+100. Race is a product of racism, not the other way around. One is not born of a particular race and the practice of racism is what makes being of certain colors the same as being associated with a certain race. Would recommend reading "Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life" by Karen E Fields.
I don't think of those words in terms of race either, but it's such an easy thing to change. It might be worth considering that a lot of the people who are speaking up have to feel that way about race being a part of everything all the time and they hate it too.
Everyone's trying to get to a level playing field where race isn't an issue. Maybe equality can seem like it's oppression if you're used to not having to worry about that stuff.
Some people are constantly marginalised in their everyday, who are constantly reminded negatively of their race, and don’t have the luxury of forgetting about race for even a day.
If changing branch names makes them even just a little bit more comfortable I don’t care if they rename master jiggerypokery.
It's the most absurd waste of human energy. Nothing is being solved, it's energy which goes directly into amplifying whatever actual racial tensions there already were.
Nobody who is actually racist goes "oh. I guess I shouldn't be racist anymore because they changed the name of the default Git branch" -- I refuse to pretend this is anything other than complete totalitarian Marxist nonsense.
It's likely that you have something that has a particular word that some how 'offends' someone.
Given the word 'Master' would asking 'MasterCard' to change its name make it less racist? Can't say Masters degree anymore because someone has dragged race into it and has been 'offended' by it. Perhaps you know some academic who's in a dilemma and can't cite a quote from a paper because the terminology contains the scary 'Master' word in it due to fear of being called a 'racist' if they use it. See where this goes? Where do you draw the line and how far will this be taken?
At some point, someone is going to draw the line somewhere and disagree with renaming for the sake of virtue signalling.
So it's not worth doing anything because there's a line somewhere ahead? At some point whatever startup you're working on will definitely reach an end in some form, so you should definitely stop working now.
I'm wondering if "Master" isn't the problem — it's "Slave" that's not so good.
And, when changing "Slave" to e.g. "Follower", it makes sense to rename "Master" to "Leader" too.
I'm surprised some people want to rename the Git "master" branches to "main", although the word "slave" is absent in this context. That's similar to your MasterCard example? (Rename to "MainCard".) But I'm not a native speaker or color minority person where I am currently, so what do I know.
At the same time, "main branch" is shorter than "master branch" and simpler to understand for beginners? I think it's a better name.
There were masters and slaves thousands of years before it existed here in America. To claim the terms are only referencing slavery in America is rather short sighted.
It’s only “racial” if master/slave is racial. There has been racial slavery in America. But the master/slave are themselves are not inherently racial words. To be hyperbolic, it’d be like avoiding the use of the word “cotton”.
Right. How are these terms 'racially loaded'? The concept of masters and slaves have been a part of humanity for a long time in many different cultures and countries.
Great that they're working on this, but how about them engineers work on improving their API stability.
Seems like mostly also strictly better names. Though being German replacing master with leader is ironic in our cultural context (the literal translation of leader is Führer...).
They is already used as a singular pronoun. Just because you want to play the grammar police won’t stop people from using it as a singular pronoun. It has already been invented, you’re welcome to use it.
I have. And I try not to make a habit of doing so for reasons of expediency. Here, there doesn't seem any clear benefit to overloading.
Depending on context to post-hoc disambiguate definition collision is a slippery slope. Especially given that language tends to be immutable once it's popularized.
Given that, why not push for a "ze" or equivalent that solves the need more optimally?
Similar to how we no longer use "retarded" to be sensitive to the disabled, people have been rethinking words like "crazy", "insane", or "sanity" to be sensitive towards those with mental illness.
Update: Not sure why I got downvoted for stating the rationale for why people are making this change. Objectively I haven't even stated my opinion on the change, just the rationale I've seen for it. If you want a source here's one from NPR around this language: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-argu...
also the US has a pretty ugly history of throwing up nonconforming people in mental institutions when it's convenient (see: suffragettes, gay people, etc.)
It doesn't really help that a lot of what we used to consider mental illness was mostly just behavior not conforming with the mainstream. US suffragettes hunger-striking were institutionalized and force-fed under the guise of mental illness, and being gay itself used to be classified as a mental illness.
