I thought of this exact point few years ago after seeing An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins; the is an adaptation of a 19th-century melodrama about the owners and residents (read: slaves) of a Louisiana plantation. In Jacobs-Jenkins' modernized retelling , which mixes the high register of language at that time with very modern slang, there's a scene in which one character tries to cheer up her friend, a fellow slave, by saying, "You are not your job." It's an incredibly funny/horrifying/poignant moment that obviously challenges the audience to consider the way we talk and learn about enslaved people and their own stories, but it also pushes the audience to think about the way we define work as a whole, and how we allow the nature of work and of certain kinds of jobs to define other people and ourselves.