At one point in the play, Joanna refers to Abba as a “slave,” and Bleu quickly corrects her to say, “enslaved person.”
Why does Bleu make this correction? Do you remember how she explained it to Joanna?
Abba’s humanity should not be identified by the involuntary imprisonment she was forced to live in. She was an enslaved person. The ownership of other humans is the stain of this country.
Bleu from “When A Trumpet Cries”
Abba was not a cow or a horse. She was an entire living, breathing woman. By using the term slave, we take away her humanity. It makes it easier on us to forget the fact that they were human and did not ask to be put in this situation. The word slave means that someone is someone else’s property. To say enslaved people, we are talking about a person and not an object.
Our words matter, especially when discussing difficult history like enslavement.
When Joanna calls Abba a slave, it implies that being a slave was her whole identity. The shift away from “slave” to “enslaved person” focuses on the human being (man, woman, child) rather than the condition being forced upon them (enslavement). This updated language brings in the individual and their humanity.
Similarly, historians no longer use the term “master” or “owner” and instead refer to the men and women who enslaved human beings as “enslavers.” In making this change, it emphasizes that the choice to enslave human beings was voluntary and deliberate.
| Discussion |
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| 1. Have you heard the term “enslaved person” and/or “enslaver,” or do you still mostly hear people say “slave” and/or “master”? |
| 2. What do you think of historians updating language as they learn more about our past? |
| Further Reading |
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| Language of Slavery by the National Park Service Language of Enslavement by the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site The Vocabulary of Freedom by the Underground Railroad Education Center |