This is such a strange piece.
Wood makes good points in the beginning—about it being stupid that the Texas board of ed. wants to limit student discomfort around race, when that concern seems to be directed towards the potential discomfort of white students. But the leap to condemning “enslaved person” as an alternative term for “slave” is really disconnected and, frankly, ignorant.
First of all, the work put into that discourse is built in decades of scholarship that Graeme Wood doesn’t really hold weight to criticize as a kid from Texas who only went to school with one black kid growing up.
Also, he’s wrong to say that identifying someone by the crime committed against them isn’t dehumanizing. We don’t call people who get shot the Murdered. We don’t call victims of assault “Assaulteds.” But that comparison isn’t even touching Wood’s radar.
Anyway, kind of nonsense clickbait that doesn’t make much of any point outside the first couple paragraphs. But maybe it’s worth discussing more.