Is there any point to referring to slaves as "enslaved persons"?

[TheSeaOtter]

@monstro

I don’t get how it sugarcoats anything. If anything, “enslaved person”–very much like “imprisoned person” and “kidnapped person”–makes it clear we are talking about oppression as opposed to something else.

It occurs to me it’s hard to find substitute words for “slave”. If we were talking about a peasant, we could say “laborer”, “serf”, “poor person”, “countryman”, or “villager”. But if you wanted to distingush a slave from a free person, what other word is there? “Servant” is ambiguous. Everything else is either pejorative or archaic.

That’s… not actually true. All of those words mean different things. ‘Peasant’ is a class of farmers. A ‘serf’ is a specific subset thereof - some peasants were actually slaves, others were free, and some were serfs, which was a strange state of semi-enslavement.

‘Laborer’ is really anyone who does work. It’s implied that it’s largely physical work, but that could be anything from farming to construction to assembly-line work.

‘Villager’ is an occupant of a village. Even if you’re using it to describe a social class, it still doesn’t imply much about what work they do - a villager could be a farmer, a shopkeeper, or a blacksmith.

As far as I know, ‘countryman’ just means ‘resident of the same country’.

‘Poor person’ describes socio-economic status, but again, it doesn’t say anything about why the person is poor or what work they do.

‘Servant’ is a job description. Servants are paid, and are free to stop being servants if they wish, or to go and work as servants for someone else. They might do work similar to some slaves, but the concepts are very much distinct.

If you really need synonyms for slave, ‘chattel’ and possibly ‘bondservant’ might do. But personally I think ‘slave’ is a good word for that. It’s a harsh sound for a harsh concept. If there were still slaves and they wanted to be called ‘enslaved persons’, I would think that a good reason to do so… except that if that were the case, I’d be more concerned with the part where we had people owning other people.

[mhendo]

@you_with_the_face

Exactly. If we accept that the word slave connotes someone who isn’t fully human, but we all understand that slaves were just as human as the people oppressing them, then it should be freakin’ obvious that there will be a dampening effect when we always refer to them as “slaves” while eschewing the perfectly cromulent “people”.

But there’s the rub: for me, and, i believe, for most modern Americans, the word “slave” does NOT connote someone who isn’t fully human.

It might have been considered that way by the people who held slaves, and even by people who didn’t hold slaves but who believed in inherent black inferiority. As a historian, though, i feel no obligation to internalize the worldview of the people that i study. I can study and understand the ideas and the arguments and the morals and the values of slaveholders, without buying into them.

And all of this is something that i have no trouble explaining to my students, while also generally using the word “slaves” to describe the people who were enslaved. We deal in considerable detail with the economic importance of slavery, and with the moral and religious and political justifications for slavery, and with the arguments (pragmatic and moral) against slavery, and with some of the wide varieties of slave experience and suffering. I think it’s very clear to my students, during all of this, that i consider the slaves to be people, to be fully human, and it’s pretty clear to me that they feel the same way.

In fact, as someone who teaches American history, i find that slavery is one aspect of the American past that my students universally agree about. If we talk about something like the US-Mexican War, or about battles between labor unions and capitalists in the Gilded Age, or about the growth of federal intervention during the New Deal, or about the Vietnam War, or about the feminist movement of the 1960s, or about the rise of conservatism under Reagan, or about the movement for gay rights, there are often students whose politics clearly lead them to one side of the debate or the other.

But slavery is something of an exception. My students—every single one of them—appear in no doubt about the immorality of the institution, about the brutality of it, and the inhumanity of it, and they clearly identify with the humanity and the suffering of the slaves, and not with the concerns of the slaveholders.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

For folks who owned slaves, I prefer the correct and direct “slaver.” Owning slaves was a monstrous thing to do, and it’s appropriate to use a word that emphasize the monstrosity of the act.

For folks who were slaves, I prefer “folks who were enslaved” or “enslaved people,” or “guy who was enslaved.” It keeps the focus on the injustice of the institution and makes it harder to think of “slave” as just another category of property.

[mhendo]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

For folks who owned slaves, I prefer the correct and direct “slaver.” Owning slaves was a monstrous thing to do, and it’s appropriate to use a word that emphasize the monstrosity of the act.

