Modern Slavery, Old Excuses: California’s Economic Dependence Mirrors the Confederacy

“Slavery,” at its core, is an institution of affordable labor—whether enforced through chains or enticed through desperation. In all its forms and names, slavery has existed since pre-civilization: from feudal systems and indentured servitude to the tragic history of Black slavery in America and today’s ongoing crisis of sex trafficking across the Americas and around the globe. In some instances, it’s forced. In others, people are lured in, seeking refuge or survival. But make no mistake—no matter how it looks, it’s still slavery.

The bottom line is this: the root cause of slavery, in all its forms, is not a moral dilemma for the benefactor. It is an economic strategy—a way to secure affordable labor.

Global institutions and governments continue to give China a pass for its enslavement of the Uyghur population. But of course, we’re told it’s not slavery—it’s “socio-economic culturalism,” and we’re simply too ethnocentric and xenophobic in the developed world to understand it.

And yet, party politics be damned—including the neo-cons, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Silicon Valley’s tech sector—here we are in California hearing the same tired arguments once used to justify slavery in the Confederacy.

In defense of her refusal to allow DHS and ICE to enforce immigration laws, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared: “I don’t think the President understands that we have entire sectors of our economy that cannot function without immigrant labor.”

Similarly, California’s June 25, 2025, formal report on undocumented immigration states: “To maintain its status as the fourth-largest economy in the world, California depends on the contributions of undocumented workers.” Governor Gavin Newsom went further, noting that between 40% and more than half of the workers in construction, agriculture, landscaping, and housekeeping are undocumented. “I don’t see many people that look like me jumping at those jobs,” he said.

Even our virtue-signaling celebrity class, supposedly advocating on behalf of immigrants, often lets the mask slip. One Hollywood actress famously said, “If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?” Hunter Biden chimed in too: “How do you think your hotel room gets cleaned? How do you think you have food on your fing table? Who do you think washes your dishes? Who do you think does your fing garden?”

Agricultural workers are often exempt from minimum wage, overtime, and even some child labor protections. Other industries—like housekeeping, yard work, and construction—frequently use “go-betweens” (temporary labor contractors or, more accurately, modern-day slave traders). Many of these intermediaries are reportedly tied to drug cartels seeking repayment for smuggling fees. These workers aren’t in control of their wages or their living conditions. This isn’t employment. It’s exploitation.

And the parallels don’t end there. The very same arguments used to defend slavery before the Civil War are being repackaged today in California.

Consider this: “If the Confederacy had been a separate nation, it would have ranked as the fourth richest in the world at the start of the Civil War.” Sound familiar? That’s from History.com.

Southern defenders of slavery argued that ending the slave economy would devastate the South’s economy, which was entirely reliant on forced labor. Some even argued that slaves were “better cared for” than poor workers in the North or Europe. When a society builds itself around the institution of slavery, it naturally creates excuses to justify its existence.

Jefferson Davis, in his inaugural address as President of the Confederacy, said: “[Slavery] is an institution so interwoven with the South’s interests, its domestic peace, and all its social relations, that it cannot be disturbed without causing their overthrow… It brought [the slave] from a benighted region, and placed him in one where civilization would elevate and dignify his nature.”

Congressman Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina said in 1860: “African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence.”

And on September 7, 1863, William Nugent wrote: “This country without slave labor would be completely worthless. We can only live and exist by that species of labor; and hence I am willing to fight for the last.”

These statements should chill every American.

No person—then or now—is chattel to be used as political or economic justification. And yet today, California’s political leadership and corporate backers are recycling the same hypocritical, vile, and immoral arguments used more than 160 years ago to justify slavery. You can change the language. You can dress it up in empathy and cultural need. But you cannot redefine what it is.