7 ms·

> but also terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" for "allow list" and "deny/exclude list." Seriously?

by mirthflat83 6y ago

mavhc 6y ago
Makes sense, better wording and less racist.
- mirthflat83 6y ago
  Nothing about those terms are racist. What’s next, renaming the color “black”?
  - Kiro 6y ago
    No, but I've heard a lot of people saying we should stop using "dark" and "black" in association with evil, e.g. black magic or dark thoughts. I'm not saying it's the right or wrong thing to do.
    - drdeca 6y ago
      I would guess that such associations have long existed, including in places where most people have dark skin, and are not based in the idea of “race”.
  - moritonal 6y ago
    Maybe it's work thinking about why the term "black" denotes not being able to do something.
  - tchaffee 6y ago
    Using black to mean evil or bad in a modern workplace is a microagression and is racist. Microagressions are well studied and the evidence points to it resulting psychological damage [1] [2]. The term "blacklist" started more frequently occurring at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas. So even the historical context does not support that the term is completely lacking of racist motives. If you are going to dehumanize and enslave an entire continent, it would certainly help your cause if their skin color continues to be associated with "evil". Consider also that the Latin word "niger" had many of the same figurative senses ("gloomy; unlucky; bad, wicked, malicious") as black is often used to mean. We don't need to rename the color black. What we do need to do is to stop using it to mean "bad" or "evil" and using white to mean "good" when there are actually far better and clearer words. Denylist says exactly what it does. Blacklist far less so, unless we are happy with continuing to use the word "black" to mean "evil". I leave it up to the reader to decide how it might psychologically affect someone if their skin color also means evil, and they are reminded of this on a regular basis by words used at work. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691619827499?journalCode=ppsa https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/174569161982749... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/
  - tzs 6y ago
    That's actually been done, although it was more a case of someone not putting enough thought into their assignment than actually trying to rename a color. Target once sold a children's desk that was available in white or black. One day, that changed to being available in white or African-American. Target was made fun of for a few days on the internet over that, and presumably some employee learned that when a word has multiple meanings and you are only trying to replace one of those meanings, s/word/replacement/g is not the right approach. I'd expect that employee also got kidded about it for years afterwards, like if he's going to play a game of chess with a co-worker on their lunch break getting asked if he wants to play white or African-American, or if he shows up at a Halloween costume party as a pirate getting asked if he's African-American Beard.
    - mnm1 6y ago
      Not all black people, even in America, are African Americans. Which makes the term wrong even for people. This is a whole new level of stupidity, however, on par with say renaming the git master branch.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  The terms have nothing to do with race.
  - tchaffee 6y ago
    Take away the historical context of the words and how do you know which list is the denylist and which list is the allowlist? "blacklist" first started becoming popular during widespread slavery of Africans for European colonies. If you want to dehumanize and enslave an entire continent, it sure does help to have the word "black" mean "evil". If you are a black American, the word black does mean a lot to you for sure. What's the impact of seeing that word mean "bad" or "evil" or "not allowed" on a regular basis at the workplace? Does that experience have anything to do with race? Whether or not it was about race in the past, it is about race now. "denylist" is both more accurate and fixes a problem that we have right now.
    - cameronbrown 6y ago
      The origins do not have anything to do with race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#:~:text=Origins%20of%20the%20term,the%20execution%20of%20his%20father https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#:~:text=Origins%2.... I don't live in America, I don't care about the context there, I don't care to have newspeak forced on me without real evidence it causes harm to people of colour, when all I actually see is white people being offended on behalf of others.
      - tchaffee 6y ago
        > without real evidence it causes harm to people Here is evidence that microagressions cause psychological harm: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691619827499?journalCode=ppsa https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/174569161982749.... It's easy to find more where that came from. > when all I actually see is white people being offended on behalf of others. Also easy to find black people who are offended by these terms. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/
zinclozenge 6y ago
Allow/deny listing makes a lot more sense to me than white/black listing
- anjc 6y ago
  Why does it make more sense? Blacklist is used also as a verb, and I don't think "denylist" could be used as such. You could say "add to the denylist" but I don't think this is sensible.
  - evan_ 6y ago