Yes, but this is very much part of the Euphemism Treadmill[0]
I would fervently argue that 'sanity' has nothing to do with denigrating persons, merely ensuring that the solution remains "sane" in light of many people pouring time on things in different contexts.
I'm not downvoting you. I just don't see an argument against sanity or coherence. These are things are objectively good. Don't hear a lot of "hey, that's awfully coherent, how about maybe walk that back a little..."
I'm good with the rest of it. I have no need to call anything master/slave. I worry about analysis paralysis though. Primary/secondary has caste connotations, if you ask me...
Because people like me with a lifetime of mental health problems really appreciate this extra consideration. Thanks!
Oh, hold on... despite that, actually I'm not some fragile snowflake that melts in the blaze other's insensitivity so they can stop being so fucking precious about my mental state. I can take 'sanity checks' just fine. I can take it a whole lot better than being treated like some wilting flower without being asked what I actually want. Wankerism is spreading faster than bloody covid.
Did you not read my comment - I clearly stated what I want: "[to be] asked what I actually want", not given it" whether I want it or not.
Sure I wasn't (in a way being) sarcastic when I said "...we really appreciate this extra consideration", just that that extra consideration be something we are involved in.
It's really simple: don't condescend or presume, but do ask. Do you not understand that?
It is not about the specific words, it is language and the use of words. Let's say ESPN came out tomorrow and said they will replace the word 'football' as it is offensive to people with limb difference - would you nod and toe the line without raising an eyebrow?
Sure. Again, why is that a problem? I have literally zero emotional investment in being able to call football “football”. Why would I not make a tiny change that has no pragmatic impact on my life in order to be more considerate?
I presume the reaction is not about investment in any specific term but against the general principle of changing names because someone feels that they're somehow related to something offensive. And of course there's the general natural resistance to someone else demanding that you change your behavior.
In essence, it's a defence of the slippery slope. And not the slippery slope fallacy, as the list included in this article already demonstrates that the slippery slope is very real, extending the approach from terms where the connection makes sense (e.g. the master/slave relationship) to terms where the connection is much weaker (e.g. dummy value).
I'll gladly support the changing of a particular term e.g. master/slave if we draw the line at discussing that term alone on it's merits and justify it's change with specific arguments that for this particular case the benefits outweigh the cost - and the cost is not "basically zero", it requires work on many, many people to change many, many things, it's a nontrivial cognitive cost of changing the habitual terminology of literally millions of people. If it's only about this particular case and we don't concede that "word policing" is generally acceptable behavior.
But if the position is explicitly about the general case, as it seems to be in the article; if we lump together the master/slave terminology with dummy value and expect to extend it further (e.g. the RuboCop debacle not so long ago), then I can't consider that acceptable. If it's piecemeal, then we can discuss specific cases, but if it's all-or-nothing, then I'm strongly on the side of free speech and against the policing of what words are permitted.
If there's no clear, defensible line of changing master/slave terminology that ensures that neutral-seeming (to me) terms won't be attacked as well, then I must defend the general concept and assert that no terms should be changed. The big issue at stake here is whether it's appropriate to make demands to change terminology because someone feels offended, as opposed to making requests (where "no" is accepted) and awaiting consensus. So there's some "line in the sand" (which I don't want to see crossed) at the implied moral right to make demands at the choice of words others use for technical terms. Because it's absolutely unacceptable to have people verbally assaulted and 'cancelled' for things that weren't meant in offence, it's absolutely unacceptable to require everyone to self-censor everything that might be misinterpreted. I've seen how it went back some decades ago in USSR, trust me, we don't want that. If ensuring this means that we'll also have to permit racists to say racist things, oh well, too bad; some things are more important than others, and freedom of speech (practical freedom, including social consequences, not the first amendment about government restrictions) is far more important than freedom from being offended. I strongly support a social climate where misinterpretable things are tolerated and people are free to just live their lives without worrying about stepping on social landmines. So if person A uses a misinterpretable term (like most of this list) in a technical discussion and person B loudly protests its use and calls for social ostracism, I'd want person A to be safe and person B to be ostracized for making unreasonable demands.
And to put it clearly, if someone demands the rest of the world to change from "dummy value" to "placeholder value", then that is an unreasonable demand. If you want to speak differently, you're free to do so, but requiring a whole field to change without a very strong reason is unreasonable chutzpah that should not even warrant attention - and it's sad that here it is, requesting attention.
