Update to Important Notes on Sensitive Topics

(Added September 3, 2024)

On the Use of the Words “Slave,” “Enslaved,” and “Enslaver”

In recent years, many writers have begun using the words “enslaver” and “enslaved” rather than “slaveowner” and “slave” to refer to people during the time of US pre-Civil War chattel slavery. This newer language is used to make it clear that slavery wasn’t inherent to the people trapped in it; rather it was done to them — that is, they were enslaved.

I support this perspective. A person’s slave-status isn’t inherent; it’s given by the unhealthy culture they live in. However, there are many problems with using this language. In this book, I used “enslaved” when that seemed most appropriate, and “slave” in other cases. I would like to explain why.

The United States propagates a belief that Americans live in “the land of the free.” In this view, people who aren’t enslaved are free, and so once chattel slavery ended after the Civil War, black people were supposedly free too. This was even called emancipation. And while chattel slavery was absolutely terrible for black people, and in many ways what came next was a major improvement, they still weren’t free. The rulers of the United States had simply raised many black people’s privilege level so that, instead of being enslaved, they became impoverished laborers and remained second class citizens. This is explored in many chapters.

So long as there are rulers who can control people’s privilege levels and arbitrarily enforce laws as they wish, no one is free. In fact, people who have actually lived in freedom recognize that all of the United States is a slave society.

Sitting Bull said, “The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in their towns or farms.”[xxx-griid sitting bull speech] Sitting Bull referred to white people as living in slavery, but white people often at least owned a farm or house. He wasn’t even referring to black people or immigrants who often owned even less than that.

A collection of Mohawk writers said, “Property is an idea by which people can be excluded from having access to lands or other means of producing a livelihood. That idea would destroy our culture, which requires that every individual live in service to the Spiritual Ways and The People. That idea (property) would produce slavery.”[xxx-a basic call to consciousness|p105]

The Mohawk writers are correct. Unhealthy cultures have economies based on property ownership and profit, and these economies produce slavery at all levels, even among the rich who also submit to the rulers.

“Slavery” simply means coerced labor. Regardless of how one person forces another to work, it’s slavery, though some slaves have been abused much more than others. This book explores many kinds of slavery:

• wage slavery: where people are kept in financial desperation and forced to work for others to live

• military slavery: where governments force people into the military and punish anyone heavily for avoiding the draft or disobeying orders

• chattel slavery: where people are owned by other private citizens

• prison slavery: where governments imprison people, with or without a good “reason,” and then find ways to make prisoners even more miserable if they don’t work.

When soldiers are forced to join the military and forced to obey orders or be severely punished, are they enslaved? If so, who is the enslaver, the commanding officer, the draft board, or the president?

When people who committed no crime and were pressured into avoiding a trial are imprisoned and forced to work for pennies an hour or face severe punishment, who is the enslaver, the guard, the warden, or the judge? Or is the enslaver the government or corporation that benefits from prisoners’ slave-labor?

Pretending that chattel slavery is the only kind of slavery, and that everyone else is “free,” only reinforces the myth that people live in freedom in the United States and other unhealthy cultures around the world. People of healthy cultures know better and see the whole profit-based economy as a system of slavery.

I don’t want to propagate this myth that Americans live in freedom, and so I chose not to use “enslaved” and “enslaver” every time I wanted to refer to people involved in chattel slavery, as if these were the only people involved in slavery. To make it consistent, this book would need to refer to prison-slaves as prison-enslaved, laborers as wage-enslaved, and military slaves as soldier-enslaved, and the text would quickly become unreadable.

Instead, this book calls out slavery in all its forms. When referring specifically to chattel slavery, I used “enslaved” or “slave” as seemed best at each point in the text.

(All citations are available in the ebook.)