I should note that the stories that this data allow us to tell are still centered on the enslaved peoples’ enslavement. From the data alone the enslaved still come accross as slaves, the most important thing about them is that they are property. This information alone cannot dismantle white supremacy or even really reframe our understanding of the slave trade
I think this is a really important point and I’m glad you made it. What Enslaved does really well is demonstrate, as you said, the legal processes that made slavery permissible. We’re all familiar with bills of sale and estate sales and shipping records and all of these things that we think of as normal - but to see them in the context of human beings helps us come to terms with just how this happened.
But you’re right, one of the limitations of this is that the records it shows only depict these people as property. I don’t think that’s the fault of the site, it makes sense given the data they have access to and it makes sense given the scope of the project, but it does really shape how we absorb the information on the site. Given that the website pages all look the same (name of person/place/thing, type of place or event, etc.) it’s easy I think to lose the humanity. The site helps show the enormity of the slave trade, but when you’re confronted with what seems like an endless number of records (588,000 for people alone) and all those records look pretty similar, your focus is shifted away from the fact that each of these were individual people who were treated as worse than livestock.