Obsidian Wings

Race slavery in history and in modern Mauritania

by Doctor Science

Via Andrew Sullivan, I see Joshua Keating's profile of modern abolitionist Biram Dah Abeid of Mauritania. Dah Abeid says:

There are two types of laws in Mauritania. You have the "slave code," which legitimizes and codifies slavery, and which gives the law a sacred aspect. These are books that were written in the Muslim Middle Ages in the Maghreb area between the ninth and 16th century. These laws authorize the owning of black people. They decree that the black race is inferior.

He says the reason slavery persists in Mauritania is that the law is "fluid":

Mauritania also has a modern law that it has codified, specifically a law against slavery. But these are not laws that are meant to be applied. The traditional law that decrees racial inequality and slavery and the inequality of women is considered superior and sacred. When there is a contradiction between the two, the traditional law trumps modern law each time.

I haven't been able to find out what "traditional slave code" Dah Abeid is talking about, but he's saying that it authorizes race-based chattel slavery in Islamic North Africa.

Now, during the period he's talking about (9th to 16th century) galley slavery was common on both sides of the Mediterranean -- but it wasn't really race-based, it was equal-opportunity, who-can-you-grab slavery, a risk to everyone living within a day's march of the coast.

But this Maghreb slave code sounds very different. My gut instinct says that this race-based slavery arose for large-scale sugar production, which Arabs pioneered. Though I've read several books on the history of sugar and slavery (Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz, Sugar: a Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott), I've never felt as though I truly understand why sugar, in particular, seems to have been *dependent* on slave labor.

Sugar Plantation Mill Yard, Antigua, West Indies, 1823 by William Clark, an English artist and traveler (no relation to the American explorer)

Once slaves were seen as necessary to sugar production, I can understand why slaves from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) were seen as the best choice. Sugar cane needs a hot, humid climate -- which is also ideal for any number of human diseases. Because humans are only truly native to SSA, people from SSA are enormously more genetically diverse than anyone else. And this means that if you cram a whole lot of people together, overwork and underfeed them, more Africans are likely to survive the inevitable epidemics.

But that doesn't explain why slave labor was necessary to make sugar. I'm going to try thinking this through. Sugar cane is heavy, so it wasn't worthwhile to transport it to the mill where it was crushed and the juice was extracted and boiled. Grain could be grown by small farmers, because they didn't have to ship the whole fresh (water-heavy) plant to a mill. Sugar milling, boiling, and preliminary refining, at least, was an industrial (or proto-industrial) process, because it required heavy equipment and a lot of fuel, much more so than grain milling.

So making sugar was an industrial-level process, requiring a big capital outlay and lots of workers coordinating their efforts. It's also very time-sensitive -- once the harvested cane is crushed, the sugar juice will ferment within 12-24 hours in the kind of climate where sugarcane grows, so that's the window where you have to start boiling it.

There's no *logical* reason this industrial process had to use slave labor, but it looks to me as though it was a nightmare of capitalism: the owners had great power and resources, while the labor involved was heavy, exhausting, and never gave workers enough skills to use as negotiating points. I think the fact that sugar was very high-value must have been involved, as well. Certainly, the notoriously high death rate of slaves on sugar plantations (and thus the need to always keep buying more) was only tolerable (to the owners) because the profits from sugar were obscenely high.

As far as I can tell, slavery in Mauritania today has no such economic pressure behind it, there's no industry or business sector that "demands" it. People keep up slavery because they -- the slave owners -- *like* it, for the daily satisfaction of dominating other human beings. It's now a habit -- or an addiction -- even if it started with the coldest of economic calculations.

That Depends Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

Perhaps you've already seen this, but adult diapers are about to outsell baby diapers here in Japan. Of course, since it is the inscrutable Orient, no one is sure if it is going to be 2020 or if it was in 2011. 

I find this even more remarkable, given that there is a "bustling Japanese diaper arbitrage trade". Chinese exchange students buy up the diapers, get them back to China where they are sold at a hefty markup, such that our local retail outlets have signs restricting the sales to 1 or 2 per customer. 

And while ObWi is home to all your diaper related blogging, feel free to reflect on whatever year-end trends you see.

All the "Eating" Holidays

by Doctor Science

Some friends once described their style of Jewish/Christian marriage as, "We observe all the 'eating' holidays." We follow the same guidelines here, at least in regard to the winter solstice celebrations.

