I Wanna Go Back to Dixie

[e_jo_m]

 

(Title taken from the Tom Lehrer song.)

Some people say that we ought to refer to slaves as 'enslaved people', because that emphasizes their humanity.

As someone descended from Confederate soldiers, I am VERY reluctant to adopt any kind of euphemism regarding the Peculiar Institution. However, it's polite to call a group what they want to be called, so I will grudgingly defer to them. If some survey conducted by Amnesty International or whatever says that they prefer 'enslaved people', then I will accede to that.

I strongly suspect that it is bad in the long-term, since it is bad to use softened terms to describe horrible evils. But it is polite to call a group what they want to be called. It is important to me that I am called by my proper name which I choose to bear, and so it would be very rude of me to not honor that wish when others have it. (I mean, we say "He's a plumber", but we would cease if he objected to it.)

Possibly more concerning, however, is that it looks like most of the people arguing for this change in nomenclature haven't actually asked (former) victims of human trafficking how they feel about it? Even more concerning is that it looks like it hasn't even occurred to them that they ought to ask? Hopefully I'm just missing something.