4 ms·

The connotation is that white is good and black is bad.

tomp 6y ago
Wouldn't it make more sense then to change the name of the race? "Blacks" -> "browns" or something... (and it would also be more physically accurate... same with "whites" -> "yellows" or "roses")
rurban 6y ago
Yes, but I don't see the correlation to any race. black is bad everywhere, probably because of its physical properties. ditto for white. Those who wish to see a racial relation are just racists, and racists should not be fed.
j-pb 6y ago
Which has nothing to do with race, and is heavily rooted in "light" vs. "shadow" mythology. In India it's the other way around, Asia has Ying and Yang. Changing these words is a feel good thing, that does nothing to address our internal biases, prejudices, and racism. It wastes time that could be spend on writing your senator, politician, or being active in a political party. It's a zero effort, zero stakes thing, that makes privileged people feel personal accomplishment, while allowing them to relax into complacency. "I make a million a year, and work for a company that makes money off of algorithmically radicalising people into right wing conspiracy theories, but I don't use the word white- and black-list anymore, because it reminds me of race. I did my part!"
leg100 6y ago
That's a connotation. Another one is that black you cannot see, white you can. Which does have some grounding in physics. And no, absolutely nothing to do with race.
- simo7 6y ago
  Of course...some people seem to have an obsession for race, they connotate everything with it.
mudita 6y ago
To me it seems that this connotation is very deeply embedded in Western culture (but not only Western culture, compare for example yin and yang) and doesn't actually have much to do with race, and more with day and night, light and darkness and the fact that humans are not a nocturnal species and darkness can be dangerous to us. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism this is traceable to the Ancient Near East and listed in the Pythagorean Table of Opposites for example, so it goes much further back than the Atlantic slave trade. I do not think that it would be possible to rip this metaphor out of our thinking. By the way, a really great linguistic book about how much of our thinking is in systematic metaphors in general, is "Metaphors We Live By", by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  > I do not think that it would be possible to rip this metaphor out of our thinking. But this is exactly what certain people are trying to do. And it's not a fringe group anymore, this is starting to touch different aspects of our life that have no any real relation to racism or skin color. If "black" in "blacklist" is offending you today, tomorrow you will be offended by Master's degree.
  - lol139189 6y ago
    (Almost) No-one is really offended by any of this. This is a purity test - it's about easily being able to identify people who still have any semblance of personal agency so they can be isolated and ostracized.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Yes, but it is worth noting that this did not originally refer to skin color, but more to the association in our culture of black with death.

tomp 6y ago

Wouldn't it make more sense then to change the name of the race? "Blacks" -> "browns" or something... (and it would also be more physically accurate... same with "whites" -> "yellows" or "roses")

rurban 6y ago

Yes, but I don't see the correlation to any race. black is bad everywhere, probably because of its physical properties. ditto for white. Those who wish to see a racial relation are just racists, and racists should not be fed.

j-pb 6y ago

Which has nothing to do with race, and is heavily rooted in "light" vs. "shadow" mythology. In India it's the other way around, Asia has Ying and Yang. Changing these words is a feel good thing, that does nothing to address our internal biases, prejudices, and racism. It wastes time that could be spend on writing your senator, politician, or being active in a political party. It's a zero effort, zero stakes thing, that makes privileged people feel personal accomplishment, while allowing them to relax into complacency. "I make a million a year, and work for a company that makes money off of algorithmically radicalising people into right wing conspiracy theories, but I don't use the word white- and black-list anymore, because it reminds me of race. I did my part!"

leg100 6y ago

That's a connotation. Another one is that black you cannot see, white you can. Which does have some grounding in physics. And no, absolutely nothing to do with race.

simo7 6y ago
Of course...some people seem to have an obsession for race, they connotate everything with it.

mudita 6y ago

To me it seems that this connotation is very deeply embedded in Western culture (but not only Western culture, compare for example yin and yang) and doesn't actually have much to do with race, and more with day and night, light and darkness and the fact that humans are not a nocturnal species and darkness can be dangerous to us. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism this is traceable to the Ancient Near East and listed in the Pythagorean Table of Opposites for example, so it goes much further back than the Atlantic slave trade. I do not think that it would be possible to rip this metaphor out of our thinking. By the way, a really great linguistic book about how much of our thinking is in systematic metaphors in general, is "Metaphors We Live By", by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
> I do not think that it would be possible to rip this metaphor out of our thinking. But this is exactly what certain people are trying to do. And it's not a fringe group anymore, this is starting to touch different aspects of our life that have no any real relation to racism or skin color. If "black" in "blacklist" is offending you today, tomorrow you will be offended by Master's degree.
- lol139189 6y ago
  (Almost) No-one is really offended by any of this. This is a purity test - it's about easily being able to identify people who still have any semblance of personal agency so they can be isolated and ostracized.

tsimionescu 6y ago

Yes, but it is worth noting that this did not originally refer to skin color, but more to the association in our culture of black with death.