7 ms·

Can you imagine being in a class to learn programming or something and your teacher starts talking about how A is a master and B is a slave? Can you imagine tha

Can you imagine being in a class to learn programming or something and your teacher starts talking about how A is a master and B is a slave? Can you imagine that your phenotype matches a minority population that was formerly enslaved? Can you imagine that you're the only such person in your programming class, and feeling everyone's eyes run over you when these terms are first used? Can you imagine that being, if nothing else, a distracting or unwelcoming experience? Sure, technically git doesn't use both ends of this metaphor and it probably comes from something like "gold master" in this case. But if you're throwing up your hands like the underlying intent is absurd, maybe chew on it a bit more?

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
To not be bothered, even though the 'master' analogy isn't applicable in the context of git branches, is coming from a place of privilege. I hope the folks saying such a change 'goes too far' could walk away after reading all the comments with a delta on this point. To you (generically), it may not matter. But we cannot project our own feelings onto others.
- dbsmith83 6y ago
  Perhaps there is some privilege in having knowledge to understand where the terminology comes from, but that doesn't mean that it should change because of someone else's ignorance.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    The suggestion to choose new terminology isn't to appease people who are 'ignorant'. It's to use more welcoming terminology, in spite of the fact, that to you, it may look like they're being ignorant. The problem with saying others are being ignorant is it denies them the recognition of how they feel about the terminology, with or without the historical programming context. It essentially states: "Because they are ignorant, their feeling are invalid". And that's a very un-welcoming attitude to have to new-comers.
    - dbsmith83 6y ago
      I don't think purging every word that you deem 'unwelcoming' is a good idea. It is very authoritarian and reeks of 1984. Understanding historical context is something to be sought. This is an innocuous term, and instead of trying to purge everything you don't like and sweep it under the rug, you should be educating other people.
      - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
        This seems like a strawman. Is changing a few words in the context of computing going to change our ability to innovate down the road? It sounds highly unlikely. Also, there's plenty of historical texts that use master/slave that capture why it's problematic to use those terms today. The folks suggesting to update our field's terminology are not saying 'burn all the books that describe the systemic racism present in America' which would be a requirement of the "purging everything we don't like and sweeping it under the rug" mindset. The point is simple: some terms are associated with terrible sentiments, when clear alternative terms exist. Can we be welcoming enough to accept this?
        dbsmith83 6y ago
        It's not a strawman, we are talking about the issue at hand--master branch. Why are you talking about master/slave terminology, which has nothing to do with the master branch terminology? I don't think it's worth completely changing terminology and disregarding history because some newcomers don't understand the meaning of an innocuous term. I think that it is more valuable to preserve it than to change it just because there are a few people who do not understand it. I believe in changing terminology that actually is rooted in oppression. It's a good rule of thumb which allows change while also not forcing everything little thing to have to change. Master branch is not rooted in oppression. Welcoming to me does not mean walking on eggshells and avoiding saying perfectly accepted industry terms that someone just may find offensive because they don't understand it. Welcoming is mentoring, teaching, and kindness. I think your logic leads down a slippery authoritarian slope. Should I not say rule of thumb because a few people misunderstand the origin? https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-04-17-1998107056-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-04-17-19981070... I'm going to keep saying it.
- mpweiher 6y ago
  Who is projecting their feelings onto others? Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo... ' a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” ' And no, "Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either." Yes, the dislike is lowest among African Americans, but still at a whopping 75%. So who supports PC? The only group is progressive activists. What do they look like, demographically? Rich, white, educated. The author additionally ran a twitter poll: "Nearly all of my followers underestimated the extent to which most Americans reject political correctness. Only 6 percent gave the right answer. (When I asked them how people of color regard political correctness, their guesses were, unsurprisingly, even more wildly off.)"
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    This reduction seems to be drawing too many absolute conclusions. Only X believes Y. Life is rarely that cut and dry.
    - mpweiher 6y ago
      > Only X believes Y. The word "only" is a direct quote from the article: "Progressive activists are the only group that strongly backs political correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a problem." (My emphasis) There are no "absolute" conclusions in my summary, it's all in the text, mostly direct quotes, and the text is, as far as I can tell, a fairly straight representation of the findings. > Life is rarely that cut and dry. But sometimes it is, such as in this case. The data are unequivocal. Now, you are obviously free to believe that you are right and the (vast) majority is wrong. But if you think that you have majority support for your opinions then you are deluding yourself.
seiferteric 6y ago
Which phenotype do you imagine has never been enslaved?
- mstrthrawy76 6y ago
  Prisoners in the US are effectively slaves. They were excluded from the abolition of slavery in the Thirteenth Amendment. It's why they don't have to be paid minimum wage. > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
arp242 6y ago
There's a lot of "can you imagine [..]" going on with these things. The question is, does this actually happen? Because if it doesn't then the entire point is moot. I've read through a lot of these kind of discussions in the last week, and one thing that really strikes me is that they consist almost entirely of white people discussing this. This seems a bit odd to me because there are plenty of non-white programmers as well (especially if you look beyond the Silicon Valley bubble). I'd like to think that these people are more than articulate enough to raise these kind of issues themselves if they want to. In general, it seems to me that black people are not so fragile that they will be scared at the first sight of the word "master", especially when it has no direct relationship to slavery (it's a common word in quite a few different contexts). Quite frankly, the entire thing has more than a bit of a "white saviour" smell to it and comes off as rather patronising. I suspect one reason this is happening is that many people feel powerless to change the status quo – a frustration I share – so they do stuff like this because, well, have to do something, and this is where they do have the power to influence things. Another commenter called this "virtue signaliging", but I think that's a bit ungenerous; I think by and large people are actually looking for ways to make a difference, which is great but ... it also doesn't mean you actually are making a difference. All of this strikes me as the programmer equivalent of "slacktivism".