For folks who were slaves, I prefer “folks who were enslaved” or “enslaved people,” or “guy who was enslaved.” It keeps the focus on the injustice of the institution and makes it harder to think of “slave” as just another category of property.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to use these terms if you’re someone who finds yourself forgetting about the horrors and monstrosity of slavery, and needing to be reminded of it by some useful linguistic conventions. If you have problems remembering that slaves were not simply “just another category of property,” and that slavery was an unjust institution, and using the term “enslaved people” helps you focus on those things, then by all means use the terms. They work perfectly well, and there’s nothing wrong with them.

For some people, though, simply using the word “slave” doesn’t cause us to forget the horrors of slavery, or the injustice of the institution, or the humanity of the enslaved persons themselves. In my mind, the word slave doesn’t hide or obscure or suppress those understandings; it triggers and reinforces them. Maybe that’s something inherent in the way my mind works; maybe it’s simply a product of the fact that my job is to teach American history, including the history of slavery. I don’t know. But, for me, using “folks who were enslaved” or “enslaved persons” would not add to my understanding of the issue, and would simply serve to make my speech and my writing sound more awkward.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@mhendo

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to use these terms if you’re someone who finds yourself forgetting about the horrors and monstrosity of slavery, and needing to be reminded of it by some useful linguistic conventions. If you have problems remembering that slaves were not simply “just another category of property,” and that slavery was an unjust institution, and using the term “enslaved people” helps you focus on those things, then by all means use the terms. They work perfectly well, and there’s nothing wrong with them.

Very subtle, nice try, but no cigar.

I don’t find myself forgetting about the horrors and monstrosity of slavery, thank you for your concern. Rather, I find other people find themselves benumbed to the horrors and monstrosity of slavery. I use these words not as a mnemonic, but as a reminder to others.

[mhendo]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Very subtle, nice try, but no cigar.

I don’t find myself forgetting about the horrors and monstrosity of slavery, thank you for your concern. Rather, I find other people find themselves benumbed to the horrors and monstrosity of slavery. I use these words not as a mnemonic, but as a reminder to others.

I’m sure they’re grateful for your concern, and for your ability to read their minds and correct their shortcomings.

[you_with_the_face]

@mhendo

But there’s the rub: for me, and, i believe, for most modern Americans, the word “slave” does NOT connote someone who isn’t fully human.

But we’re talking about ideas that are occurring on a subconscious level.

Of course few people will think they aren’t enlightened enough to see slaves as people. In truth, I doubt that is the case.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@mhendo

I’m sure they’re grateful for your concern, and for your ability to read their minds and correct their shortcomings.

:rolleyes: You’re being ridiculous. Yes, I can read minds; I use this superscience called language to do so. That is, I listen to the words people say, and I am able to understand their thoughts thereby. You may wish to give it a try some day.

Whether others are grateful to me for reminding them of things they might forget? You must understand how small a shit I give for their gratitude on this subject.

Frankly, if a scholar like Henry Louis Gates sees a reason to use this linguistic formation, I’m going to give it due consideration.

[mhendo]

@monstro

It’s more than fucked up that enslavers considered slaves “people” when it benefited them politically, but considered them animals when they were literally and figuratively screwing them.

Every time i teach my students about the Constitution and the three-fifths clause, i am amazed anew at the sheer hubris that permitted Southerners to hold human beings in slavery and permit them none of the rights of free people, and yet at the same time argue that the slave population entitled slave states to greater representation in Congress.

[mhendo]

@you_with_the_face

But we’re talking about ideas that are occurring on a subconscious level.

Of course few people will think they aren’t enlightened enough to see slaves as people. In truth, I doubt that is the case.

You might be right. But if people really are that unaware, do you think that they are likely to have their outlook changed by a simplistic linguistic shift, like saying “enslaved persons” rather than “slaves”?

[mhendo]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Frankly, if a scholar like Henry Louis Gates sees a reason to use this linguistic formation, I’m going to give it due consideration.

I have a lot of respect for Gates. I also have no problem if people want to use this locution; there’s nothing wrong with it. It might also be that linguistic shifts like this are baby steps in the long and slow process of getting some people to change their views. I just think that it’s putting the cart before the horse, and that, if people are ignorant about slavery, then correcting their actual historical understanding is far more important than correcting their terminology.

