I am in the office on this Monday holiday (don't ask why) and have been
reading the exchange on "slave" and "enslaved."

Like Henry Wiencek, at first I found "enslaved person" a somewhat arch
construction, but you easily get used to it. I think that it is
important to try to be clear in what we are discussing when we write
about history, and using the word "enslaved" does, indeed, as folks have
pointed out here, free you from inadvertently getting trapped in other
people's language and perspectives, and it reminds readers that the
people being written about were not slaves by choice or by nature.

To banish the word "slave" from the language of historical scholarhip,
though, is not likely to serve any good purpose, and we do not gain by
whitewashing the past or taking off the hard edges. I recall that
somebody in Virginia state goverment once decided to impose the
anachronistic term "manor house" in place of "plantation" because it
reminded people of slavery, a ridiculous proposal that was laughed out
of practice in no time at all.

I am old enough to remember that we got to African American through
Black and Negro and colored and other words not worth printing. Each
change of terminology seemed in some ways better than what went before,
but none was or is perfect. Some are not even accurate in some contexts.
We can't call relatively recent immigrants from Haiti  who are black
"African American" and convey the same information that we convey when
we use that term for somebody whose family has been in the United States
since slavery times and been a part of American culture for generations.
Or Colin Powell, whose immediate ancestors are not from the United
States or anywhere in Africa.

It's important when writing about a population as diverse at that of the
United States (and Virginia) not to generalize inaccurately from one
group to the whole or to write about the whole as if there were no
variety or minorities. I have a friend who used to jump up when somebody
said that "Virginians" believed or did this or that thing; and he would
shout, "That's genocidal language!" because that kind of generalization
almost always leaves part of the population out of the discussion and
consigns it to historical oblivion.

To be clear, we have to describe and define, and we will probably never
have entirely accurate and acceptable terms, particularly for the many
people in this diverse culture who have diverse ancentries and cultural
heritages.


Happy Unbirthday to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and a good
many millions of other people who don't get any federal recognition at
all for their nativities.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at
http://www.lva.virginia.gov

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