Worker Enslaved At SC Restaurant For 5 years

[Lady Victory]

Implying literally forcing a black man to work for no pay for over 5 years while abusing the shit out of him is "apolitically motivated". Get fucking real.

Being a piece of shit is political now?

And yes, slavery is inevitable under capitalism, as the profit motive inherently encourages the bosses to steal as much of the wealth generated by the workers as they can possibly get away with.

Is that why pretty much every capitalist country on the planet has illegalized slavery except for use on prisoners? Hell, even then it isn't slavery, because the prisoners still oftentimes receive payment.

My guy, the Romans paid their slaves. Paying slaves doesn't make them not slaves. That's not how slavery works.

[Rusozak]

I thought this was a hyped up clickbait title pumped with overreaction but... Jesus fucking Christ that's actual textbook slavery. It's sickening such an abuse when unnoticed for 5 whole years.

[USS Monitor]

How did this go on for so long? Why is this sort of thing even possible in the first place!?

Welcome to America, where slavery is okay if it's a punishment for arbitrary crimes.

And it's all because of a loophole in the 13th Amendment:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

That is not what happened here.

Please do not blame the honorable Unionists of the Civil War era such as myself for the abusive actions of this restaurant manager. What he did was not legal.

My guns are ready if anyone thinks he needs a cannonball to the face.

[Grenartia]

Under capitalism such abuses are inevitable, unfortunately. I'm sure there are numerous others who are suffering the same plight as the victim in this case right now.

Under any other system, everyone is a slave to one leader or party.

I can think of a system where you're not a slave to a leader, a party, or a manager.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Under any other system, everyone is a slave to one leader or party.

I can think of a system where you're not a slave to a leader, a party, or a manager.

Mother Anarchy?

[The Alma Mater]

What the actual fuck?!? How did that go on for so long? Did nobody every question why this man was working for so many hours without getting paid? Did he never complain to his coworkers or customers about? Or even his friends or family? Why the hell didnt he just tell his boss to go fuck himself and walk out? I mean seriously how did he even survive without getting paid for 5 years? I have so many questions about this case...

In South Korea it's been known to go on for 30 years.

Yeah, salt and seaweed farmers in SK's West coast, the islands specifically, love snatching up people with disabilities and using them as slave labor. Government doesn't even give a shit and only steps in when people make a stick of it, and then forget it's happening within 6 months.

This is common throughout the world.

And most people are more than happy to take advantage of it. all for those low, low.prices. Or high prices but oh so pretty apple logo.

People who are shocked and outraged by this yet happily buy products produced by slaves with disabilities in foreign countries are a tad bit hypocritical.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

In South Korea it's been known to go on for 30 years.

Yeah, salt and seaweed farmers in SK's West coast, the islands specifically, love snatching up people with disabilities and using them as slave labor. Government doesn't even give a shit and only steps in when people make a stick of it, and then forget it's happening within 6 months.

This is common throughout the world.

And most people are more than happy to take advantage of it. all for those low, low.prices. Or high prices but oh so pretty apple logo.

People who are shocked and outraged by this yet happily buy products produced by slaves with disabilities in foreign countries are a tad bit hypocritical.

Not really when the capitalist system demands you get the lowest price to live.

It's fucked up and exploitative for everyone except the ones at the top.

[Katganistan]

It is utterly disgusting to see that this... creature was able to physically and verbally abuse, torture, and force Mr. Smith to work without pay with impunity because apparently, he did not believe that people with mental disabilities are entitled to the same rights and respect as anyone else. That Mr. Smith is also black and was forced into what could only be compared to slavery is doubly disgusting.

I find it appalling that Mr. Smith's social workers were unaware of this happening for five years. There should be an inquiry into why they were in the dark about this, especially with beatings and burnings occurring.

The creature that did this to Mr. Smith should not only pay him for the time, overtime, and the mental and physical cruelty... that creature should be jailed for the longest possible legal penalty for these crimes. Preferably in the span of decades.

[Katganistan]

I don't know why the article feels the need to mention the race of everyone involved when race had nothing to do with it.

Well, when a white man in a southern state enslaves a black man in a southern state, naturally people are going to draw the parallels to something that supposedly ended 150 some-odd years ago happening again.

[New haven america]

I don't know why the article feels the need to mention the race of everyone involved when race had nothing to do with it.

Cause a white business owner in a Southern State (South Carolina specifically, the birthplace of the Confederacy) enslaved a black man for years on end.