Also, having been involved in discussions like this before, and this one, i resent the idea—sometimes implied, sometimes explicitly stated—that people who don’t change their terms must somehow be unaware of the reality of slavery, or must somehow unconsciously think of slaves as less than human. Some of us are able to use the term “slave” without attaching connotations of subhumanity to it, and without downplaying the injustices and the violence and the horrors of slavery.

[you_with_the_face]

@mhendo

You might be right. But if people really are that unaware, do you think that they are likely to have their outlook changed by a simplistic linguistic shift, like saying “enslaved persons” rather than “slaves”?

Yeah, I do think small shifts like this can do this.

Do you think phasing out “Columbus discovered America” has changed people’s consciousness over the past 20 years? I do. The replacement of “discovery” with other words and phrases has chipped away at some of the Eurocentric bias that has distorted much our history-telling for the last 500 centuries. Instead of seeing the Americas as a vast, untamed wilderness uninhabited by anyone except forests and animals, people are more likely to appreciate the fact that advanced societies were already living here. These were advanced societies that had been started by Columbuses of a different time and ethnic origin, but were pioneers in their own right.

The sheer number of indigenous people present in the Americas when Columbus came is also easier to appreciate when we stop casually saying that Columbus “discovered” America. You can’t “discover” a place that has been “discovered” by millions of others. When we replace the word with something more accurate, we can rely on language to convey the truth in addition to history lessons. Needing an in-depth backstory to prevent people from misunderstanding the facts, when we could recognize the problematic implications of our vocabulary and change it accordingly, is smart to me.

The same applies to the issue of slavery.

By the way, there doesn’t seem to be a systematic movement to scrub “slave” from our vernacular. It’s just a few people modifying their speech in a certain way. The question being asked in this thread is why would someone do such a thing. Regardless of whether you agree with this rationale, are you bothered by it? I don’t get why anyone would be.

[bup]

@you_with_the_face

Yeah, I do think small shifts like this can do this.

I agree. Words matter. Reducing a person to a synecdoche label - like cripple, or retard, or even slave - has subconscious effects which grow over time.

Besides, simply churning the vocabulary wakes the listener up again. It’s easy for a documentary soundtrack to become a wash of sounds. Varying phrasings is just good writing.

[JRDelirious]

Answered “Possibly” – for many of the reasons mentioned above, only that I myself could still take it or leave it as far as the discourse at this time. A slave is an enslaved individual() and I don’t feel particularly confused about that part, and while reading the thread I’ve tried to see if it stirs me differently but I really can’t detect it. As bup points out, the evolution of the language and of social convention is away from some forms of synecdochal reference towards [adjective modifier][generic noun]. But I don’t think I would give a second thought to whether some text reads “slave” or “enslaved people” if the meaning is clear.
()Depending on the historic period and geographic location, slaves may have been seen as “people”, yet all the same chattels, not legal “persons”. Or even as persons, but just inferior ones. One can imagine that among some other cultures where equality and personal autonomy may NOT have been presumed as fundamental values even within the same national group, and where slaves may have been vanquished enemies, there may have been a sense that sure, these were people too but so what, we’re the victors and they’re the vanquished, our god(s) told us to do with them as we will, sucks to be them, Vae Victis. True, even Aristotle believed there were people who were just born to be slaves to the Civilized, but ISTM it was relatively late (vis-a-vis the whole of Western history) that the excuse came about of the Subsaharan Africans being racially inherently primitive or degenerated beyond any other population as the justification for general slavery.

Speaking of that, most of the discussion in the thread is about the form of slavery as practiced in the Americas, especially in what became the USA and in the Caribbean colonies. Would the authors who advocate such usage go ahead and refer to Spartacus and his followers as “rebel enslaved people”? To the early Mamluke armies as “enslaved warrior caste”? Say “enslaved oarsmen” instead of “galley slaves”?

Oh, and if using EP to refer to the (human) slaves avoids people getting silly about referring to a brake slave cylinder or a slave flash unit, that’s a trivial relief but a relief nonetheless.

[Andy_L]

@Thudlow_Boink

I can kind of see the point. Calling someone an “enslaved person” rather than a “slave” emphasizes that (1) slaves are people too, and (2) their status as a slave is something that has been imposed upon them.

