this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Somebody explain this to an Asian?
Cotton picking was historically the job of black slaves in the US. After the slaves were officially freed, a lot of black people in US south kept doing that job for "slave wages" for lack of better opportunities. (Edit: this continued for generations. There were areas in the south where emancipation didn't actually seem to change much for a very long time.) Cotton picking and racial oppression are tightly coupled in the American mind. It wasn't the only thing slaves did, but most modern depictions of American chattel slavery feature it.
Black History Month is when we learn about the various atrocities that the US has committed against black people over the centuries. It's February.
It was also very common after the blacks were freed, for blacks to be arrested for random shit during the picking season. Then forced to do manual labor while in jail. The manual labor? Picking cotton.
This never really went away, did it?
I see. So what's the meaning of this post? Showing a racist image? What's with the $200 / hour?
There were memes going around on TickTock a while back claiming Biden offered $300/hr jobs picking cotton, as a joke. Some people took it seriously.
There was also a separate argument on Reddit about it, saying it was such a shitty job that no-one would do it for even $200/hr. So someone made a poll about it. Which mostly seemed to show (going by the comments) that people didnโt understand cotton picking wasnโt a year-round job lol.
I think it's being presented by the teacher as an insensitive way to introduce that history. But the subtext is all the times black people have been lied to and fucked over in various ways. So the joke is that they're being lured back into the fields and will be re-enslaved, I guess. It's pretty dark, especially the way things have been going in the US. Idk, someone else might interpret it differently.