A lot of people are unhappy with the New York Times acquiring Wordle, the trendy daily word game. My great ChicagoNow fellow blogger Howard Moore reminds us that this is just a game, and not to get too worked up about how difficult the words seem to have become.
I ran into a different issue the other day. As one of my five-letter guesses, I entered the word “Slave.” The omnipotent Wordle moderator immediately informed me that my attempt was Not in the Word List.
Excuse me? The word is present in Merriam-Webster, with multiple definitions including “a person held in forced servitude.” Other definitions include the use of the word in tech environments.
But a little research indicates that certain words, deemed by the Times as offensive, have now been removed from the Wordle word list. “Slave” is apparently on the offensive list. Thou shalt not use it.
And in this case, I don’t get it. Which just shows my ignorance. Apparently, there has been a debate for years about whether the word should no longer be used. Former Trib columnist Eric Zorn devoted a column to the controversy in 2021. The word is a “needlessly dehumanizing word to describe a person who was in bondage.”
But isn’t that the point? Calling a slave a slave exactly points out the dehumanization that slavery was. Euphemistically dancing around it with terms such as “enslaved person” just doesn’t convey the horror of the stain on our history.
I have a second point of reference. Next month, I will be celebrating Passover. I will lead my family’s Seder, in which we will read from the Haggadah. After a few blessings, we will read (and chant) Avadim Hayenu. “We were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt.”
The harsh words are blunt and are used with other symbols (charoseth–a chopped nuts and apple mixture representing the mortar used during forced construction work, maror–bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of slave life) because we never want to forget. Indeed, the theme running throughout the Seder is to pass the history from generation to generation.
Just as the more recent ancestors of many of us who died in World War II concentration camps were not “people ensnared by a Nazi policy,” but rather murder victims, slaves were slaves. Let the horror of the word speak on our behalf, and may we never forget.
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