Final Exam: Just Do It?

     As the first semester of American Studies has come to an end, I feel like I have become a more knowledgeable person about many different American topics and events in our history. One particular topic really stood out to me throughout the year: slavery.

    To the right, I chose to analyze a political cartoon about Nike sweatshop labor.  This artifact surfaced on an anti-sweatshop Ezine (a magazine only available on the web) right after a Bangladesh sweatshop fire in November of 2012 that killed 112 people and injured hundreds.

     This is an important American contemporary artifact because it depicts current "slave like" conditions, even though slavery was abolished over a century ago. The boss of the "sweatshop" I think is portrayed as a slave master. He has pointy "shark" like teeth, spikes on his shoes, he is triple the size of the workers. All these characteristics must instill great fear in the workers. A vary obvious feature of the man is that he is white, while all the the workers are colored, which make them look even more like "civil war era" slaves. The workers are weak, wearing the same outfit (in different colors), a minority race, and sitting on a bench working with a machine that has smoke spewing from it. If this image doesn't scream SLAVERY to you, you must be from another planet.

    This artifact relates to my American Studies class because we spent a lot of time talking about slavery, civil rights, and sweatshop labor. Throughout these past five months, our class has analyzed countless numbers of texting ranging from movies to short stories, so  I would like to analyze three different texts--a historical document, short story, NPR audio clip--and show the striking parallels between the texts and my artifact.

    Even though slavery has been abolished and slave codes have vanished, there are still practices quite similar in today's world. In 1680, a Virginia Slave Code was passed that read, "No slave may leave his master's grounds without a pass". According to an article in the New York Times,  "An Ugly Side of Free: Trade Sweatshops", many sweatshop workers have their "passports (and other ID's) confiscated, meaning they can't even go out on the streets, keeping them trapped inside the sweatshops".  All workers in the cartoon are literally trapped inside the factory and cannot leave. To me, this seems even worse than the slave code because slaves could "leave with a pass", but now the workers can't even leave the factory.
   
   My artifact clearly depicts that the company Nike is harvesting sweatshop labor. I  can safely assume that millions of people wear Nike shoes and don't even think twice about all the blood, sweat and tears, that went in to making them. this year we read a short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", which portrays a society where everyone is happy and the only way to keep their happiness is by having a child locked in a cellar below ground. Everyone in Omelas, "understands that their happiness...health... and wisdom... depend wholly on this child's abominable misery" (282). Everyone in Omelas knows someone is suffering in order to keep them  happy. This is striking similar to Nike sweatshop labor because many of us know people are treated like slaves to make our clothes, but Nike is a brand loved by millions, so we are able to sacrifice knowing people are suffering, to get a good product out of it.

   In the political cartoon on the far left, one brave man is trying to earn fair labor rights. He is being kicked in the face by the boss, whom has spikes sticking out of his shoes. Unfortunately, there are people in other sweatshops who treat their workers even worse. On an NPR Podcast about a Jordanian sweatshop, it was revealed that twenty-five people, "went up to the owner and asked for their wages, and they got threatened with guns, and a few people got hit". If that image doesn't send chills up your spine, I don't know what else will. All they wanted were their wages, which should automatically be something they always receive.
 
  After thorough examination of the three texts above, I found it very frightening how there is still truly slavery in this world. I believe my artifact connects all the three texts together because it very forwardly tells us that slavery is still going on today as we have constantly struggled to end it for good.
From now on I will defiantly think twice about where my clothes are coming from and try to buy clothes that are made in fair work conditions. Will you do the same?

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