Today marks the 153rd anniversary of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that officially abolished slavery in the United States. It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around the idea that just over a century and a half ago, it was legal to own another human being in America. Slavery has existed de factor or de jure in one way or another about as long as civilization has existed. It has only been wholly eradicated as a protected legal institution since 2007, which is mindblowing. Even though it is no longer a protected legal practice, it nonetheless remains a factual reality all over the world, and is a big part of the labor force building the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

There are lots of different reasons why slavery has ever been a thing and all of those reasons are bad. Humans are essentially all the same. We are animals with the same anatomy and core characteristics. The psychology of small differences is really the only thing that ever made the practice socially acceptable, which is just as bad an indictment of slavery as the practice itself. While slavery has been dead since 1865, its cultural effects are still quite present in modern society. Let’s not forget that if the reasons for treating people like property were wrong then, e.g. some kind of invented superiority myth, they’re still wrong now.

Happy Thirteenth Amendment Day. I’ll try sticking to soccer again tomorrow.