Because I'm a black developer and I am deeply, savagely offended by such empty pandering gestures. It's like being patted on the head. The thought that a professional like me is disturbed by industry standard terminology is truly degrading. For the life of me, I cannot comprehend there being any good faith motivation behind any of this.
It is not at all a fact this this takes away anything from anyone. It is not clear to me at all there is anything even close to a significant fraction of public opinion that agrees that using these words in this way is a problem.
Here we have 50+ HN readers and hundreds of OC readers wasting part of their limited patience/passion/tolerance/love for the topic of racial unjustice because someone is using their etymological ignorance (and inability to use Wikipedia) to project their own bias into completely unrelated matters.
Is etymology more important to you than the people who are telling you they find something offensive, unwelcoming, and a factor (regardless of size) in racial equality?
Do you believe that there is limited space on the internet? Or that in the absence of this discussion every person here would instead be doing something highly productive?
For example I know many people that would be offended by referred to has them or they instead of she/him.
There is no perfect solution there you will never offend anyone. Offense is taken not given.
In the words of Stephen Fry
“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what." -- Stephen Fry
Remember, you can please everyone some of the time, Some people all of the time, but you can never please everyone all the time
The people who claim these words are offensive are a tiny fraction of the total population which, if the reasoning those offended people use were to hold true should be offended. When it comes to the use of terms like master/slave and blacklist/whitelist in source code or configuration data most people will not even be aware that this is a thing, let alone that they should be offended by it.
Even more problematic is that the majority of the people who claim these terms are offensive use projection upon others to derive the offensive nature of said terms since they themselves are neither the descendants of slaves nor of former slave owners, nor are they truly offended by the supposedly positive connotation of the word 'white' in terms like 'whitelist'. In the last few years a cult has grown around the concept of 'white guilt' led by a priestly class of apostles like Robin DiAngelo (author of 'White Fragility', currently the #1 bestseller according to the New York Times). What the cult leaders don't seem to realise is that their narrative totally revolves around 'white' people who they put in the centre of their universe which' well-being depends on their actions and inactions. They are just as race-centred as white (or black) nationalists, they just approach the situation from a different position. They can both use Kipling's The White Man's Burden as a guide, they just view it as an indictment against 'the white man' instead of a proclamation of manifest destiny. They deny agency to 'non-white' people by claiming they can only truly reach their peak by grace of the 'white' people seceding from positions of power.
In short, these cultists are racists, their racism being that of low expectations. Martin Luther King had it right, when it comes to race relations the ideal society is a colour-blind society.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
The reply is to your question as to whether ... etymology [is] more important ... than the people who are telling you they find something offensive....
Got it. Most of your comment went off in a different direction that sounds like a white supremacist diatribe. No interest in discussing that with you, it's nonsense and I'm sorry you believe something like that.
Do you have a source for the "tiny fraction" claim? And do you have a similar number for how much of the population cares about etymology?
You got that backwards, when you make a claim which in your opinion is representative of a given fraction of a population the onus is on you to prove that it actually does represent these people, not on those who cast doubt on your agency for the group.
Also, most of my reply was a direct quote from Martin Luther King's famous speech. The rest of the reply is a statement of fact on the cultist nature of the concept of 'white guilt'. Please explain to me in what way this sounds like a white supremacist diatribe, as far as I understand white supremacists are not wont to cast aspersion on their 'white brethren'.
Stop throwing these labels around, they can not replace rational arguments and are just a form of academic laziness.
it distracts from the real problem and from actual solutions as I mentioned in my other comment[1]. companies actions (such as using off-shore havens, and funding surveillance Tech) need to stop. by playing the culture war we make ourselves feel good without stopping anything.
Not only are you not alone, that's both the default view of many (most?) programmers and the stated claim of many closeted racists who want to detract from incremental steps by referencing orthogonal issues and derailing conversations.
You're not wrong. These are two separate issues and they should both be improved. It's not like we can only do one without the other, and the first steps to bigger change will almost always start with small steps that many feel are too small.
If a man screams "slaaaaaaaaveeeee" in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still cause offence?
The answer is yes. It does. Because it's not about sparing the feelings of the person who hears it. It's about controlling language to control thought. It's about control.
