[Ads-l] "slave" or "enslaved person"

Sun Apr 3 16:57:09 UTC 2016

>From one of the articles Christopher cites, Nick Sacco's:

“I believe there is an unavoidable paradox wemust address when engaging in this discussion. While I think that enslavedperson more precisely acknowledges the humanity of those forced into slavery’schains, the term is unavoidably presentist.”

I am reminded of something PatrickRael wrote: “Changes in the names used to refer to people ofAfrican descent in Americahave a ... complicated and instructive” history.  (This includes names used by them to refer to themselves.)  For a discussion of changing terminology in thetwentieth century, see “A Note onTerminology,” Black American Reference Book, xi---xii.

Joel

      From: Christopher Philippo <toff at MAC.COM>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Friday, April 1, 2016 11:28 PM
 Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "slave" or "enslaved person" [Enslavement of Native Americans]

On Apr 1, 2016, at 12:43 PM, Z Rice <zrice3714 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> the use of the term “slave” on this mailing list is very telling as it implicitly LEGITIMIZES the enslavement of children, women, and men.

¿The use of the term on ADS-L unquestionably renders enslavement morally right and/or legal in history and/or in the present day, worldwide?  The logical argument and evidence leading to such a conclusion must be extraordinary and surely merit sharing.

Some discussions on the subject elsewhere:

Waldman, Katy. ”Slave or Enslaved Person? It’s not just an academic debate for historians of American slavery.” Slate Plus. May 19, 2015. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/historians_debate_whether_to_use_the_term_slave_or_enslaved_person.html

Sacco, Nick. "The Paradoxical Nature of the 'Enslaved Person vs. Slave’ Name Debate.” Exploring the Past: Reading, Thinking, and Blogging about History. July 10, 2015. Blog.
https://pastexplore.wordpress.com/2015/07/10/the-paradoxical-nature-of-the-enslaved-person-vs-slave-name-debate/

“I’m taking this space to aggregate a discussion on H-Net [Humanities and Social Sciences Net http://www.h-net.org ] from 2010 on the use of enslaved person versus slave that helped me grok a lot of concepts I once took for granted. […]
"Today, there isn’t much heat left in this debate. Historians have more or less settled on careful usage of the term enslaved for the interpretive power it lends readers, while allowing some balance and interchangeability to not, as J. L. Bell wrote, 'spoil one’s writing.’
“For my part, I believe Professor Blight’s insistence that the term ‘slave' is only in bad faith when we truly don’t understand the people we label slaves is directed at the wrong element in the equation. We write not just so that we can understand the past, but so that others can, too. We might know the subjects we label slaves, but to ensure that readers never forget the work and power it took to create American slavery, it helps to use the term ‘enslaved’ as often as possible.”
Poe, Ryan M. “Slave or Enslaved? A Discussion from the Recent Past." July 7, 2015. Blog. http://ryanmpoe.com/wordpress/slave-or-enslaved/

On Apr 1, 2016, at 1:14 PM, Joel Berson <berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
> you will find Jewish forced laborers in Nazi Germany referred today as “slaves" or "slave laborers", even in Wikipedia ("Forced labour under German rule during World War II") 

I’m not sure what “even in Wikipedia” signifies.  The article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II like many WP articles is the product of a limited number of pseudonymous and anonymous people and bots, probably not scholars in the field, probably not people with knowledge of the best sources or access to the most current ones, some of whom may be working under more than one username or IP address, the basic framework of which was set by the article’s creator.

The article’s creator in this case identifies himself as Piotr Konieczny a Polish person working in South Korea specializing in the sociology of new media (but apparently mainly editing the English WP).  You will find Jewish forced laborers in Nazi Germany referred today as “slaves” or “slave laborers”, even by Piotr Koneiczny and a relatively small number of anonymous people who chose to collaborate: does that mean anything?  The choice of wording has been given relatively little treatment on the article’s talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II#Forced_or_Slave so for all we know little or no thought went into the choice, or maybe quite a lot of reasoning went into it but the reasoning has gone unstated.

Incidentally, the Polish Wikipedia’s equivalent of the English Wikipedia’s “View History” tab is “Historia i autorzy” (History and authors): I rather like that more!

Chris Philippo
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org