--- Max van Balgooy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> "You will notice that we use the terms 'master-enslaver' and 'enslaver'
> to talk about those who enslaved others.  This is quite intentional.  It
> is generally considered polite to talk about these famous men as
> planters, politicians, or "great leaders".  We want to call attention to
> how the frame shifts if we also talk about them as enslavers.  This
> emphasis, while in itself a partial distortion, complicates these other
> frames if applied consistently.

Okay, I will throw up the BS flag on this one. You cannot hope to increase
understanding on a subject that is already distorted by distoring it in another
direction. This will just serve to irritate the people who's ideas you are
challenging and make them far less open to other viewpoints thus defeating the
whole purpose. In addition, you are also creating new misconceptions in people
who have little knowledge of the subject and are trying to learn.

Secondly, it also seems like a knock specificailly at "white men" in
particular. One thing I've noticed about the whole "enslaver" issue is that it
is almost exclusively used when talking about the male owner of slaves, usually
the plantation owner. Women were slave owners as well and were largely
responsible for a plantation's success. Using the rationale that their comfort
and wealth was because of appropriated labor of enslaved peoples, that puts
them in the same category as the men. But I guess if you are already considered
to be part of an "oppressed" population, as women are often times considered
because of their lack of rights and social status, it's not PC to also consider
them to be "enslavers".

Along this vein, why aren't these "enslavers" also described as "bigots" and
"chauvinist" because they also would have thought that Native Americans,
Mexicans, the Irish, and other non-Europeans were inferior and women were the
weaker sex. I mean if you are going to point out one of their faults to show
that they weren't great politicians or leaders every minute of the day, why not
point them all out while you are at it.

Thirdly, I'll state again that using the term "enslaved" implies that the
people were free at one point. If they were taken from Africa, sold, or forced
into slavery, I'll grant the use of the word. But if people were never free to
begin with, they can't really be "enslaved". They start out as slaves. It's
like being born an American (or other nationality) citizen. If you are born in
America or to American parents, you are automatically a citizen. There is no
naturalization process. So why are slaves who are born slaves suddenly given
the status of "enslaved", which has been up until recently, applied to people
who at one point had been free?

>And while these men were not
> politicians or great leaders every moment of every day, they were always
> enslavers.  Their comfort and wealth were wrapped up with the fact that
> they enslaved other people, appropriating their labor and controlling
> their lives.  Such an approach, we believe, challenges commonly used
> language and frames of understanding that replicate systems of racism.

And it does nothing to educate people on the social conditions that made
slavery acceptable. Instead, it looks like a smear campaign against men who
have otherwise been revered. Not one exhibit on slavery that I've seen actually
goes into the social history of why slavery was acceptable in it's time. (I'm
sure they are out there but it doesn't seem to be the norm.) If the goal of
changing the language is to challenge frames of understanding, we must present
the whole picture, not one piece of it. A relatively few number of white men
owned slaves; a vast majority of people supported the institution.

In addition, we can't say in one breath that it is wrong to apply 21st century
ideals to another time period and then turn around and apply one of our 21st
century ideals to that time period.

> It is also in line with suggestions by Michael Banton, Robert Miles,
> Stephen Small, bell hooks, Leon Higginbotham, and others within the
> field of race studies that we remove language that continues to mask
> systems of domination.  We recognize the term may be awkward for some,
> disturbing or irritating to others; however, we use it to unmask the
> ways that dominant language obscures the reality of enslaving human
> beings.

I think people are smart enough to figure out for themselves how truly terrible
slavery was without unmasking any language. I think it's great that historic
houses are starting to show other aspects of the time period besides just the
lives of the white men who owned the houses. You don't need many words to
convey the vast differences between a plantation house and the slave quarters.
Having both on display is impact enough. I think people are smart enough to
figure out the rest. If they aren't, no amount of language will help them
understand.

> "The other term that we use quite consciously is 'enslaved' (instead of
> 'slave').  We use it to counter a long tradition of erasing the basic
> humanity of enslaved people by naming them only in terms of a status
> that was imposed upon them.  Using the term 'enslaved people' emphasizes
> the point that 'people' were enslaved and that who they were exceeded
> that status."

So how is "slave status" different from "enslaved people status"? "Slave" has
always been applied to people. Animals aren't enslaved. People were treated
like objects. They were listed in death inventories along with farm animals and
property. Again, modern people are probably smart enough to see a death
inventory and come to same conclusion that *human beings* had this status
imposed on them. Changing the wording gives an inaccurate picture of the
historical times. A slave owner would not look at his slave and think, "this is
an enslaved person that had this status imposed on him." No. They are going to
look at a slave and think, "This is a good strong farmhand. He's worth $200."

Dickering over language seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to avoid
confronting the social reasons behind slavery in the US and to shift the blame
onto a few white men who owned plantations. This is not surprising. Slavery is
a HUGE embaressment in the timeline of US history. On the one hand, we, as a
nation, did a lot of impressive things. We were the upstart country that won
our freedom from an oppressive colonial government and in little over 200
years, has become one of the biggest, wealthiest and most powerful nations in
the world. Europe had been working on their countries for a couple of thousand
years and didn't get as far.

We pride ourselves on being the "land of the free" and it is directly tied into
our national image. Our pledge, our national anthem, our money, national seal
and flag all have mention or symbolizm about freedom and liberty for all
people. So how do we, as a nation, reconcile the fact that a little under 150
years ago that we had a social and legal system that deliberately took away the
freedom of other people and it was an intregal part of our society? Oooh, ouch.
Kinda stings doesn't it? Europe got rid of slavery long before we did. Germany
had that mass extermination thing going on not long ago but that was carried
out by one crazed maniac and his minions, not the entire nation in general.

In contrast, slavery was supported and promoted by basically the entire nation.
Sure, there were free states and there was also the fugitive slave act that
said that run-a-way slaves could be returned to their masters no matter where
in the Union they happened to be found - free state or not. So while the
majority of Americans did not own slaves, everyone was essentially part of the
social system that kept slavery intact long after it had been abolished in the
rest of the "civilized" world. A plantation owner might be the primary
"enslaver" but it was the rest of society that supported the system. It's just
a little easier to point the finger a few men with power than the average joe.

And one can argue that one way to affect changing attitudes is to start
changing the language. But I see a lot of verbage changing and not a lot else
being done to explain the times and social attitudes. We need to go one step
beyond "this is how the rich whites lived and this is how the enslaved peoples
lived." We need to start addressing WHY and HOW. How does a person become
dehumanized to the point of being property? That is what needs to be addressed;
not how to distort history through language to try and redeem a population that
has long been misunderstood.

Deb



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