Do you really have to ask this question. I don't think a generic YA novel could be any more obvious with this type of symbolism.

[USS Monitor]

I got curious and followed the links to get some more background, like how it was able to go on for so long without Smith reaching out for financial help and revealing the situation to others.

https://www.postandcourier.com/archives ... baeec.html

Smith worked from an early age at the restaurant and later lived in a nearby cockroach-infested apartment owned by the business, his attorneys said. They called the living conditions “subhuman.”

So there's why he wasn't going home and revealing the situation to a landlord. Also...

Smith later said, according to the suit, that he never came forward because he thought the attempt would result in more harm or his death.

And apparently the manager's brother was also in on it:

The physical and emotional abuse lasted from 2010 until his rescue on Oct. 10, 2014, the attorneys said. It started when Bobby Edwards started managing the place and continued after complaints to Ernest Edwards, they said.

I don't know how big this restaurant was, but with the two brothers, plus all the hours Smith was working, they may have not needed other staff. Or not had a lot of other staff.

As to the Two Jerseys question about why the article mentions the race of the people involved, the restaurant manager was using racial epithets in his verbal abuse, so it would appear that he is racist on top of any other huge glaring character flaws.

[Katganistan]

https://www.postandcourier.com/archives/black-restaurant-worker-beaten-enslaved-for-years-charleston-lawyers-say/article_27d52c5d-bd9a-5c87-83fd-31ab7bcbaeec.html

Black restaurant worker beaten, enslaved for years, Charleston lawyers say

Andrew Knapp
Nov 15, 2015 Updated Apr 28, 2021

A pair of Charleston attorneys on Monday filed a federal lawsuit against an Horry County restaurant, accusing its white operators of beating a black employee and using racial slurs over several years of “slavery,” a statement said.

The civil suit in U.S. District Court lists 14 accusations against J&J Cafeteria in Conway, owner Ernest J. Edwards and manager Bobby Paul Edwards, who are brothers. It also names the restaurant’s registered corporation, Half Moon Foods Inc.

It covers a range of conduct, such as false imprisonment, discrimination and unfair labor practices, alleged to have occurred toward the end of Christopher Smith’s 23 years of working at the Conway restaurant.

Smith, who the attorneys described as mentally handicapped, was rescued last year after state social workers fielded a tip from someone concerned about his safety. Bobby Edwards, 50, of Lakeside Drive in Conway was arrested Nov. 19, 2014, on a charge of second-degree assault and battery. That criminal case was still pending Monday.

In the statement Monday, lawyers Mullins McLeod and David Aylor called Smith’s ordeal troubling and outrageous.

“This lawsuit cannot change the past,” Aylor added, “but hopefully it will bring about positive change in the future.”

A telephone message left Monday for the restaurant’s owner was not immediately returned.

Reviews of the business on Yelp.com included a mix of praise for its Southern fare and complaints about experiences with its staff members.

Smith worked from an early age at the restaurant and later lived in a nearby cockroach-infested apartment owned by the business, his attorneys said. They called the living conditions “subhuman.”

The physical and emotional abuse lasted from 2010 until his rescue on Oct. 10, 2014, the attorneys said. It started when Bobby Edwards started managing the place and continued after complaints to Ernest Edwards, they said.

Smith was forced to work 18-hour shifts six days a week and an 11-hour stint on Sundays, they said, and he wasn’t paid for much of it or allowed breaks. The attorneys estimated that Smith was paid about $2,842 yearly.

He was hit with a frying pan, burned with grease-covered tongs, and beaten with butcher knives, belt buckles and fists “while being called the N-word repeatedly,” the attorneys said. The assaults took place in places like a walk-in freezer as he screamed for his life, they said.

He was targeted, they said, because he is black.

After responding with Conway police to the tip, S.C. Department of Social Services representatives found scars on his back.

Smith later said, according to the suit, that he never came forward because he thought the attempt would result in more harm or his death.

Reach Andrew Knapp at (843) 937-5414 or twitter.com/offlede.
More information

https://greensboro.com/news/national/pr ... 47e78.html

Like Smith, waitresses at the J&J Cafeteria were reluctant to come forward because they feared Bobby Paul Edwards, according to Geneane Caines, an advocate for Smith who said her daughter-in-law worked at the restaurant.

"Costumers that were going in there would hear stuff and they didn't know what was going on, and they would ask the waitresses, and the waitresses were so scared of Bobby they wouldn't tell them then what it was," Caines told WMBF last year.

