the U.S. in its prisons. But I have chosen this UN report because it makes it clear that not only do some Americans understand that this country is still embroiled in racist slavery — the prisoners involved are overwhelming Black — but that this is the way we appear to the rest of the world. A couple of years ago I wrote a research paper on the racism and brutality of all too many American law enforcement officers. (see SR Archive search on “brutality”. It is one of my most cited papers in half a century of writing papers. Slavery and the racism it represents has been baked into the United States since its creation, although you rarely hear anyone mention that. Did you know that 41 of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence owned human beings, as they owned cattle or dogs? And that 25 of the 55 men who participated in the Constitution Convention in 1787 and signed it were or had owned other human beings.  In American prisons it is essentially still going on, as this article describes.

To read the UN report upon which this article is based see: Systemic racism pervades US police and justice systems, UN Mechanism on Racial Justice in Law Enforcement says in new report urging reform