Choosing Our Words, Carefully
Historians of slavery grapple with language, its meanings and its power
Join us this evening — Thursday February 17 at 7 pm ET — for our first live event of the Spring term: Author of How the Word is Passed Clint Smith in conversation with JHU’s own Professor Jessica Marie Johnson. Their topic: How Americans are reckoning with slavery. Thanks to our hosts, Baltimore’s Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture. Register here.
Maybe you’re like me, caught up in the “Wordle” word-game craze. What you might not know is that the game, created by one man as a diversion for his partner, got so big that last month the New York Times bought Wordle for a reported seven-figure sum. Try Wordle here.
Wordle caught our attention at the Hard Histories Lab when it was revealed that its new editors at the New York Times changed the game to bar users from inputting “insensitive or offensive words.” Among the banned words was the term “slave,” Newsweek reported.
Some users railed against the Times, but most missed a more serious subtext. Among scholars of slavery there is an on-going discussion, one that has led to pointed debate, over what terms are best used to chronicle and to characterize slavery and persons held in bondage. When might we term people “slaves,” and when is it better to describe them as “enslaved?”
Last week, Rebecca Onion over at Slate published her take in “Why Grammarly’s New Suggestions for Writing About Slavery Were Always Going to Miss the Mark.” The writing-assistant app, Onion reported, consulted experts and the results included new user recommendations: the phrase “enslaved person” instead of “slave,” and “freedom seeker” in the place of “fugitive slave.”
Onion spoke with Dr. Daina Ramey Berry at the University of Texas Austin, Professor and Chair of the History Department; Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professorship in History; Fellow of Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History; Fellow of George W. Littlefield Professorship in American History and author of the prize-winning The Price for the Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to the Grave, in the Building of the Nation (Beacon Press 2019). Dr. Berry pointed readers to “Writing about “Slavery”? This Might Help,” a crowd sourced set of recommendations from scholars of color intended to guide students, journalists and really anyone for whom slavery is their subject matter. (Hard Histories director, Martha Jones, is among the references for her 2015 essay “Julian Bond’s Great-Grandmother a “Slave Mistress?” How the New York Times Got it Wrong.”)
As researchers and writers on slavery, our thinking about language — it power and its pitfalls — will continue to generate debate. And still, it is already clear that whatever choices we make, they must informed and intentional. The cost for using language that is careless or that denigrates or dehumanizes is too high. Thank you to Dr. Berry and everyone leading these discussions.
MSJ.