That explains why the other staff didn't report it.

https://www.wmbfnews.com/story/28116609 ... -employer/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-rest ... -employee/

The abusive manager got sentenced to ten years. Let's hope he actually stays there the full ten.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

This will be the tip of the iceberg. The UK also has a problem with modern slavery, there have been a few cases in the papers over the last decade, of people with learning difficulties forced to work as agricultural labourers and other similar jobs. It is estimated there are about 10,000 people currently enslaved in the UK.

[Aarlbohardt]

I was born in Columbia, SC. My Dad was in the USAF, so we moved around constantly until we returned permanently back in 1994. I've existed and experienced enough Carolina days to tell anyone that race is still very much a factor for opportunity and social status down here. It's not as blaring evident or all encompassing as say, 40 years ago. But it is definitely in the top 3 most socially regressive states. Racial slurs still float through the air down here like a summer breeze. Rednecks just do a quick double take and quickly slip in a public n-bomb just because. The most common type of course is the backhanded, diet racism comments that folks down here think is okay just because it's not an obvious slur. But, that's why South Carolina adopted euphemisms just like the rest of white protestant America. Low-income communities: ghetto. Subsidized housing: tenement projects Exurban: White flight from black suburbs. Subprime mortgage: poverty loans. Community building: minorities uniting. All that fun, sad, pathetically ignorant semantic jargon fest of what we call our Traditional Family State.

[The Alma Mater]

I don't know why the article feels the need to mention the race of everyone involved when race had nothing to do with it.

Considering the article explicitly mentions the owner used racial slurs towards the worker it is obviously relevant - even if only for that reason.

So the counterquestion: why did you need to ask this ?

[Borderlands of Rojava]

I'd forgotten about this for a bit. Damn, what kind of bastard enslaves an autistic man?

[The Reformed American Republic]

I'd forgotten about this for a bit. Damn, what kind of bastard enslaves an autistic man?

A scumbag and a psychopath.

[Page]

Those of you denying there are any intersectional issues at play, really think for a minute, if an enslaved intellectually disabled person was a white man, do you maybe think more people who crossed his path might have been compelled to take a closer look? Perhaps even more so if that person was a white woman? Would you think about how studies have definitively proven that the entire medical community treats black people like they feel less pain, and that we have been conditioned to likewise see black folks' emotional distress as less significant? Or maybe just the fact that perpetrators of these crimes deliberately target those from marginalized communities.

Why do white people have to be so defensive? You hear that a white man enslaved a disabled black man and just because the parties' races were mentioned, you take that as an attack on you, an accusation like "I would never do something like that!"

Denial of these intersectional factors because of white fragility perpetuates the collective ignorance that allows atrocities like this to go on for so long.

[Ifreann]

I don't know why the article feels the need to mention the race of everyone involved when race had nothing to do with it.

America has a history with this kind of thing.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

I don't know why the article feels the need to mention the race of everyone involved when race had nothing to do with it.

Race is gonna come into it when the manager at the restaurant keeps calling the worker a n*gger.

[The Reformed American Republic]

I don't know why the article feels the need to mention the race of everyone involved when race had nothing to do with it.

Race is gonna come into it when the manager at the restaurant keeps calling the worker a n*gger.

I don't buy into intersectionality, but this ^^

[Boomhaueristan]

I'm confused, where was his family during his unpaid employment? How did he survive without pay? Is he alone in the world? Did he have no coworkers with a moral compass?

[Borderlands of Rojava]

I'm confused, where was his family during his unpaid employment? How did he survive without pay? Is he alone in the world? Did he have no coworkers with a moral compass?

Unfortunately we live in that kind of society. I've seen shit where a crime goes down against like an old woman and people stand there and watch and do nothing. Some dude can be dying of an overdose on the street and people walk by and don't do shit. I'm not remotely surprised no one helped him, but I am disappointed.

[Mercatus]

The abuser doesn’t deserve to have that much money poured into incarcerating them. This should be a capital offense.

Killing him would cost more money actually, not that I disagree with this being a capital offense.

I’m pretty sure a single round of 9mm is cheaper than a lifetime of meals and paying security guards. Lethal injection is the dumbest shit ever.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Killing him would cost more money actually, not that I disagree with this being a capital offense.

I’m pretty sure a single round of 9mm is cheaper than a lifetime of meals and paying security guards. Lethal injection is the dumbest shit ever.

It's not the execution, it's observing due process rights that makes it more expensive as well.