Think about why people go looking for things to be offended by. If they only wanted to feel welcome would they really go looking?
This is going to be controversial; thus flagged, but I'd like to have an actual conversation about this.
It's my understanding that slavery has very little to do with race, blacklist has nothing to do with black people and "man" is the default term of humanity that comes from a completely different etymology than the word we use to refer to a male person.
I'm generally pretty stubborn but given the amount of traction this is getting, can someone _please_ explain to me the logic here? I'm perfectly willing to change my mind but right now I cannot fathom that these terms were harming people- unless those people were looking for reasons to be harmed.
There were eras where slavery had little to do with race (see: the Roman Republic and Empire) but the history of slavery in the last half-millennium had everything to do with race; it is the edifice on which white supremacy was built.
You're not "controversial" for skipping over the blindingly obvious, but we're not allowed to insult people on this forum, so feh!
> but the history of slavery in the last half-millennium had everything to do with race;
Slaves in Russian Empire were freed a few years earlier than slaves in the USA. There were roughly 5 times more slaves in Russia than in USA, and I can pretty confidently say that zero of them were black. Even if you add ~2 million black slaves from Brazil, the number of black slaves would be dwarfed by the white slave population from Russia.
Based on this calculation, I don't think that your thesis about the history of slavery in the last 500 years holds well.
There was also the Barbary Slave Trade, which lasted until the early 19th Century and during which over a million Europeans were removed from Europe during raids and enslaved in North Africa. Not to mention slavery in Africa itself, which goes from pre-history to today. The Atlantic Slave Trade is a stain on the history of the West, but it is by no means unique.
Not all slavery is race but the vast majority of US slavery was race-based against black people. Black people don't care about the general history of all slavery, they care that at one point the vast majority of blacks in America were slaves.
Please explain to me how "sanity check" or "dummy value" can reasonably be considered non-inclusive.
There are multiple definitions of these words including:
Sanity - reasonable and rational behaviour.
Dummy - an object designed to resemble and serve as a substitute for the real or usual one.
It strikes me as incredibly sensitive to say these are unacceptable for use. Sure, we can use different words but that is not the point - the point is how can words used as commonly defined and with no spite or foul intention be banned?
The comedian Stewart Lee has an excellent routine on this:
Copy-pasted my comment here, but similar to how we no longer use "retarded" to be sensitive to the disabled, people have been rethinking words like "crazy", "insane", or "sanity" to be sensitive towards those with mental illness. For people with mental illness those words may be loaded with negative meaning and there are often more neutral or descriptive terms that can be used instead.
Update: Not sure why I got downvoted for stating the rationale for why people are making this change. Objectively I haven't even stated my opinion on the change, just the rationale I've seen for it. If you want a source here's one from NPR around this language: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-argu...
I fundamentally disagree that you can't use a word in one context because of its use in another. If I call someone a bastard I do not mean that they were born out of wedlock the context and use of the word are entirely different.
Sure, I agree everything has nuance and context to it. I was really just stating the rationale I've seen given for avoiding those words rather than offering my opinion.
That being said, given your example I'd ask you to consider this situation: If you call someone a bastard jokingly and they happened to be a child who was born out of wedlock and it was a sensitive subject for them, do you think it would potentially be hurtful? Is there another word you could choose to get the same point across that might have been less hurtful? If so, is there a significant downside to using that other word instead? If you found out that someone was literally a bastard and the word made them unhappy, would you continue to use it when talking with them?
Stewart Lee: "What is political correctness? It's an often clumsy negotiation towards a kind of formally inclusive language. And there's all sorts of problems with it. But it's better than what we had before."[1]
There's been a movement at my employer to replace some of these terms for years, though it seems to be getting more widespread attention lately.
Some of the terms, especially 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', are also very confusing to many non-native english speakers. 'Allowlist' and 'denylist' are just a lot clearer in those cases.
I would think racism and slavery are two different things. Usually slaves and masters are of the same race. But I understand why this might be a good move, the word “slave” itself is pretty loaded with negative connotations.
"Usually" is not the best word here, I agree. What I meant is that it's "often the case". There are multitude of examples from Middle Ages in Europe(and before that), and Vikings etc. Not only people from Africa were were victims of slave trade.