Later today I will expand this post, hopefully with pictures of some of the delicious cholesterol-bomb cookies we've been making, by for now I have a quick question:

Our big Christmas Dinner will be on the 26th. We're having turkey with all the trimmings, and I'm heading out to pick up the fresh turkey now; we'll start brining it tomorrow night. I was planning to put the turkey in the picnic cooler outside on the porch, in what I call God's Fridge, and to keep it cool with a couple bags of ice. Now I learn that the overnight low tonight is predicted to be 18°F (-8°C), with the high tomorrow 31°F/-1°C, the low tomorrow night 25°F/-4°C.

I keep the cooler up against the house, so it doesn't get quite as cold as outdoors. Nonetheless, I'm afraid that under these conditions the turkey will freeze overnight.

The question is, do you-all think the cooler will keep the turkey *warm*, compared to the outside world? Or should I put the cooler in a cool part of the basement -- which is still awfully warm compared to God's Fridge (when it's turned into God's Freezer)?

Into the darkness again

by Doctor Science

In honor of the darkest day of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere) (when I started writing this), I'm going to give some advice relevant to a post that's currently going around tumblr:

The problem with a history of depression and anxiety is that you can never know if you're "just having one of those weeks" or if you're sliding back down into those places you swore you'd never go again.

This is not actually true. As someone with >more depression-mileage than most on tumblr (as in, diagnosed and dealing with it for more than 20 years), I can say that no, you *can* know if you're "just having one of those weeks" or if it's more serious.

This advice is for people who've already been diagnosed with depression or depression+anxiety, gotten a bit better, and now wonder if they're relapsing, just having a bad week, or whether they're in a situation where feeling depressed is the normal human thing to do.

Starry Moonlit Deep Winter Night, by Stephen Remick. I found this picture via google image search, and picked it because it so accurately evokes how moonlit snow can glow while the sky above is dark, as though the light of the sky is down and the earth's darkness is up. It's very New England.

the last Friday open thread before Christmas Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

Tell everyone whether you've been naughty or nice and what you expect in your stocking. I'll be experiencing the wonder that is a Japanese university Christmas, which means a committee meeting on Dec 25th. Ho ho ho.

wondering what 'avuncular' is in Korean Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

Just got back to Japan, and cracked open google news to find this.

Kim executes his 'despicable scum' uncle

Talk about Korea or anything else you'd like to. 

Leveling up in cooking

by Doctor Science

The other day Sprog the Younger was reading a story in which a character -- a rather manly kind of man -- was trying to bake a cake, despite having no prior experience. She LOLed, and then thanked me for teaching her these critical life skills, so that she, at least, knows how to read a recipe, and how to bake a cake.

I opined that baking a cake (from scratch, no mix involved) is actually a medium-level cookery skill, because you usually have to separate eggs -- and my observation is that separating eggs is a great divider between the "can actually cook" and the "can cook a couple of things" groups.

Both the girls scoffed at the notion -- but then, both of them can cook enough to feed themselves, though only The Younger does it for fun. She loves reading recipes on the internet, because the comments are where you really learn what cooking is about: "This recipe is great! I loved it and will make it again! ... I changed everything." It will *really* cure you of slavishly following every detail of a recipe, and make you much less nervous about my husband's most-hated cooking instruction: "Adjust seasonings." Ri-i-i-ight. I shall now make it *less salty*. Thanks a lot, cookbook.

Anyway, I said that separating eggs is one of the points where you level up as you learn to cook, because a) it takes a little practice, and b) once you can do it, there's a whole new set or level of recipes you can try.

Younger said, "I can bake fairly well but I can't COOK, you can tell because I don't know how to make a roux" -- speaking of another leveling-up skill. I promised I would teach her to make a light one, such as I use for gravy or white sauce, but I've never really tried making a full-scale Cajun roux. As I told Younger, it seem to be the pan equivalent of roasting a marshmallow until it's a perfectly even light brown all over -- and my approach to marshmallows often devolves to Flame On!

But there's also the fact that no two Cajun chefs agree on how to make it. Some say: 1:1 ratio of flour:fat by volume, some by weight, while others say a 60:40 ratio. Some say the pan must be very hot, some say no more than medium-low. Some say you can use canola oil, others (more sensible IMHO) say never!. What they all agree is that you have to keep stirring and not take your eye off it until it's the desired color -- which for a very dark roux might be 40 minutes or more.

To heck with that, says I. Now that I see there's such a thing as microwave roux, that's what we're going to try.

