[Ads-l] "slaves" and "enslaved [persons]" revisited

Sun Apr 17 14:41:25 UTC 2016

On Apr 17, 2016, at 8:30 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU> wrote:
> Z, or anyone sharing the same preference,
> 
> Given your preference for “enslaved [persons]" over "slaves," do you also say "prisoners" should be dropped in favor of "imprisoned [persons]?

C’mon now.  Quite apart from what was posted here on April Fool’s Day (think about that), there genuinely is some merit in both terms, actual cases for why being made in the articles I’d linked previously (archived post here: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-April/141606.html ) and in others that I’m sure could be found without too much difficulty for anyone concerned about the matter.  In some contexts, imprisoned people or whatever might at times be better and probably does get used.

That the word “slaves” somehow “implicitly LEGITIMIZES the enslavement of children, women, and men” - it’s impossible to imagine a logical argument and evidence that would support such a claim.  That is, were it actually a serious claim - and it manifestly was not.  It’s tinfoil hat territory, like Jared Lee Loughner and David Wynn Miller.

In some contexts “enslaved persons” or variations thereon make sense and might be the preferable term, while in other contexts not so much.  It could in some contexts sound overly euphemistic, as if to suggest slavers fully recognized the humanity of the people they’d enslaved: “My God!  I don’t have slaves here, I’m no monster!  These are enslaved PEOPLE working my fields!”

“People of color” was perhaps just such a euphemism, used perhaps to suggest slavers recognized the humanity of all such people - while advocating they all be deported to Africa, to there grow cotton and tobacco cheaply for Americans (and the more they grow the less expensive it will become to deport more people to Africa until they’re all gone), and if a lot of them die from disease in the generally undesirable land the slavers acquired there, or from being killed by the native population who didn’t like their land being essentially stolen, or from being killed by the native population by arms the slavers sold to them, hey.  Just business.  Try to think of it as an adventure, and yourself as a pioneer!  Those are things the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States and its auxiliary groups and others like them were writing in its early decades.  They drew in some misguided or merely budding abolitionists whose thinking on the subject had a long way to go; had they used some uglier word in their name than “people of color” they might have lost those new members.

>  […]           Indeed so cheaply can cotton, rice, sugar, coffee, &c. be produced in Africa; and such is the enormous expense of slave labor, that whenever such articles are extensively cultivated by freemen, it will be impossible for those who cultivate these articles by slaves, to compete in the markets with those who sell what is produced by free laborers; and the ultimate consequence must be, if proper inducements are held out to the people in Africa, to cultivate cotton, sugar, coffee, rice, indigo, &c. the cultivation of such articles by means of slaves must be abandoned.—Colonizing in Africa, will therefore, in this way, contribute to the gradual destruction of slavery; for slaves are principally employed in the culture of these articles. […]
>             If the American colony should not contribute to relieve the country from the black population, it would still produce such benefits and blessings, in regard to the free blacks born in this country, the extinction of the slave trade, and the civilization of the Africans, as to warrant and induce the greatest exertions and zeal in the cause of the colony.   But the colony can do much to relieve the country from the black population.  The expense of transportation is less than was supposed; and it is demonstrable that by means of the commerce to which the colony will give birth, it may be reduced to a mere trifle.  The objection of the expense of transportation vanishes when we think of the many thousand slaves annually transported from Africa.
>             The colonists who went out in the Oswego, were transported at an expense of $34.35 each.  They could have been transported in a larger vessel, for one third less; and if the vessel had a return cargo, another third might be deducted from the price of transportation.  The colonists that were last transported, went out an expense of $26.
> […] to accomplish the great purposes of this colonization—the melioration of the conditions of the free blacks in this country, the gradual extinction of slavery in the United States, and the ultimate removal of the black people, requires means beyond the reach of any association of individuals.  These grand objects require the strong arm of the national government.  To procure the interposition of the government, Dr. Ayres said, was now the design of the society.  An application for that purpose would be made to Congress at the next session; he was therefore solicitous to have an expression of public opinion in favor of the interposition of the national legislation, so that the members of Congress may be informed what public opinion is concerning this very interesting subject. […]
“Colonization.” Troy Sentinel. October 8, 1824: 2 cols 3-4. [From the Albany Daily Advertiser.]

The ultimate goal of deporting all people of color to Africa with the “strong arm of the national government” (should we obtain federal support for deportation) is just to save them from themselves!  It’s noble to get rid of people of color!

> When the slave steals, therefore, it is from sympathy, to supply the destitution of the free black, or for traffic with him. When the master has to employ severity, it is to repress the inertness, or to guard against the depredation, or the discontent, which the intercourse and spectacle of the free black, has been the principal agent to awaken. In getting rid, then, of the free blacks, the slave will be saved from the chief occasions for suffering, and the owner, of inflicting severity.  Such are the benefits to these two classes, which the Society contemplates to place by the side of that more inestimable one, which it proposes to the free blacks. The free blacks it would save from want, vice, misery—the slave from crime and suffering, the master of the slave from all occasion for resort to harsh treatment of him.

The Sixteenth Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States. 2nd Ed. Washington, DC: James C. Dunn, 1833. xxv. https://books.google.com/books?id=LLVPAQAAIAAJ&pg=PR93

Whether those who use “people of color” consciously do so in a Yankee Doodle sort of way, turning the slavers’ term into a positive one, I’m not sure.  I’d maybe like the term more if that was what was happening.

I was reminded somewhat of a group of people who imagined themselves to be adoptee rights activists insisting that adoptees need to be called “adopted persons” or “persons who were adopted” (and other terms I forget) and that any reference to “adoptees” in law needed to be changed accordingly, because “adoptees” is dehumanizing or reduces people to objects of commerce or some darn thing.  Meanwhile, actual adoptee rights activist groups, like Bastard Nation (to which I’ve long belonged), actually managed to change laws in some states so that adoptees can access their original birth certificates as a matter of right, something no other organization had accomplished.  Sadly, many people seem to like the activism of feelings.  It being often completely ineffectual (even counterproductive), it’s much easier.

Among some, mothers/natural mothers/birth mothers/biological mothers/first mothers (and other terms I forget) is a revolving door.  Terms are declared offensive by some, discarded, revived later when the new terms are decided to be offensive.  See e.g. http://www.dailybastardette.com/bj-lifton-booted-from-adoption-conference-offensive-language-cited/ (written by a friend of mine).  A longtime advocate for adoptees and bparents had been booted as an invitee to a conference because of her usage of “birthmother.”  That, in spite of many such people still liking that term… and the organization Concerned United Birthparents still being the largest organization of people who’d willingly or unwillingly surrendered children for adoption.  The man who booted her was someone who for a number of years (maybe still?) had miniscule marches on Washington, D.C. for adoptee rights - nevermind that adoption law is state law, not federal.  Nevermind that the media coverage he got for his miniscule marches was similarly minicule, or nonexistent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8PTnoDPHs  (One of the protestors’ signs: “Abolish Adoption Slavery.”  Some white people just have no sense of perspective, proportion, or propriety sometimes, do they?)
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