Renewed calls to replace "blacklist," "whitelist," and "master/slave" terms amid BLM protests

[dangh]

I expect the BDSM society to strongly oppose the ban on master-slave references.

 

[Evernessince]

Cool. Now, can we finally also ban "white rice" and "brown rice"? I'm offended to no end by these racist terms.

You are missing the point. There's no racial connotation associated with the words brown rice or white rice. The name of either doesn't leave one to think one is inferior. It does not indicate that you should avoid one or call it undesirable. Blacklist, as in something regrettable, punishable, to be blocked, or that you should not do business with could very well be considered racist, especially given the fact that it's jaxoposed to Whitelist. It's essentially Black bad, White good.

I'm not saying the words should be changed but I do find it funny that people are willing to ignore the origins of them. Master / Slave is 100% not racist. These words simply define two roles with no relation to race.

 

[Damocles]

I'm all for the protests over police misconduct but there comes a point where things are going overboard and this is a perfect example. The failure of diversity is not something that can be overstated but if we allow ANY word or phrase outside of the obvious (like the N word) then our society & culture become meaningless.

Agree. PC gone completely bonkers and OTT.

 

[Danny101]

This whole thing is getting dumber and dumber. If you're in good financial shape, you are said to be in the black. Is that racist? Shall we change it, too?

 

[Lew Zealand]

This whole thing is getting dumber and dumber. If you're in good financial shape, you are said to be in the black. Is that racist? Shall we change it, too?

No no no, silly!

If you're in good financial shape, you're in the Persons Of Recent African Descent and if you are in more perilous financial shape, you're in the Persons of One Of The Various Indigenous Nations Of North And/Or South America But Quite A Bit Less Recently Of African Descent.

'Cuz it Began In Africa.

 

[Danny101]

No no no, silly!

If you're in good financial shape, you're in the Persons Of Recent African Descent and if you are in more perilous financial shape, you're in the Persons of One Of The Various Indigenous Nations Of North And/Or South America But Quite A Bit Less Recently Of African Descent.

'Cuz it Began In Africa.

Lol. One day when I was in a shop and jamming AC/DC's Back in Black. The service advisor was escorting a black customer to look at his car and I'm over here jamming out and he looked at me crazy.. I get in the red more times than I care for so I'm very happy to get back in the black.

 

[candle_86]

No

 

[Mithan]

Racism needs to be addressed, but some of this is just stupid.

 

[toooooot]

I predict that the final step for justice will be a mandatory mind wipe of every citizen, especially the brain parts where any history of slavery and oppression is stored.
This is ridiculous. This is even worse that amid real problems, like our very broken medical system, people find time to propose such useless things.

 

[toooooot]

No. Context matters. And the IT context shouldn't care about overly-sensitive people's feelings (not that they were racist terms to begin with).

All the illogical people calling for this should get blacklisted from making decisions lol.

I propose all over sensitive people are sent away to a designated place for only over sensitive people. I hear Syria is lovely this time of.. All year round!

 

[dylannnnnn]

The ignorance from some users on here is amazing.

Regardless of the history and intention of white/black list, the connotation is black = bad, white = good. This is called casual racism.

Given how easy it is to change to the new modern preferred terms of allowed and not allowed, this really should not be an argument.

If you think white/brown rice is the same as this you are a part of the problem.

Dear Tech Companies, make the change. we will cope just fine.

 

[sdms96825]

Master/Slave terminology probably should be abolished, and I have no strong opinion one way or another on Black/White. I can see where the argument to replace the Black/White terms comes from, and somewhat agree with it. At the end of the day, its just names and buzzwords. If someone thinks they should be changed and you disagree, ask yourself, is this really the hill you want to die on?


Except those monuments were erected not immediately following the civil war, but during the Jim Crow era. They're also to the generals of a traitor nation that failed within 4 years of being founded. Save the history of losing side for the books and museums, where they can be presented with context, not for random street corners of neighborhoods that were populated with the descendants of former slaves at the time those statues were erected.

How was the south a "traitor nation"?

 

[sdms96825]

Firstly they're not actually confederate monuments. They're mostly put up by the KKK or similar organizations during the Jim Crow era as away to tell black people what white people in the area thought their place in society was. Secondly, you'll notice that in every single country on earth, people try to put up statues of people they admire, to celebrate them and their legacy. What legacy is there to celebrate about a bunch of people who committed treason because they didn't want their slaves taken away from them?

If you want a museum telling the story, I'm all for it. But statues and monuments are to celebrate actions or individuals, and celebrating those that fought for slavery sends an interesting message to coloured people doesn't it?

About 20 years ago the Taliban blew up those Bamyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan and we were appalled at their attempt to destroy history.

 

[Capaill]

Master and slave were terms used for the primary and secondary hard drives on a single IDE (pre-SATA for the millennials here) ribbon cable (there could only be 2). It was necessary to designate one of them master and the other slave.

Exactly. They are words that have clearly understandable meanings. The master drive was the one in charge and the slave drive was the one that wasn't. While it might make you think of slavery, it certainly doesn't make you want to bring it back. They're just words.

Much like UNIX which has processes: parents and children. You can kill a parent process or a child process. If you kill the child's parent process, the child becomes an orphan. The words don't encourage murder of children's parents, they're just words that help to explain the state of the processes.

Are all people called Isis or Ira automatically terrorists? Maybe we should force them to change their names so they don't distress people affected by terrorism.

