![]() And this is the conundrum: The state of enslavement was, by definition, dehumanizing.Ĭaesar, played by Aaron Pierre, and Cora, played by Thuso Mbedu, escape from the plantation where they were held as slaves in ‘The Underground Railroad.’ Kyle Kaplan/Amazon Studiosįor artists, writers and thinkers it’s difficult to reflect on the dehumanization of masses of people without diminishing some of the characteristics that make them unique. Whichever side you take in the ongoing terminology debate, both “slave” and “enslaved person” erase both personality and agency from the individuals being described. I think that Jenkins is onto something important here. In that same NPR interview, Jenkins notes that “right now are referring to as enslaved, which I think is very honorable and worthy, but it takes the onus off of who they were and places it on what was done to them. What, then, to make of Barry Jenkins’ saying he wants to push past this terminology? “Enslaved person” – at least among people open to the idea that a fresh look at American chattel slavery necessitated new language – became the new normal. Underground railroad story answerr series#However controversial the series may be, it is setting the terms of current discussions about enslavement. In the opening essay, project editor Nikole Hannah-Jones eschews “slave” and “slavery,” using variants of “enslavement” throughout. The new language reached another pinnacle with the publication of The New York Times’ 1619 Project. ![]() ![]() In 2015, renowned slavery and Reconstruction historian Eric Foner wrote, “Slave is a familiar word and if it was good enough for Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists it is good enough for me.”ĭespite such resistance, more and more academics recognized the limitations of the older, impersonal terminology and started to embrace “enslaved” and its variants. In the 1990s, a group of scholars asserted that “slave” was too limited a term – to label someone a “slave,” the argument went, emphasized the “thinghood” of all those held in slavery, rendering personal attributes apart from being owned invisible.Īttempting to emphasize that humanity, other scholars substituted “enslavement” for “slavery,” “enslaver” for “slave owner,” and “enslaved person” for “slave.” Following the principles of “people-first language”– such as using “ incarcerated people” as opposed to “inmates” – the terminology asserts that the person in question is more than just the state of oppression imposed onto him or her. In the past three decades there has been a movement among academics to find suitable terms to replace “slave” and “slavery.” ![]()
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