At 11:59 AM 2/22/98 -0600, you wrote:
>        My original intention was to respond narrowly to several points of
>language in Ms. Fuller's first post on this subject.  I obviously was too
>brief to convey my intended meaning at least judging from the continuing
>discussion and how my post has been refered to and responded to.
>
>        Even using the words in a "relative sense," saying of slaves that
"some of
>them had it real good" seriously misunderstands the slave experience --
>degradation and exploitation was a constant in their lives. Slaves were
>property, they had no rights as human beings.

That was my whole point: slaves are slaves no matter "if they lived better
than poor, free whites" or if they were treated worse than abused dogs.
Calling them "servants" or any other PC term skirts the issue that blacks
or any other people that were owned by another person, is basically
distorting history.

I really don't want to get into a discussion of "these people were degraded
more than those people," because then it really does become relative.

But again, the original point was that if an exhibit or subject deals with
slaves, they should be called that and not something else just for sake of
not offending anyone.

Deb Fuller