Kanye is free from the constant threat of the lash and being forced to labor to enrich someone else, but he isn’t free from discriminatory laws designed to trap freed blacks and place them back in bondage. At any moment, just for being black and free, he can be arrested for “strolling about”—walking peacefully on the roads and minding his business; or for being “idle”—looking like he has no job; or for being “immoral”—whatever that meant to the white person reporting him and the police responding to the call.

If convicted of any of these infractions, he will once again become the chattel property of a random white man.

Prejudicial laws like these were common in the slave-owning South to snare freed blacks and force them back into slavery. Some states, like the state of Georgia, passed expulsion laws that required blacks who were manumitted to leave the state within a year of their emancipation.

Expulsion laws were a sinister ploy created by whites to reinforce white supremacy and eradicate the free black population perceived to be a threat by their very existence in a slaveholding society. They knew giving freed blacks 365 days to find a place to live, get a job and save enough money to retrieve their families was destined to fail because it takes many years for an enslaved person to save money to purchase their own freedom. So, Kanye’s dilemma was to move far away from his wife and children or voluntarily submit himself to re-enslavement and keep his family together.

Read More: https://www.theroot.com/some-did-choose-to-return-to-slavery-because-they-chose-1826037714