In the last 500 years, too, without any doubt. There were 21 million white slaves in Russia, emancipated only in 1861. USA and Brazil had ~4,5+2 million black slaves, combined.
I'm very much fine with this, but the impact it will have pales in comparison to the good Twitter could do by, oh, let's say banning Trump, white supremacists, racists, etc. from their platform.
There is a lot of downvoting going on in here on very valid comments. I know it goes against the guidelines to complain about downvotes, but it’s surprisingly toxic in this comment section. I expected better on HN, it’s pretty disappointing.
People on each side are downvoting the other side. I changed that in a few cases, but I'm also not seeing a lot of fine comments here that are downvoted. It's mostly flamewar stuff that breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
If you have links to other examples, I'd appreciate them. You can always send them to hn@ycombinator.com.
171 comments
[ 71.0 ms ] story [ 5134 ms ] threadI am not a fan of ignoring context but I get why American companies, with their specific history would want to do that.
Race is being dragged into everything now and I hate it.
Everyone's trying to get to a level playing field where race isn't an issue. Maybe equality can seem like it's oppression if you're used to not having to worry about that stuff.
If changing branch names makes them even just a little bit more comfortable I don’t care if they rename master jiggerypokery.
Here's a really great article that helped me notice my own privilege - https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf
Nobody who is actually racist goes "oh. I guess I shouldn't be racist anymore because they changed the name of the default Git branch" -- I refuse to pretend this is anything other than complete totalitarian Marxist nonsense.
Given the word 'Master' would asking 'MasterCard' to change its name make it less racist? Can't say Masters degree anymore because someone has dragged race into it and has been 'offended' by it. Perhaps you know some academic who's in a dilemma and can't cite a quote from a paper because the terminology contains the scary 'Master' word in it due to fear of being called a 'racist' if they use it. See where this goes? Where do you draw the line and how far will this be taken?
At some point, someone is going to draw the line somewhere and disagree with renaming for the sake of virtue signalling.
And, when changing "Slave" to e.g. "Follower", it makes sense to rename "Master" to "Leader" too.
I'm surprised some people want to rename the Git "master" branches to "main", although the word "slave" is absent in this context. That's similar to your MasterCard example? (Rename to "MainCard".) But I'm not a native speaker or color minority person where I am currently, so what do I know.
At the same time, "main branch" is shorter than "master branch" and simpler to understand for beginners? I think it's a better name.
Great that they're working on this, but how about them engineers work on improving their API stability.
>Whitelist becomes allowlist.
>Blacklist becomes denylist.
>Master/slave becomes leader/follower, primary/replica or primary/standby.
>Grandfathered becomes legacy status.
>Gendered pronouns (for example "guys") become folks, people, you all, y'all.
>Gendered pronouns (for example "he" or "his") become they or their.
>Man hours becomes person hours or engineer hours.
>Sanity check becomes quick check, confidence check or coherence check.
>Dummy value becomes placeholder value or sample value.
For the love of grammar, just invent a neutral pronoun.
"He" or "she" is singular.
"They" is plural.
These things are not like each other.
Depending on context to post-hoc disambiguate definition collision is a slippery slope. Especially given that language tends to be immutable once it's popularized.
Given that, why not push for a "ze" or equivalent that solves the need more optimally?
why?
Update: Not sure why I got downvoted for stating the rationale for why people are making this change. Objectively I haven't even stated my opinion on the change, just the rationale I've seen for it. If you want a source here's one from NPR around this language: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-argu...
Labels applied to disadvantaged groups linguistically develop a pejorative connotation over time.
I would fervently argue that 'sanity' has nothing to do with denigrating persons, merely ensuring that the solution remains "sane" in light of many people pouring time on things in different contexts.
Unless we're saying sanity in of itself is bad?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Evolution
I'm good with the rest of it. I have no need to call anything master/slave. I worry about analysis paralysis though. Primary/secondary has caste connotations, if you ask me...
Oh, hold on... despite that, actually I'm not some fragile snowflake that melts in the blaze other's insensitivity so they can stop being so fucking precious about my mental state. I can take 'sanity checks' just fine. I can take it a whole lot better than being treated like some wilting flower without being asked what I actually want. Wankerism is spreading faster than bloody covid.
