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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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:
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.
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.
I really have an inside battle when I read this sort of stuff here on HN, because I don't want to post derailed political comments, I want this place to be like it is, keep it cool and avoid kulturwars, but man it's hard.
Look, I'm not in the US, so maybe I can't even think how it is with racism there, but I just can't help to think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling. It feels like some bunch of uber-priviledged SV guys who think too high of themselves want to feel good about something and they come up with this BS that everyone will forget a week later.
Man, it's so surreal. Don't you have poor people in your city? What about helping your local NGOs? What about working for them for free? One week you help feed the people, another in the kitchen and another one in accounting.
Dunno, it feels sooooo far away from my reality. I don't know what is to be earning +100k year and thinking this is a great idea! It was even difficult to write this comment because I find it funny and just feel the impulse to mock this.
> I just can't help to think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling. It feels like some bunch of uber-priviledged SV guys who think too high of themselves want to feel good about something
Except that’s not what happened. This was spearheaded by Black developers who don’t want to have to read about “slaves” being “rekicked” at their jobs. Is that not a reasonable request?
SV has one of the highest homeless populations in the US, I do not see any of them giving up larges parts of the salary to fix that problem, or even demanding the cities stop preventing building of new housing.
You "think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling" because that is exactly what it is.
The real problems we face as a society can not be fixed with a Twitter post and a image outlining the Newspeak we must all follow in the totalitarian superstate that SV wishes upon us
Chess is racist, blacks always move second and are thus at a disadvantage. Cancel chess.
Daoism is racist, yin is black and has negative connotations. Cancel Daoism.
Star Wars are racist. Droids are enslaved, C3P0 even calls his owner 'Master Luke', a racially-charged word. Cancel Star Wars.
Education is racist. Issued Master's degrees use a racially-charged word. Cancel education.
"To kill a mockingbird" is racist. It is full of insensitive language and it makes reader feel uncomfortable. Cancel "To kill a mockingbird".
"Mysterious island" by J.Verne is racist. The only black character is a servant to a wise white engineer and serves mostly as a comedic relief. Cancel "Mysterious island".
Coal industry is racist, miners are always mocking blacks wearing blackface after every shift. Cancel coal mining. (Good for environment, too!)
Disclaimer: I'm so insensitive because I was born with a white privilege, which I greatly enjoyed since my early childhood in an industrial/mining town in the Ural Mountains, near the eastern border of Siberia.
Saying that these terms are racially loaded is, well, racist.
I can kind of understand the argument that there is a history of racism connected with slavery, but the concept of "slave" predates discrimination of coloured people by millenia, closely followed by the word itself, which is actually derived from "Slav" (like you sometimes hear Russians being referred as). But fair enough, seeing a connection to racism is maybe just misinformed.
But "blacklist" (and "whitelist") is just completely absurd. "Blacklist" is a term from a play, referring to a literally black list. Whitelist is just an antonym. Such color metaphors are incredibly common, think wedding dresses or "black death", or black flags, or white lie. Obviously, none of this is connected to skin color. How exactly does your mind have to be wired to come to the opposite conclusion?
As one of the largest (and most criticized) players in political information, one would think that Twitter could maybe do something better about the current situation than engaging in etymological misinformation...
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.
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.
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!
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.
Moving away from race a bit and totally anecdotally, but my wife was looking at my screen once while I was using the command line and she remarked how it seemed like all the commands were chosen by men: kill, terminate, spawn, mount, push etc. It may be subtle but words matter and they do attract or repel people. And then we complain why there are too few women in tech. Inclusion is not just about race.
I'm not american and don't know what do these words _mean_ for a lot of people. My sidestory that I only feel "bad" because as a non-native english speaker it's really hard sometimes to speak correctly PC-ish. For example my native tongue doesn't have gender pronouns. Grammatical gender doesn't exist at all. So third person singular doesn't make a difference between gender like english. It doesn't exist when I address that person. But when I go to Twitter or check people's profile they more and more ask how they should be addressed or what pronoun to use. Just interesting how the language can affect your way of thinking about the world.
Are they going to rename their servers as well? The word 'server' comes from the Latin word 'servus' which means slave.
Also, the word 'twit' has several meanings which might not fall so well with certain people. Ask Google Translate what it means and this is what you get:
While I personally think they chose a name which fits the product very well indeed I do get the feeling that, if the current witch hunt continues, they'll eventually fall foul of the mob and be either forced to bend to their will or find themselves in the position now reserved for Facebook, i.e. the whipping boy of the social media giants.
+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 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.
[+] [-] brink|5 years ago|reply
Race is being dragged into everything now and I hate it.
[+] [-] shahruz|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rvz|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nappy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aplummer|5 years ago|reply
If changing branch names makes them even just a little bit more comfortable I don’t care if they rename master jiggerypokery.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] emerged|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bobthepanda|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Separo|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] monkpit|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zorpner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gokhan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickelbob|5 years ago|reply
Here's a really great article that helped me notice my own privilege - https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf
[+] [-] Raed667|5 years ago|reply
Changing the usage doesn't harm me in any way and if it arguably provides a more welcoming environment for people then why not.
[+] [-] DyslexicAtheist|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23727420
[+] [-] shahruz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] im3w1l|5 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] f3295cde|5 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] bluedevil2k|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hw|5 years ago|reply
Great that they're working on this, but how about them engineers work on improving their API stability.