In addition, “enslaved person” (to me) conveys the idea that what is happening to the enslaved is a continuing crime.

This article http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2011/10/21/in-american-history-the-monsters-are-real/ might be of interest, by the way.

"And the truth is that even the most horrific fantasies from the most violent horror movies pale in comparison to many of the real monsters of history Poole describes. Consider for example the story he tells of one prolific serial killer from the 1700s — a man whose story makes that of Jack the Ripper seem G-rated. This particular killer was a mad sea captain who abducted his victims and chained them up, still alive, in an almost airless 18-inch high crawlspace below the deck of his ship. There his victims were subjected to every imaginable form of deprivation, degradation and physical torture. Those he killed he killed slowly and painfully, forcing the others to watch as he did so. This serial killer victimized countless men, women and children over many decades.

And he wasn’t acting alone. There were hundreds of such ships with hundreds of such captains, serial killers and sadistic torturers all. And everyone knew what they were doing yet almost no one tried to stop them because it was all perfectly legal."

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@mhendo

Also, having been involved in discussions like this before, and this one, i resent the idea—sometimes implied, sometimes explicitly stated—that people who don’t change their terms must somehow be unaware of the reality of slavery, or must somehow unconsciously think of slaves as less than human. Some of us are able to use the term “slave” without attaching connotations of subhumanity to it, and without downplaying the injustices and the violence and the horrors of slavery.

I in no wise intend to make or imply any such thing.

[you_with_the_face]

@Andy_L

And he wasn’t acting alone. There were hundreds of such ships with hundreds of such captains, serial killers and sadistic torturers all. And everyone knew what they were doing yet almost no one tried to stop them because it was all perfectly legal."

Heh. This characterization reminds of a thought I’ved been marinating on for quite a while. We could easily take the story of American slavery and turn it into a very interesting and disturbing sci-fi/fantasy story.

[Carmady]

@bup

I see it precisely the opposite. We’re so used to slave that its effect has been numbed.

Enslaved people is not a euphemism; it’s perfectly descriptive. It heightens the awareness that they were slaves *and *people. Its unconventional phrasing wakes the brain up to process meaning.

To be clear, I never said it was a euphemism. I said it sounds euphemistic (and should have added “to me”), even though I know it isn’t a euphemism. I voted that there was certainly a reason for the change.

I was just pointing out that to some people, such as myself, who learned the history of slavery using the term “slaves”, the term “enslaved persons” may sound euphemistic for the simple reason that it does not call to mind slavery… because it wasn’t the word we learned for it. “Enslaved person” brings to mind someone that possibly was enslaved for a short period, possibly was not thought of as a lesser person, possibly was enslaved for a crime committed, or any number of other reasons. It does not immediately bring to mind “human beings who were permanently enslaved and considered subhuman” for me… but it will, for people who grow up with the new term.

[j666]

That was a sloppy reference to 3/5th on my part. My only excuse is that I wasn’t really talking about history, but ranting at the idea that people might find slavery rational, or believe slave owners “cared for” slaves.

I accept that some people have become numb to the horror inherent in the word “slave”. But does “enslaved person” carry any weight?

“enslaved person” - additional syllables, soft vowels, the “n”'s and “r” - is such a soft and lazy phrase next to the harsh single syllable of “slave”.

@mhendo

Every time i teach my students about the Constitution and the three-fifths clause, i am amazed anew at the sheer hubris that permitted Southerners to hold human beings in slavery and permit them none of the rights of free people, and yet at the same time argue that the slave population entitled slave states to greater representation in Congress.

[you_with_the_face]

@j666

“enslaved person” - additional syllables, soft vowels, the “n”'s and “r” - is such a soft and lazy phrase next to the harsh single syllable of “slave”.

So what? Obviously the people who prefer to say “enslaved person” don’t think a syllable count matters in their ability to communicate what they want to communicate. Academics aren’t reknown for their pithiness anyway.

I’ll point out that the very fact that we are still talking about this subject, days after the OP started, proves that Henry Louis Gate’s interesting word choice was/is the opposite of “pointless”. It has gotten people to think about what they say and think when they hear the word “slave”, when they otherwise would not. There is power in that whether you agree with the action or not.