What do you want? Does what they want stand in the way of you getting it?
Did you not read my comment - I clearly stated what I want: "[to be] asked what I actually want", not given it" whether I want it or not.
Sure I wasn't (in a way being) sarcastic when I said "...we really appreciate this extra consideration", just that that extra consideration be something we are involved in.
It's really simple: don't condescend or presume, but do ask. Do you not understand that?
If that happened to be online, and you happen to have a link, it'd be interesting to read
We have the opportunity to make tech marginally more hospitable to Black developers at basically zero cost to everyone else. Let’s not mess it up!
In essence, it's a defence of the slippery slope. And not the slippery slope fallacy, as the list included in this article already demonstrates that the slippery slope is very real, extending the approach from terms where the connection makes sense (e.g. the master/slave relationship) to terms where the connection is much weaker (e.g. dummy value).
I'll gladly support the changing of a particular term e.g. master/slave if we draw the line at discussing that term alone on it's merits and justify it's change with specific arguments that for this particular case the benefits outweigh the cost - and the cost is not "basically zero", it requires work on many, many people to change many, many things, it's a nontrivial cognitive cost of changing the habitual terminology of literally millions of people. If it's only about this particular case and we don't concede that "word policing" is generally acceptable behavior.
But if the position is explicitly about the general case, as it seems to be in the article; if we lump together the master/slave terminology with dummy value and expect to extend it further (e.g. the RuboCop debacle not so long ago), then I can't consider that acceptable. If it's piecemeal, then we can discuss specific cases, but if it's all-or-nothing, then I'm strongly on the side of free speech and against the policing of what words are permitted.
If there's no clear, defensible line of changing master/slave terminology that ensures that neutral-seeming (to me) terms won't be attacked as well, then I must defend the general concept and assert that no terms should be changed. The big issue at stake here is whether it's appropriate to make demands to change terminology because someone feels offended, as opposed to making requests (where "no" is accepted) and awaiting consensus. So there's some "line in the sand" (which I don't want to see crossed) at the implied moral right to make demands at the choice of words others use for technical terms. Because it's absolutely unacceptable to have people verbally assaulted and 'cancelled' for things that weren't meant in offence, it's absolutely unacceptable to require everyone to self-censor everything that might be misinterpreted. I've seen how it went back some decades ago in USSR, trust me, we don't want that. If ensuring this means that we'll also have to permit racists to say racist things, oh well, too bad; some things are more important than others, and freedom of speech (practical freedom, including social consequences, not the first amendment about government restrictions) is far more important than freedom from being offended. I strongly support a social climate where misinterpretable things are tolerated and people are free to just live their lives without worrying about stepping on social landmines. So if person A uses a misinterpretable term (like most of this list) in a technical discussion and person B loudly protests its use and calls for social ostracism, I'd want person A to be safe and person B to be ostracized for making unreasonable demands.
And to put it clearly, if someone demands the rest of the world to change from "dummy value" to "placeholder value", then that is an unreasonable demand. If you want to speak differently, you're free to do so, but requiring a whole field to change without a very strong reason is unreasonable chutzpah that should not even warrant attention - and it's sad that here it is, requesting attention.
Changing the usage doesn't harm me in any way and if it arguably provides a more welcoming environment for people then why not.
Here we have 50+ HN readers and hundreds of OC readers wasting part of their limited patience/passion/tolerance/love for the topic of racial unjustice because someone is using their etymological ignorance (and inability to use Wikipedia) to project their own bias into completely unrelated matters.
Do you believe that there is limited space on the internet? Or that in the absence of this discussion every person here would instead be doing something highly productive?
For example I know many people that would be offended by referred to has them or they instead of she/him.
There is no perfect solution there you will never offend anyone. Offense is taken not given.
