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1. From: Randy Browne [mailto:randybrowne@gmail.com] Professor Shaw raises an interesting question about the shift in historical writing from "slave(s)" to "enslaved" Africans/African-Americans or "captive" Africans (for those who deal with the transatlantic slave trade). Although I agree with Prof. Shaw that "slave" has lost much ground over the past two decades, there are some contemporary historians who have resisted using "enslaved" as an alternative. As David Brion Davis, for example, observed in *Inhuman Bondage *(2006), "it is extremely ironic but also understandable that many African Americans today strenuously object to the use of the words 'slave' and 'slaves' when describing their ancestors' people. As we have seen, many Southern slaveholders also wished to avoid those words and succeeded in finding euphemisms for 'slaves' in the U.S. Constitution." "Fortunately," Davis writes, "there is no need to adopt the clumsy phrase 'enslaved persons' in order to show that inhuman bondage was never successful in dehumanizing a people..." (Davis, 412-13, n13). Like Prof. Shaw, I'm very interested in hearing other scholars' reasons for preferring one term over the other. Randy M. Browne Ph.D. Student Department of History University of Carolina at Chapel Hill 2. From: Marc Ferguson [marcferguson@charter.net] I use both terms, somewhat interchangeably. I think the difference is that the use of "slave" implies identity, and carries with it something of an ontological aura, whereas "enslaved" refers to a condition. Marc 3. From: cewalker@UCDAVIS.EDU Dear Jenny, to say blacks were enslaved ignores the fact that most Africans were slaves in Africa before the white man came. Slavery being the most common form of private property before the arrival of Europeans. Best , CEW , UC Davis.
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