It arose because for centuries they were the people the civilized people of Europe enslaved. The word “slave” derives from the Slavic people. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, and take it one step at a time. Determining the motivations of the people who fabricated this problem and then concocted a solution requires more investigation. It is fairly easy to determine what the agenda is of those who support voter suppression in the name of voter integrity. The so-called problem exists solely in the mind of the beholder. People concoct a problem and then devise a solution which then is mandated/legislated. In other words, what we have here is exactly what we have with voter integrity. From my own experience from the Exodus to Spartacus to slavery in America, it never once occurred to me that the use of the term “slave” restricted the humanity of an individual to that one and only trait thereby requiring an extraction to separate them. People well understand that calling someone a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker does not mean the common noun is inherent to their identity as a human being. Calling someone a “professor” does not denigrate the person’s humanity. Calling Lotstein an “archivist” does not invalidate his humanity or conflate the person and the term. In other words, there is a process going on of mandating the use of this politically-corrected vocabulary.Ĭommon nouns, of course, are not inherent to people’s identity as a human being. The effort to substitute “enslaved people” for “slaves” has been long advocated by many Black academics to emphasize the violence that defined American slavery and the humanity of those subjected to it, said Anne Charity Hudley, a linguist at Stanford.Īs best I recall, Lotstein reported that the Dictionary of Archival Terminology was going to be updated accordingly. The New York Times article included the following: This combination of presentations and actions serves as a reminder that the debate over slave and enslaved isn’t simply an academic one but part of the culture wars with political consequences. Then on November 1, 2021, on the front page of The New York Times, the slave/enslaved words was one of the binary choices included in “ On the Left, a New Scramble over the Right Words to Say.” One should note that the front page article immediately below this one was “Ugly Infighting and Virginia Election Fill Democrats with Dread.” The next day was the election. 28-30, 2021, Michael Lotstein, University Archivist, Manuscripts and Archives, spoke about it. During the “Yale and Slavery in Historical Perspective Conference,” Oct. This proposed name change recently has been mentioned by Yale and The New York Times. Instead the common noun has been dropped and replaced by the adjective “enslaved” from the verb “to enslave” now placed before the word “person.” What should you call a person who is owned by another person? Traditionally, the common noun for such a person has been “slave.” Lately that word has been called into question. He is set to publish Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, with Simon and Schuster in October, 2018.Slide from the Yale and Slavery in Historical Perspective Conference,” Oct. In 2012, Blight was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For that institution he wrote the recently published essay, “Will It Rise: September 11 in American Memory.” He also reviews for the New York Review of Books. Blight works in many capacities in the world of public history, including on boards of museums and historical societies, and as a member of a small team of advisors to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum team of curators. He is currently writing a new, full biography of Frederick Douglass that will be published by Simon and Schuster in 2015. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars, New York Public Library. During the 2006-07 academic year he was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. In 2013-14 he was the William Pitt Professor of American History at Cambridge University, UK, and in 2010-11, Blight was the Rogers Distinguished Fellow in 19 th century American History at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. As of June, 2004, he is Director, succeeding David Brion Davis, of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale. He previously taught at Amherst College for thirteen years. Blight is Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University, joining that faculty in January, 2003.
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