Editor's note

Some may call it human trafficking, but advocates press for a more accurate term: slavery.

Read Reporter Kimbriell Kelly's story about it this month, however, and you'll see that, though stark, even that word doesn't accurately describe what is happening in Chicago and around the world today.

For many Americans, slavery conjures up images of picking cotton, of tilling soil, of working in the fields under the blistering sun. As with that form of enslavement--which mostly involved Africans-today's involves an even uglier underside that we are too hesitant to discuss.

For hundreds of years, the Africans who were brought here were forced not only into hard labor, but also into unwanted sexual relationships with the white men who legally owned them--and, sometimes, with each other--in the name of breeding, to create more workers.

Some of today's slavery, it seems, also focuses on sex. But this time it's about recreation, not procreation. This time it's solely about filling the growing U.S. market for women who will make their bodies available in almost any way imaginable.

At first, it may seem hard for many of us to believe. But turned on your TV lately? Been to the movies? If you really watch, your disbelief will evaporate. What's the message about how women should look and behave, and how men should treat them? What's the message about how love, or a desire for connection, should be expressed? In a culture that often endorses the image of the pimp, after all, are we really that surprised that sex industry would be persisting?

The fact that this form of enslavement involves hundreds of thousands worldwide--and more than 10,000 in the United States each year--makes it an issue that should matter to all of us. It means we need to take more responsibility for having honest conversations--with each other, with our friends and with our children--about sex. And that means more than putting on some Marvin Gaye and gettin' it on. It means we have to be willing to examine our own fascinations, confusions and misinformation about sex and sexuality, too.

Otherwise, we may continue to think it is normal and acceptable for such a line of work to remain a major economic engine, generating $9 billion worldwide, according to the U.S. State Department. Instead of viewing these as isolated incidents, or just blaming the women doing the work, or the men soliciting or coercing them, it is time we examined the larger conditions that led us to this point.

It is an interesting footnote, for instance, that it is often more-established immigrants recruiting newcomers, often from their own countries, for such work. One Korean woman Kelly learned about, for instance, was duped into working at a brothel run by other Koreans. It is a gross distortion, at best, of the American Dream.

It seems that dream will continue, however, as long as others--probably of all races, class and ages--keep the sex industry alive and thriving. As long as we want to buy it, the market will remain.

I only hope we can find some other ways to spend our money--and our mental energy--before too many more people's bodies alone become more valuable than the contributions they could make with their minds.

Starting this month, you'll notice a few fewer issues of the Reporter in your mailboxes or online. We are going bimonthly, to a six-issue annual publication schedule. To our regular subscribers, have no fear. Your 10-issue subscriptions will be extended accordingly. And we'll be working on new pricing structures to continue to make our magazine affordable for its variety of readers.

Most importantly, please don't take this as a sign that we're going away. The Reporter remains your best independent, in-depth source when it comes to the ways race and poverty affect our city and our lives. Like every nonprofit, however, we have weathered cutbacks and increased financial pressures, which mean we've had to refocus our resources.

Those resources can be best used, in our opinion, through our new bimonthly schedule. But we want to hear what you think. Write to us, call us or send us letters. Tell us what you like and what we can do better.

Most importantly, however, thanks for sticking with us. As has been true for all of our 33 years, we couldn't do our good work without readers and supporters like you.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Community Renewal Society
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group