Trafficking in Antiblackness: Modern-Day Slavery, White Indemnity, and Racial Justice

In Trafficking in Antiblackness, Lyndsey P. Beutin examines how campaigns to end human trafficking invoke the memory of transatlantic slavery to support positions grounded in antiblackness. She shows how media, philanthropic, NGO, and government actors repurpose the history of transatlantic slavery and abolition to undermine contemporary struggles for racial justice and slavery reparations.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 21 April 2023
Publisher: Duke University Press

In Trafficking in Antiblackness, Lyndsey P. Beutin delves into the intricate relationship between campaigns to combat human trafficking, often referred to as "modern-day slavery," and the invocation of transatlantic slavery as a means to support positions rooted in antiblackness. Through a comprehensive analysis of contemporary antitrafficking visual culture and media discourse, she reveals how a constellation of media, philanthropic, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and government actors are actively engaged in ending human trafficking. However, Beutin argues that these actors repurpose the history of transatlantic slavery and abolition in ways that undermine contemporary struggles for racial justice and slavery reparations.

Recurring narratives, images, and figures, such as "slavery in Africa," "Arab slave traders," and "Black incapacity for self-governance," are employed discursively to portray Black people across the diaspora as the enslavers of the past and present, rather than white Americans and Europeans. This rhetorical defense is designed to shield these actors from accountability for the dispossessions and violence associated with slavery.

Despite these concerning implications, Beutin demonstrates that antitrafficking discourse remains popular and politically useful for former slaving nations and their racial beneficiaries. By refashioning historic justifications for white supremacy into the abolition of slavery today, these actors are able to maintain support and legitimacy for their actions.

This study sheds light on the complex ways in which historical narratives are manipulated to serve contemporary political interests, highlighting the need for a more nuanced and critical approach to addressing human trafficking and its intersection with racial justice.

Weight: 445g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478019787