http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/historians_debate_whether_to_use_the_term_slave_or_enslaved_person.html

Should the historian’s first responsibility be passively representing the past, or actively seeking to right its wrongs, even if in some small way? Academics are divided over whether to use the term slave or enslaved person to describe black victims of institutionalized forced labor in the United States. The debate has even spilled from the windows of the ivory tower, with a Straight Dope poll inviting respondents to weigh in on the harsh single word versus the multipart “circumlocution.” (Bondsperson has emerged as a distant third contender.) It may seem like a meaningless exercise in semantics, ancillary to the system’s central sin. But larger questions crowd close.