What is the difference between slaves and enslaves

Therefore, it stands to gloss over the comprehensively and grotesquely dehumanizing quality of slavery. It puts us in our proper historical context.

And each time we do it strikes a subliminal blow against sexism. Sign up at chicagotribune. Twitter EricZorn.

Skip to content. Officials are observing the arrival of enslaved Africans years earlier to what is now Virginia. You may hear other phrases like slave labor camp or escapee, rather than plantation or runaway. It is important to acknowledge humanity where it exists, assign agency when it was present, and keep language useable and understandable. Unfortunately, this phrase is also rather unwieldy. At the end of the day, I suppose that the most important factor is that the quarters themselves were not enslaved.

They were living quarters for people in a condition of enslavement, who were at the time referred to as slaves. It was the transfer of people who had been enslaved.

Complicated, I know. The most important thing to remember when you talk about language is not the specific word you use, but rather that you have carefully and thoughtfully chosen that word to be as precise and humanizing as possible. Language evolves. We constantly shift the way we talk about particular topics. Through that evolution, our motivation remains constant: to examine the past and the people who lived through it honestly and with all the integrity we can muster.

But as I said before, I partly agree with Doctor McCoy when using the term enslaved person in the context of a conversation or in literature.

We are no longer in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, language has changed and continues to. In a small but important way, we carry them forward as people, not the property that they were in that time.

This is not a minor thing, this change of language. All in all, when facing the discussion between using the terms slave or enslaved person, an enslaved person should not be exclusively used over the word slave. We need to continue the use of the word slave to keep the original language, censoring may only lead to disbelief. But on the other hand, we need to maintain the term of an enslaved person to identify these individuals as humans, not property. We need both terms in our vocabulary, we should know our history, while still giving respect to the ones before us.

Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to content Without a doubt, the topic of slavery is a hard pill to swallow.

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