I think whatās left out here is that fundamental changes in the law were made after leaders were murdered. Nobody who fought for those changes believed the underlying issues magically vanished. Today, exposure and discussion of those issues along with the push for new changes in the legal system are also coming after injustices and murders committed against average citizens. Changes made due to the uprisings are viewed as progress vs. the previous decades when those systems were expanded and abused, while the results were largely ignored by most of the public.
Hereās an odd story from my parents neighborhood. A man who worked for a cleaning company at Tulane masturbated in front of another man who was an unwilling participant and got fired. I posted it here because of the police response.
The police issued a bench warrant, but did not arrest him. Instead they waited for him to come in to pick up his final paycheck 2 weeks later and staged an ambush on Weiner Drive. When he tried to drive away, the cops surrounded the car (with the manās son in it) and tried to smash the windows with their guns before one cop opened fire on the car. The cops shot the man, but thankfully not his son.
The police had his info and could have arrested him at any time, but chose to stage a violent shooting. This is who the cops are. Their job as they see it is to be like TV action shows, full of violence and shooting ābad guys.ā And it goes without saying who those ābad guysā are. A wealthy white professor would have been discreetly asked to please come speak to the police if accused of the same.
Thread.
After that thread revealed that Twitterās image cropping algorithm is also racist, someone put it pretty directly to the test:
Full thread of tests here, which Iāve linked rather than embedded because the images are TALL.
I didnt realize what was going on until I clicked each picture. Wow
A black man is burnt to death by four white people, in Iowa, and racism wasnāt a factor?? GTFO
JFC! Itās like the early 60s!
I keep saying I never thought Iād see things from oral history or textbooks IRL, but here we areā¦ 
Indeed, here we are.
āMay you live in interesting timesā indeed. The elder gods are pissed, and donāt care who suffers.
taking a page from jason kottke, going forward iāll be using clear language about slavery exclusively, as opposed to the dunning school/gone with the wind bullshit weāve all been conditioned to using.
examples (from kottke)
Slaves = Hostages
Slave Owners = Human Traffickers
Slave Catchers = Police
Plantations = Death Camps
Mistresses = Rape Victims
Discipline = Torture/Murder
Overseers = Torturers
Trading = Kidnapping
Profit = Theft
Middle Passage = Genocide
example in practiceā
George Washington was our first President and was an active and willing participant in a vast conspiracy to kidnap children from their families in order to force them into industrial and sexual servitude.
My only question is about Slaves = Hostages. Doesnāt that imply ransom or some future exchange would be involved? 
And are āhostagesā not usually still seen as humans, just ones that are of monetary value at some future point? I do not think slaves were viewed as fully human, or even 3/5 human, but more akin to livestock. And I am struggling with anything that would acknowledge that without being incredibly insulting and degrading at the same time. So maybe āhostagesā will have to do?
Yeah, of all the language thatās changing āslaveā and slavery will be the hardest to excise from my vernacular - saying āenslaved personā doesnāt fix past atrocities or afford the agency to our deceased ancestors which they were denied in life.
I canāt accept āhostagesā as a good substitute, because as you say that implies an option for rescue.
i see your point and i may go back to the source document kottke was quoting. for those interested these areāhttp://historynewsnetwork.org/article/160266
this is sheer speculation on my part but by using the admittedly fraught term āhostageā it allows for much more vividly accurate descriptions of slaveholders (a term that has almost been rendered neutral by its historical uses) as kidnappers, hostage takers, and enslavers all of which are much less neutral terms.
Yes, but mistresses on plantations could also be perpetrators of violence themselves. Soā¦ not sure how to change it to reflect that reality?
I think that also the terms āenslavedā and āenslaversā are useful as well.
this is not meant to fix past atrocities but instead to label them more accurately as the atrocities they were. much of the language used in history classes has been far too neutral, and this set of possible alternatives are much less so.
what about collaborators?
I understand.
Iām just not sure itās effective with that one term.
IMO, the word slave means āproperty that isnāt humanā only to the kind of monsters who would enslave others.
To the oppressed it tends to mean being forced to inhabit the worst conditions of life, with the lowest, most undesirable status.