[+] [-] abootstrapper|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bmm6o|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spaniard89277|5 years ago|reply
I really have an inside battle when I read this sort of stuff here on HN, because I don't want to post derailed political comments, I want this place to be like it is, keep it cool and avoid kulturwars, but man it's hard.
Look, I'm not in the US, so maybe I can't even think how it is with racism there, but I just can't help to think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling. It feels like some bunch of uber-priviledged SV guys who think too high of themselves want to feel good about something and they come up with this BS that everyone will forget a week later.
Man, it's so surreal. Don't you have poor people in your city? What about helping your local NGOs? What about working for them for free? One week you help feed the people, another in the kitchen and another one in accounting.
Dunno, it feels sooooo far away from my reality. I don't know what is to be earning +100k year and thinking this is a great idea! It was even difficult to write this comment because I find it funny and just feel the impulse to mock this.
[+] [-] jakelazaroff|5 years ago|reply
Except that’s not what happened. This was spearheaded by Black developers who don’t want to have to read about “slaves” being “rekicked” at their jobs. Is that not a reasonable request?
[+] [-] syshum|5 years ago|reply
You "think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling" because that is exactly what it is.
The real problems we face as a society can not be fixed with a Twitter post and a image outlining the Newspeak we must all follow in the totalitarian superstate that SV wishes upon us
[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|5 years ago|reply
Chess is racist, blacks always move second and are thus at a disadvantage. Cancel chess.
Daoism is racist, yin is black and has negative connotations. Cancel Daoism.
Star Wars are racist. Droids are enslaved, C3P0 even calls his owner 'Master Luke', a racially-charged word. Cancel Star Wars.
Education is racist. Issued Master's degrees use a racially-charged word. Cancel education.
"To kill a mockingbird" is racist. It is full of insensitive language and it makes reader feel uncomfortable. Cancel "To kill a mockingbird".
"Mysterious island" by J.Verne is racist. The only black character is a servant to a wise white engineer and serves mostly as a comedic relief. Cancel "Mysterious island".
Coal industry is racist, miners are always mocking blacks wearing blackface after every shift. Cancel coal mining. (Good for environment, too!)
Disclaimer: I'm so insensitive because I was born with a white privilege, which I greatly enjoyed since my early childhood in an industrial/mining town in the Ural Mountains, near the eastern border of Siberia.
[+] [-] blackbrokkoli|5 years ago|reply
I can kind of understand the argument that there is a history of racism connected with slavery, but the concept of "slave" predates discrimination of coloured people by millenia, closely followed by the word itself, which is actually derived from "Slav" (like you sometimes hear Russians being referred as). But fair enough, seeing a connection to racism is maybe just misinformed.
But "blacklist" (and "whitelist") is just completely absurd. "Blacklist" is a term from a play, referring to a literally black list. Whitelist is just an antonym. Such color metaphors are incredibly common, think wedding dresses or "black death", or black flags, or white lie. Obviously, none of this is connected to skin color. How exactly does your mind have to be wired to come to the opposite conclusion?
As one of the largest (and most criticized) players in political information, one would think that Twitter could maybe do something better about the current situation than engaging in etymological misinformation...
[+] [-] dijit|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bobthepanda|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Veen|5 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
[+] [-] PeterBarrett|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frandroid|5 years ago|reply
You're not "controversial" for skipping over the blindingly obvious, but we're not allowed to insult people on this forum, so feh!
[+] [-] Arcuru|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] micheljansen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ibejoeb|5 years ago|reply
why?
[+] [-] lollerka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yetanfou|5 years ago|reply
Also, the word 'twit' has several meanings which might not fall so well with certain people. Ask Google Translate what it means and this is what you get:
Twit: (noun) a silly or foolish person. Syonyms: idiot ass halfwit nincompoop blockhead buffoon dunce dolt ignoramus cretin imbecile dullard moron simpleton clod dope ninny chump dimwit nitwit goon dumbo dummy dum-dum dumbbell loon jackass bonehead fathead numbskull dunderhead chucklehead knucklehead muttonhead pudding-head thickhead wooden-head airhead pinhead lamebrain peabrain birdbrain zombie jerk nerd dipstick donkey noodle nit numpty clot goat plonker berk prat pillock wally git wazzock divvy nerk twerp charlie mug muppet nyaff balloon sumph gowk gobdaw schmuck bozo boob lamer turkey schlepper chowderhead dumbhead goofball goof goofus galoot dork lummox klutz putz schlemiel sap meatball gink cluck clunk ding-dong dingbat wiener weeny dip simp spud coot palooka poop squarehead yo-yo dingleberry wing nut drongo dill alec galah nong bogan poon boofhead mompara tomfool noddy clodpole loggerhead spoony mooncalf
While I personally think they chose a name which fits the product very well indeed I do get the feeling that, if the current witch hunt continues, they'll eventually fall foul of the mob and be either forced to bend to their will or find themselves in the position now reserved for Facebook, i.e. the whipping boy of the social media giants.
[+] [-] AzzieElbab|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Anthony-G|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyc116|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emerged|5 years ago|reply
I get dibs after Asians, as a person who has some rosacea. For too long we have been disadvantaged.
[+] [-] baggy_trough|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] botwriter|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Certhas|5 years ago|reply
I am not a fan of ignoring context but I get why American companies, with their specific history would want to do that.
[+] [-] klagan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jyriand|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frandroid|5 years ago|reply
Not for the last 500 years.
[+] [-] r721|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kache_|5 years ago|reply