Slavery is a legal or economic system in which principles of property law can apply to humans so that people can be treated as property, and can be owned, bought and sold accordingly, and cannot withdraw unilaterally from the arrangement.ccording to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language, by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of, according to Andi Cumbo-Floyd, carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were.