Its a common thing that farmers do. It helps them prepare the field after a harvest to use it again.

Obviously there are going to be more total enslaved people now, it scales with the population. The problem with looking at it that way is that it doesn’t actually tell you if the situation is improving. All it tells you is that there are way more people now. That’s why you look at a percentage. That will tell you how bad the problem was, how much better its gotten, and how much better it needs to get.

I’m not trying to argue that everything is ok because a smaller percentage of people are enslaved now. A percentage is simply the more useful method of measuring how common slavery is and comparing it to different times.

If you aren’t accounting for the change in population and you’re just comparing the estimated number of slaves, then you are definitely correct. However, I think its probably better to measure what percentage of the population is made up of slaves.

What is your definition of slavery that would mean there is more slavery now than before the civil war?

There are a lot of words and phrases that don’t make sense at all in English, so I usually don’t question things very much. Maybe I’m the weird one but I’ve never seen anyone ask about why we use the word rice.

Idk, do you think the people who are opposed to its use are just muckraking?

Idk what muckraking is, but I think those opposed to it are mostly correct in their thinking. I just think that this isn’t quite the same as other similar examples. This use of the word rice is so far detached from racism that most people don’t even know about the connection. There is no intention of racism, there is no perception of racism. I see no problem.

What could rice have to do with computer customization?

Nothing, its a completely different meaning of the word rice.

Even if it’s distanced from the original meaning the word itself implies that racist joke.

Me and everyone I know didn’t know the history of the word at all until now. We didn’t think it implied anything, we just assumed it was another stupid nonsensical English word.