This is all so silly and muddying the waters (and that's not a reference to skin colour). Let's get back to the real issue which is the unequal and heavy-handed police treatment of minority peoples and the general tolerance of racism in our societies. What's being done about that?

 

[stewi0001]

Fun Fact: Back in the day, when there was slavery. There were black slave owners too. It was not common but there was.

 

[Reehahs]

What are we suppose to call black and white photos then? Greyscale?

 

[Bullwinkle M]

Before you burn the World down and rewrite history because of a single act of racism, ask yourself one thing....

Did Derek Chauvin commit an act of racism?

Or do people of all colors reach a point where they finally snap and no longer care if they are on video committing a crime?

Sure, Derek had intent when he killed George, but was there any evidence of racism?

I have yet to see any evidence of that

Racism is when you take over an Interstate freeway at the wrong time (without a permit), obstructing traffic and dragging an innocent white driver from his truck, beating him for driving on that freeway, then claiming he was running over "peaceful" protesters with malicious intent when he was not

THAT is racism!

 

[mbrowne5061]

How was the south a "traitor nation"?

They rebelled against the federal government, they fired the first shots of the war by firing on the Union Fort Sumter (you don't just get secede and then go 'oh, by the way, give us free stuff' - if they wanted control of any forts, they should make sure they actually controlled them before seceding), then we had a long 'discussion' about who was right and determined that the confederates were wrong: a state's rights end at the beginning of an individual's rights.

 

[dotnon]

The ignorance from some users on here is amazing.

Regardless of the history and intention of white/black list, the connotation is black = bad, white = good. This is called casual racism.

Given how easy it is to change to the new modern preferred terms of allowed and not allowed, this really should not be an argument.

If you think white/brown rice is the same as this you are a part of the problem.

Dear Tech Companies, make the change. we will cope just fine.

Thank you for the only sane post in this thread. For a group of people complaining about PC and snowflakes, they sure are precious about changing a few terms. The irony of saying "it's just words!" then complaining about changing said words seems lost.

Set A: Terms we use which can cause offense to a group or groups of people.
Set B: A more specific set of terms we could use, which do not cause offense to anyone.

How could changing from Set A to Set B be controversial, unless you have an issue with a group that might be offended?

 

[tacobravo]

BLM is the cult of deranged socialists which exploit the herd mentality of their puppets to destroy, cancel and censor the ideas they don't like.

The anti fascists are actually fascists go figure.

 

[lipe123]

It's this kind of thing that just messes with the credibility of the whole "racism is bad" debate.

People throw in stupid unrelated crap like confederate statues - why do you do this? Just STOP.

Whitelist and blacklist has nothing to do with skin colour or race!
Like someone else noted earlier "words matter" and so does context! In fact context matters 1 billion times MORE than just words!
Just for reference,
Blacklist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#Origins_of_the_term

Then my issue with BLM is the sole focus on black skin colour and completely ignoring that the same issues happen to various other people as well. I get that you can be for one thing and not necessarily against something else. But here we have the same sentence that comes up a lot now "your silence on this matter is deafening".

Racism is bad and needs to end but the way to do this is through education and dialogue.
All we are seeing right now in the news and everywhere else is cancel culture, shaming and alienation.
None of these things are going to end racism , they are going to make it EVEN WORSE!

 

[Capaill]

Thank you for the only sane post in this thread. For a group of people complaining about PC and snowflakes, they sure are precious about changing a few terms. The irony of saying "it's just words!" then complaining about changing said words seems lost.

Set A: Terms we use which can cause offense to a group or groups of people.
Set B: A more specific set of terms we could use, which do not cause offense to anyone.

How could changing from Set A to Set B be controversial, unless you have an issue with a group that might be offended?

My problem isn't with the words. Change them if you want. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
My problem is with why they are being changed and when it's going to stop. If we are going to have to change internationally recognised industry-standard terminology every time someone in a single country gets offended by them (and that is starting to happen a lot lately), we'll end up going backwards. Nobody will know what to call the words. People / companies / sites will be attacked for using the wrong word (we changed that word 6 months ago, shame on you!).

Just get over it. Master/slave, black/white, male/female, main/replica, active/passive, primary/foreign. Use whatever word best describes the objects in context and don't target people because they don't meet your very particular and localised standards.

In case it's not clear, I'm ok with you not using master/slave. As I'm sure you're ok with me (in a different country) continuing to use master/slave.

 

[loki1944]

Just when you thought humanity couldn't get any more pathetic.

 

[x31efm]

I believe the entire point is being missed in this conversation. This is not an ask to remove white/black words by themselves, just to remove them in the context of white(good), black(bad), and the vast majority of those cases are the whitelist/blacklist example. To try to extrapolate to an unending goal is to not even try to listen to folks that are negatively impacted by this, which I would guess most commenters are not part of that group. We could listen more, and judge less.

 

[sdms96825]

They rebelled against the federal government, they fired the first shots of the war by firing on the Union Fort Sumter (you don't just get secede and then go 'oh, by the way, give us free stuff' - if they wanted control of any forts, they should make sure they actually controlled them before seceding), then we had a long 'discussion' about who was right and determined that the confederates were wrong: a state's rights end at the beginning of an individual's rights.

The southern Confederate generals were fighting for independence from the Union -- like George Washington and other generals fought for independence from England. If the southern Confederate generals are "traitors", were George Washington and other Revolutionary generals "traitors"? In fact, many northerners wanted to let the south secede -- sort of like many in the U.S. today would like to see California (other than northern California) secede. LOL