Schmitt 1

Hunter Schmitt
Professor Brown
English 250 PD
10 May 2014
Behind Closed Doors
Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter construct a clear purpose in informing the reader in
Slavery in the Land of the Free on slavery being alive in present day. Both claim slavery is
flourishing in the United States, but not in the common way generally thought about. Bales and
Soodalter support their claim with the shocking number of current slaves, a disturbing real life
example, and the scattering of examples throughout the essay. After reading their essay, one will
come to the troubling realization that slavery is active in America.
There is no way of knowing what the exact number of slaves are in the United States. A
conservative estimate is 50,000 slaves present in America. A U.S. Department study
approximated 14,500 to 17,500 slaves are brought in every year. Slaves in the 1800s were in
plain sight almost on display as an indication of having wealth. Now slaves are hidden from sight
which impedes being able to have a more precise estimate of slaves in America. The numbers are
astounding nonetheless. Bales and Soodalter give examples of a young girl named, Maria, and a
town used simply for a cheap workforce. They make the audience aware of the issue of slavery
in America and the impact it has on the lives of people. They emphasize the role slavery plays in
the day to day of the economy with the incredible number of slaves. Bales and Soodalter do an
excellent job in relating these numbers to real people and not just viewing these statistics as
numbers by illustrating true stories of people in slavery.
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Bales and Soodalter comment that slaves in the 1800s were about $40,000, but now are
only a couple hundred dollars. Instead of taking care of the health needs of their slaves, now they
are so inexpensive that it is cheaper to let them die and buy another slave. What an unsettling
idea that a person is treated similarly to that of a broken tool and thrown away. A staggering one
percent of trafficking and slavery murders are solved each year. For every 14,500 to 17,500
slaves that die, another 14,500 to 17,500 slaves are brought in the following year to replace them.
Bales and Soodalter appeal to the emotions of the audience because we all know someone who
has been sick and needed to go to the hospital. Imagining them just wasting away because it is
simply cheaper is uncomfortable to think about. It is absolutely amazing how the slave owners
can have such little concern or respect for a humans life and purchasing them for such a small
amount of money. This is extremely unsettling and the author does an excellent job of making
that a point in this essay.
Bales and Soodalter capture the readers attention by starting the essay with an example
of slavery that occurred in the town of Laredo, Texas. They describe a story of a twelve year old
child named, Maria, who is tricked into coming to America to earn an education, but is forced to
work day and night. If Maria was not cleaning fast enough, she was sprayed with pepper spray. If
she passed out from exhaustion, she was physically and sexually abused. The description Bales
and Soodalter go into about little Maria is disturbing and makes it hard to continue reading. The
authors use this example to illustrate how the normal suburban house with kids and freshly cut
green lawn is not all it seems to be. The wife who is described as a Pleasant woman and the
sort youd chat with at the mall or the supermarket is a drastically different person behind
closed doors (Bales and Soodalter 722). This is a strong story to persuade the reader to conclude
how in what seems like the model family, there is slavery flourishing. It makes the reader think
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about the many houses passed on the way to work or school that may have a similar story. This is
just one of the thousands of stories of human beings beaten and forced to work for little or no
wage.
Bales and Soodalter bring to attention the town of Immikalee, Florida about a forty
minute drive south-east of the Naples, Florida. Immikalee is described as a poor community
occupied by laborers to work the nearby fields. These laborers wake up every morning walking
to the bus stop to, by chance, be able to work that day making very little wages. Bales and
Soodalter do an exceptional job sprinkling in real life stories like Maria and people victim to
slavery and the different forms of slavery brought about today so the reader does not get lost in
the numbers, but the rather relates the numbers with these shocking stories and with human lives.
This strategy of displaying the amount of slaves here in the United States and then relating it
with an impactful true life illustration like that of the children forced into or deceived into
slavery which relates a story to a statistic which impacts the readers logic throughout their
everyday lives and impacts their emotions about real people with real alarming stories that could
be going on in neighborhoods anywhere.
Slavery is an issue that will always be among us. Once we make a stand for this troubling
cruelty happening to human beings in our own neighborhood, we will diminish the role it plays
in our country and the lives it ruins. Bales and Soodalter do an excellent job illustrating and
convincing us of an issue we do not see or even think about on a daily basis. They do a brilliant
job persuading us of the power slavery holds in our society troubling our thoughts with the
stories of those lost in the numbers.


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Work Cited
Bales, Kevin and Soodalter, Ron. Slavery in the Land of the Free. Rereading America 9
th
ed.
Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle. Boston New York: Bedford/St.
Martins, 2013. 721-737. Print.