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> Its tone deaf to ignore this as why it might be offensive to some of your coworkers. I'm speculating: you believe it's a problem for African Americans, but e

> Its tone deaf to ignore this as why it might be offensive to some of your coworkers. I'm speculating: you believe it's a problem for African Americans, but e.g. not for Polish Americans, right? I'm trying to understand your thought process here, because the word slave literally (literally literally, I'm not making this up) stems from Slavic people that were captured by Romans.

ptsneves 6y ago
On the topic of romans and meanings changing, the word decimation used to mean the killing of one in ten in the Roman legions as a way to get military discipline. Nowadays there is no connection to Roman legions nor killing and actually is used to refer as a synonimous to anyhalation in general. It annoys me this slave thing because racism or xenophobia are often very complex and real problems of disaffection and social innequality yet we are policing words as if it has any corrective impact.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > yet we are policing words as if it has any corrective impact. Exactly. There are far bigger fish to fry than whether or not some piece of software uses terms that can be misconstrued to be somehow racist (riddle me this: is BDSM inherently racist because that subculture uses "master" and "slave" terminology?). We (at least here in the US) are in dire need of widespread reforms throughout our "justice" system, particularly when it comes to police and prisons. We are also facing an ongoing issue of white supremacists infesting our government at all levels. Harassing open-source projects over what words they use is a petty and pointless distraction from these very real issues that have very real and very strong impacts on American minorities. I can't speak to other countries and their race relations, but my impression from hearing about their attitudes toward immigrants/refugees is that they ain't much better.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > I can't speak to other countries and their race relations, but my impression from hearing about their attitudes toward immigrants/refugees is that they ain't much better. I wouldn't conflate the two, they are not connected. After WW2, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe were forced to migrate to Germany. There obviously was no race-issue, as they were not only the same race, they were the same ethnicity, they spoke the same language. And still they weren't welcome by the local population, as their arrival primarily meant that whatever the locals had would now be shared. Pretty much all opposition to immigration is economic. Race doesn't play a part in the motivation, it's a secondary thing that comes into play afterwards. If immigration was a (significant, visible) net benefit to every person in the country (it is not, and you'll usually find the anti-immigration opinions with those who stand to lose from immigration, and, unsurprisingly, the pro-immigration stance with those who stand to gain), there would be much, much fewer objections. Consider a headline like "Nigerian billionaire seeks to immigrate and promises to invest in the rust belt and create tens of thousands of jobs in manufacturing". Do you believe Trump-supporters would protest that person's immigration?
waheoo 6y ago
I dont believe it is a problem, you're misrepresenting my statement. I said it is easy to see why it might be offensive. I am in no position to discern that but I also dont give a shit about what term you use, and its dated anyway. Further more, i find it trite to waste energy on these "decisive", and small sound bite sized issues that mean absolutely nothing to the vast majority of people. Im discussing the use of the term master/slave in the context of a database master slave setup where one database has to take orders from another. And you think its cute to "speculate" maybe im talking about where the word slave comes from? Opposed to, how it may or may not offend those with a cultural history of 400 years of slavery. That is extremely disingenuous.

ptsneves 6y ago

On the topic of romans and meanings changing, the word decimation used to mean the killing of one in ten in the Roman legions as a way to get military discipline. Nowadays there is no connection to Roman legions nor killing and actually is used to refer as a synonimous to anyhalation in general. It annoys me this slave thing because racism or xenophobia are often very complex and real problems of disaffection and social innequality yet we are policing words as if it has any corrective impact.

yellowapple 6y ago
> yet we are policing words as if it has any corrective impact. Exactly. There are far bigger fish to fry than whether or not some piece of software uses terms that can be misconstrued to be somehow racist (riddle me this: is BDSM inherently racist because that subculture uses "master" and "slave" terminology?). We (at least here in the US) are in dire need of widespread reforms throughout our "justice" system, particularly when it comes to police and prisons. We are also facing an ongoing issue of white supremacists infesting our government at all levels. Harassing open-source projects over what words they use is a petty and pointless distraction from these very real issues that have very real and very strong impacts on American minorities. I can't speak to other countries and their race relations, but my impression from hearing about their attitudes toward immigrants/refugees is that they ain't much better.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > I can't speak to other countries and their race relations, but my impression from hearing about their attitudes toward immigrants/refugees is that they ain't much better. I wouldn't conflate the two, they are not connected. After WW2, ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe were forced to migrate to Germany. There obviously was no race-issue, as they were not only the same race, they were the same ethnicity, they spoke the same language. And still they weren't welcome by the local population, as their arrival primarily meant that whatever the locals had would now be shared. Pretty much all opposition to immigration is economic. Race doesn't play a part in the motivation, it's a secondary thing that comes into play afterwards. If immigration was a (significant, visible) net benefit to every person in the country (it is not, and you'll usually find the anti-immigration opinions with those who stand to lose from immigration, and, unsurprisingly, the pro-immigration stance with those who stand to gain), there would be much, much fewer objections. Consider a headline like "Nigerian billionaire seeks to immigrate and promises to invest in the rust belt and create tens of thousands of jobs in manufacturing". Do you believe Trump-supporters would protest that person's immigration?

waheoo 6y ago

I dont believe it is a problem, you're misrepresenting my statement. I said it is easy to see why it might be offensive. I am in no position to discern that but I also dont give a shit about what term you use, and its dated anyway. Further more, i find it trite to waste energy on these "decisive", and small sound bite sized issues that mean absolutely nothing to the vast majority of people. Im discussing the use of the term master/slave in the context of a database master slave setup where one database has to take orders from another. And you think its cute to "speculate" maybe im talking about where the word slave comes from? Opposed to, how it may or may not offend those with a cultural history of 400 years of slavery. That is extremely disingenuous.