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

To not be bothered, even though the 'master' analogy isn't applicable in the context of git branches, is coming from a place of privilege. I hope the folks saying such a change 'goes too far' could walk away after reading all the comments with a delta on this point. To you (generically), it may not matter. But we cannot project our own feelings onto others.

dbsmith83 6y ago
Perhaps there is some privilege in having knowledge to understand where the terminology comes from, but that doesn't mean that it should change because of someone else's ignorance.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  The suggestion to choose new terminology isn't to appease people who are 'ignorant'. It's to use more welcoming terminology, in spite of the fact, that to you, it may look like they're being ignorant. The problem with saying others are being ignorant is it denies them the recognition of how they feel about the terminology, with or without the historical programming context. It essentially states: "Because they are ignorant, their feeling are invalid". And that's a very un-welcoming attitude to have to new-comers.
  - dbsmith83 6y ago
    I don't think purging every word that you deem 'unwelcoming' is a good idea. It is very authoritarian and reeks of 1984. Understanding historical context is something to be sought. This is an innocuous term, and instead of trying to purge everything you don't like and sweep it under the rug, you should be educating other people.
    - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
      This seems like a strawman. Is changing a few words in the context of computing going to change our ability to innovate down the road? It sounds highly unlikely. Also, there's plenty of historical texts that use master/slave that capture why it's problematic to use those terms today. The folks suggesting to update our field's terminology are not saying 'burn all the books that describe the systemic racism present in America' which would be a requirement of the "purging everything we don't like and sweeping it under the rug" mindset. The point is simple: some terms are associated with terrible sentiments, when clear alternative terms exist. Can we be welcoming enough to accept this?
      - dbsmith83 6y ago
        It's not a strawman, we are talking about the issue at hand--master branch. Why are you talking about master/slave terminology, which has nothing to do with the master branch terminology? I don't think it's worth completely changing terminology and disregarding history because some newcomers don't understand the meaning of an innocuous term. I think that it is more valuable to preserve it than to change it just because there are a few people who do not understand it. I believe in changing terminology that actually is rooted in oppression. It's a good rule of thumb which allows change while also not forcing everything little thing to have to change. Master branch is not rooted in oppression. Welcoming to me does not mean walking on eggshells and avoiding saying perfectly accepted industry terms that someone just may find offensive because they don't understand it. Welcoming is mentoring, teaching, and kindness. I think your logic leads down a slippery authoritarian slope. Should I not say rule of thumb because a few people misunderstand the origin? https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-04-17-1998107056-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-04-17-19981070... I'm going to keep saying it.
mpweiher 6y ago
Who is projecting their feelings onto others? Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo... ' a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” ' And no, "Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either." Yes, the dislike is lowest among African Americans, but still at a whopping 75%. So who supports PC? The only group is progressive activists. What do they look like, demographically? Rich, white, educated. The author additionally ran a twitter poll: "Nearly all of my followers underestimated the extent to which most Americans reject political correctness. Only 6 percent gave the right answer. (When I asked them how people of color regard political correctness, their guesses were, unsurprisingly, even more wildly off.)"
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  This reduction seems to be drawing too many absolute conclusions. Only X believes Y. Life is rarely that cut and dry.
  - mpweiher 6y ago
    > Only X believes Y. The word "only" is a direct quote from the article: "Progressive activists are the only group that strongly backs political correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a problem." (My emphasis) There are no "absolute" conclusions in my summary, it's all in the text, mostly direct quotes, and the text is, as far as I can tell, a fairly straight representation of the findings. > Life is rarely that cut and dry. But sometimes it is, such as in this case. The data are unequivocal. Now, you are obviously free to believe that you are right and the (vast) majority is wrong. But if you think that you have majority support for your opinions then you are deluding yourself.

seiferteric 6y ago

Which phenotype do you imagine has never been enslaved?

mstrthrawy76 6y ago
Prisoners in the US are effectively slaves. They were excluded from the abolition of slavery in the Thirteenth Amendment. It's why they don't have to be paid minimum wage. > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

arp242 6y ago

There's a lot of "can you imagine [..]" going on with these things. The question is, does this actually happen? Because if it doesn't then the entire point is moot. I've read through a lot of these kind of discussions in the last week, and one thing that really strikes me is that they consist almost entirely of white people discussing this. This seems a bit odd to me because there are plenty of non-white programmers as well (especially if you look beyond the Silicon Valley bubble). I'd like to think that these people are more than articulate enough to raise these kind of issues themselves if they want to. In general, it seems to me that black people are not so fragile that they will be scared at the first sight of the word "master", especially when it has no direct relationship to slavery (it's a common word in quite a few different contexts). Quite frankly, the entire thing has more than a bit of a "white saviour" smell to it and comes off as rather patronising. I suspect one reason this is happening is that many people feel powerless to change the status quo – a frustration I share – so they do stuff like this because, well, have to do something, and this is where they do have the power to influence things. Another commenter called this "virtue signaliging", but I think that's a bit ungenerous; I think by and large people are actually looking for ways to make a difference, which is great but ... it also doesn't mean you actually are making a difference. All of this strikes me as the programmer equivalent of "slacktivism".