Why We Must Stop Referring to Non-Enslaved Black People as “Free”

So you’ve stopped referring to enslaved people as slaves, what’s next?

You’ve recognized that assigning a status related identity to enslaved persons legitimizes the existence of the system of enslavement and diminishes reflection around the inhumanity that such a system embodies, now what?

It’s time we reflect on the idea that the antithesis to being an enslaved Black person is being a “free Black person.” That’s not true. The antithesis of being…