The Silicon Valley-centric world of programming has been captured by the bizarre belief that certain offensive terms need to be excised from polite speech in order to make sure we do not communicate “noninclusive” thoughts. Google’s latest inclusivity guideline advises against “smartphone.” Coders at several big firms went from using “blacklist”/“whitelist” to “allowlist”/“denylist” in the great neurotic panic of 2020 that saw all sorts of well-intentioned liberals attempt to fight societal racism in America by racializing their every private thought and public utterance. These were heady days.
Even mechanics updated their vocabulary on the “master cylinder” and “slave cylinder” in the clutch of cars, two interacting hydraulic automotive parts that are, notably, inanimate objects. Realtors stopped referring to “master bedrooms.” Now, on Zillow, you’ll find “primary bedrooms.” The August 2020 New York Times described how “the term’s racist and sexist undertones lead New York’s real estate community and others to rethink outdated industry jargon.” I’m deeply confused about how “master bedroom” could be both racist and sexist. The “master of the house,” from London or Paris to the plantation South, was historically likely to be male. Surely “mistress bedroom” would be a sexist inaccuracy, as well as a source of great confusion to homebuyers.
While many of the changes demanded of the fussiest language users lately make no sense, the actual language around slavery is extremely tricky, both morally and grammatically. If I think slavers’ claims to own their slaves is not just morally wrong but illegitimate, because a human being cannot by very nature be the property of another, then the sentence “Lentulus Batiatus owned Spartacus” is not just unpleasant, but untrue. Yet all “slave” and “slave-owner” mean as terms are “person who was owned by another person” or vice versa. Arguably, the language around slavery is what linguists and philosophers call factive language: words that can’t be said without implying that they (or at least the moral and legal claims built into them) are true. Conundrum.
That’s why I am much more open to using terms such as “enslaved person” than I usually am toward some similar constructions. Intelligent people can disagree because you also don’t want to sound like you are denying that slavery occurred. Again, it’s tricky. This is something that requires actual human thought, which is why I was alarmed to learn via an insightful Twitter thread from Princeton history Ph.D. student Elise A. Mitchell that the autoediting software Grammarly is now set to do our thinking for us regarding the phrasing around this subject. As she writes about why she “doesn’t think we can automate this”: “I just found out about Grammarly’s updates re: slavery terminology. … Telling people to change ‘fugitive slave’ and ‘runaway’ to ‘freedom seeker’ doesn’t make any sense. Not everyone who fled was seeking ‘freedom.’ Some people sought temporary reprieve, the company of one another, or employment (often while remaining in bondage), for example. Running away is not the only way to ‘seek freedom.’ The term ‘freedom’ in the era of slavery always needs clarification. I also worry about ‘enslaver’ in place of ‘slave owner’ (and I use enslaver often). I’m worried it can sometimes muddle the differences between chattel slavery and other forms of enslavement.” All good points. The Ivy League milieu has problems aplenty, but it contains a lot better thinking than whoever is doing Grammarly’s linguistics, who should stick to then/than and reminding writers it’s home in on.