In the words of Stephen Fry
“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what." -- Stephen Fry
Remember, you can please everyone some of the time, Some people all of the time, but you can never please everyone all the time
Even more problematic is that the majority of the people who claim these terms are offensive use projection upon others to derive the offensive nature of said terms since they themselves are neither the descendants of slaves nor of former slave owners, nor are they truly offended by the supposedly positive connotation of the word 'white' in terms like 'whitelist'. In the last few years a cult has grown around the concept of 'white guilt' led by a priestly class of apostles like Robin DiAngelo (author of 'White Fragility', currently the #1 bestseller according to the New York Times). What the cult leaders don't seem to realise is that their narrative totally revolves around 'white' people who they put in the centre of their universe which' well-being depends on their actions and inactions. They are just as race-centred as white (or black) nationalists, they just approach the situation from a different position. They can both use Kipling's The White Man's Burden as a guide, they just view it as an indictment against 'the white man' instead of a proclamation of manifest destiny. They deny agency to 'non-white' people by claiming they can only truly reach their peak by grace of the 'white' people seceding from positions of power.
In short, these cultists are racists, their racism being that of low expectations. Martin Luther King had it right, when it comes to race relations the ideal society is a colour-blind society.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
Do you have a source for the "tiny fraction" claim? And do you have a similar number for how much of the population cares about etymology?
Also, most of my reply was a direct quote from Martin Luther King's famous speech. The rest of the reply is a statement of fact on the cultist nature of the concept of 'white guilt'. Please explain to me in what way this sounds like a white supremacist diatribe, as far as I understand white supremacists are not wont to cast aspersion on their 'white brethren'.
Stop throwing these labels around, they can not replace rational arguments and are just a form of academic laziness.
Also maybe consider that etymology is about not just the origin of words, it's also about their evolution over time as cultures evolve.
Not replying anymore, have a nice day!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23727420
Thank god I'm not alone.
The answer is yes. It does. Because it's not about sparing the feelings of the person who hears it. It's about controlling language to control thought. It's about control.
Think about why people go looking for things to be offended by. If they only wanted to feel welcome would they really go looking?
It's my understanding that slavery has very little to do with race, blacklist has nothing to do with black people and "man" is the default term of humanity that comes from a completely different etymology than the word we use to refer to a male person.
I'm generally pretty stubborn but given the amount of traction this is getting, can someone _please_ explain to me the logic here? I'm perfectly willing to change my mind but right now I cannot fathom that these terms were harming people- unless those people were looking for reasons to be harmed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
You're not "controversial" for skipping over the blindingly obvious, but we're not allowed to insult people on this forum, so feh!
Slaves in Russian Empire were freed a few years earlier than slaves in the USA. There were roughly 5 times more slaves in Russia than in USA, and I can pretty confidently say that zero of them were black. Even if you add ~2 million black slaves from Brazil, the number of black slaves would be dwarfed by the white slave population from Russia.
Based on this calculation, I don't think that your thesis about the history of slavery in the last 500 years holds well.
The world is not the US and does not share your culture, yet you're imposing it on us.
There are multiple definitions of these words including:
Sanity - reasonable and rational behaviour.
Dummy - an object designed to resemble and serve as a substitute for the real or usual one.
It strikes me as incredibly sensitive to say these are unacceptable for use. Sure, we can use different words but that is not the point - the point is how can words used as commonly defined and with no spite or foul intention be banned?
The comedian Stewart Lee has an excellent routine on this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zdyz5
Update: Not sure why I got downvoted for stating the rationale for why people are making this change. Objectively I haven't even stated my opinion on the change, just the rationale I've seen for it. If you want a source here's one from NPR around this language: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-argu...
That being said, given your example I'd ask you to consider this situation: If you call someone a bastard jokingly and they happened to be a child who was born out of wedlock and it was a sensitive subject for them, do you think it would potentially be hurtful? Is there another word you could choose to get the same point across that might have been less hurtful? If so, is there a significant downside to using that other word instead? If you found out that someone was literally a bastard and the word made them unhappy, would you continue to use it when talking with them?
[1] https://youtu.be/x_JCBmY9NGM
Some of the terms, especially 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', are also very confusing to many non-native english speakers. 'Allowlist' and 'denylist' are just a lot clearer in those cases.
Not for the last 500 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-...
So much of the tech language is filled with insensitivity.
It certainly was a relief for me ( I am a dark Indian) when SQLServer went from master/slave to publisher/subscriber.
I don't have to second guess intonations when people say master/slave as a sly joke or a sincere discussion in tech meetings.
If you have links to other examples, I'd appreciate them. You can always send them to hn@ycombinator.com.