Old Woman Frying Eggs, by Velasquez. One of my favorites, by one of my favorite painters. It's almost Dutch in subject matter, though still very Mediterranean in style. [source].

Misconceptions on the way to the Supreme Court

by Doctor Science

As you would expect, I've got my own take on Sebelius vs. Hobby Lobby Stores. Last week, Eugene Volokh did a series of posts about the case; I made some comments, which I'll repost here, along with some other information I've dug up.

Dinah Consoling Hetty in Prison, a sculpture by Francis John Williamson illustrating a scene from George Elliot's Adam Bede. Spoilers [highlight to read]: Hetty is in prison for the crime of "child-murder": she abandoned her new-born baby in the field where he was born. In the end, her sentence is commuted to transportation to Australia, along with the child's father.

This illustration, like all others I've seen and like the BBC production, gets the characters' looks fundamentally wrong. Dinah is rather cool and bland -- not to say boring or plain -- in appearance, while Hetty is extraordinarily *cute* -- Elliot keep comparing her to kittens, lambs, etc. Jenna Coleman is the look they should be going for. But also [highlight to read]: Hetty is attractively "plump" -- enough that no-one realizes she's pregnant.

Asymmetries and a goodbye

by liberal japonicus

Back when the world was young and Obama was running for president, one of the points, which I uncharitably assume was thought to be sufficient to derail his candidacy and so indicated not a modicum of restraint, but a desire to use only as much mud as necessary, was to highlight his choice of focussing on his father over his mother and suggest (often sub rosa) some sort of indication of a rejection of all things Caucasian. 

While taken to idiotic heights by Dinesh D'Souza in his The Roots of Obama's Rage, the question of why he wrote extensively about his father yet, as Janny Scott, in her biography of Obama's mother, has her quoting second hand that Stanley Ann Dunham noted that her son had only reserved 'one sentence' for his mother might still be on people's minds. While it may be a bit of hubris, I think that I know what Obama was thinking. 

I suppose the same charge could be leveled against me, in that I have written about my mother (here and here) but not anything at length about my father. While it is possible, in some sort of 'all possible worlds' theory, that Obama is, in D'Souza's words 'governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s', there is a more understandable and, I believe, sympathetic, way to look at things, (not that D'Souza shows any ability to actually be understanding or sympathetic). More below the fold

Corporate Personhood and Legal Fiction

by Ugh

Corporate "personhood" is in the news again with SCOTUS granting cert in the Hobby Lobby case to determine:

Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)..., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.

I'm not so much interested in the specific issue in the case, primarily because the outcome is clouded by the RFRA* - absent which Hobby Lobby would have lost and there would be no SCOTUS case - but to revisit a question I had when this topic was discussed here before.

That is, corporations are entirely creatures of statute - legal fictions, in other words.  They have only the ability to do things that the state allows them to do (to own property, sue and be sued, etc.).  In the past, state laws limited these things in large ways, and the articles of incorporation of corporate entities would also limit what the entity could do, but these days it seems these limits have largely gone by the wayside, so a corporation can do anything that is "lawful" as long as certain procedures are followed.

In any event, the underlying legal creation is still there.  Without state law, there are no corporations, unlike natural persons.  So, my question is: what happens to corporations formed under state law when that state repeals its corporate code?  

This is different, in my mind, than revoking a corporate charter, which would require some sort of process (due or otherwise) to be followed under current judicial precedent (e.g., just compensation if it's a taking, notice/opportunity to be heard, trial, etc.).  Delaware's corporate code revokes corporate charters for failure to pay franchise tax, but only after certain procedures are followed.

Rather, this would be the end of corporate law itself.  There would be no such thing as a corporation after repeal.  So....what happens?  Could a state even do this?  The Delaware Corporate code provides that if a corporate charter is revoked then a court has the power to wind up its affairs, including "to make such orders and decrees with respect thereto as shall be just and equitable respecting its affairs and assets and the rights of its stockholders and creditors."  So, would there be some sort of statewide corporate wind up, with, I assume, corporate property sold and the proceeds distributed to shareholders (or the property itself distributed)?  What if repeal doesn't provide for such a process?  Would repeal constitute some sort of "taking" requiring just compensation?  Taking of what?  Limited liability?  

I have to imagine this has come up before, but I can't seem to find an example (hence looking at the law governing charter revocation).  

*I do hope SCOTUS realizes the can of worms it would open by ruling that corporations are covered by the RFRA, either directly or indirectly through its shareholders.  The case  produce an interesting vote count.