    Watch me: “hey can you denylist the ip range I just sent you?”
  - WaltPurvis 6y ago
    It only sounds unfamiliar to you because it's unfamiliar to you. You can use any noun as a verb. Google it.
    - fhars 6y ago
      Isn‘t that usually written as “you can verb any noun”? /gd&r
  - gregoriol 6y ago
    Why wouldn't "to denylist" be as good as "to blacklist"? It's only because we are used to the second one that the first one seems strange, but after some time it will seem as normal to use it
    - anjc 6y ago
      It seems awkward to have a verb as part of the noun, but as I write this I'm thinking of many.
- GordonS 6y ago
  These terms at least make as much sense as the old ones. But where would "greylist" fit in here? It slotted in nicely between whitelist and blacklist, and I'm not sure what a good name would be in the context of "allow list" and "deny/block list"?
lallysingh 6y ago
Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? The new names actually describe what they do. The reason it may seem ridiculous is that racism is very, very deep in American culture. The country's culture goes back hundreds of years and is still slowly working on being less so. Here's an example: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342/recall-that-ice-cream-truck-song-we-have-unpleasant-news-for-you https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342...
- dingle3 6y ago
  what's the racist background?
  - waheoo 6y ago
    Black people = bad, white people = good. Rosstex posted a good explain below.
    - drdeca 6y ago
      The explanation that Rosstex posted does not refer to “black” people, or to “white” people?
      - libria 6y ago
        By "racist background" they mean "racist association". Perhaps it didn't start that way but due to history it can easily be twisted to be seen as offensive. I can't tattoo a swastika on my arm, despite its origins.
        drdeca 6y ago
        “Easily twisted to be seen as offensive” is not the same thing as “offensive”. [edit: also, that doesn’t really explain citing Rosstex?] Also, my understanding is that that there are places in the world where the primary associations for a swastika are the earlier ones, not the nazi ones. I don’t see a reason to tell the people living in those places to stop using that symbol amongst themselves (though asking that they not use it in places where it is likely to be genuinely misinterpreted may be reasonable)
rosstex 6y ago
Some etymology: blacklist (n.) also black-list, "list of persons who have incurred suspicion, earned punishment, or are for any reason deemed objectionable by the makers and users of the list," 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (a sense attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.1). Specifically of employers' list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activity) is from 1884.
- Accacin 6y ago
  To be 100% honest, when I first read the changes to whitelist/blacklist I thought, "Well, that's pretty stupid" but after reading your comment and a few others, it does actually seem quite racist. Like someone else mentioned, without the racist connotations I wouldn't know whether black or white list was the 'good' one. Language evolves constantly, always has and always will do. I'm not going to get hung up on things being renamed and I honestly do not see why people should be. I'm still not sure about the 'master' branch change being required, as it's obvious (to me) the context in which master refers to (like a master copy or a key or something). There's no 'slave' branch (master/slave terminology is a problem).
  - fhars 6y ago
    As argued elsewhere in this thread, there is plausible evidence that the name of the „master“ branch in git is directly derived from the bitkeeper concept of „master“ and „slave“ repositories: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/msg00066.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...
  - j_4 6y ago
    >without the racist connotations I wouldn't know whether black or white list was the 'good' one. Please. Humans are diurnal animals, and we depend on sight as our main sense. The idea of light good, dark bad is present in infants. It's likely much older than consciousness. I'm not denying that there's an unfortunate racist element correlated with it all, with the trend over the past few centuries being pale-skinned people exploiting dark-skinned people, but it's certainly not the root cause of these associations.

> but also terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" for "allow list" and "deny/exclude list." Seriously?

mavhc 6y ago

Makes sense, better wording and less racist.

mirthflat83 6y ago
Nothing about those terms are racist. What’s next, renaming the color “black”?
- Kiro 6y ago
  No, but I've heard a lot of people saying we should stop using "dark" and "black" in association with evil, e.g. black magic or dark thoughts. I'm not saying it's the right or wrong thing to do.
  - drdeca 6y ago
    I would guess that such associations have long existed, including in places where most people have dark skin, and are not based in the idea of “race”.
- moritonal 6y ago
  Maybe it's work thinking about why the term "black" denotes not being able to do something.
- tchaffee 6y ago
  Using black to mean evil or bad in a modern workplace is a microagression and is racist. Microagressions are well studied and the evidence points to it resulting psychological damage [1] [2]. The term "blacklist" started more frequently occurring at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas. So even the historical context does not support that the term is completely lacking of racist motives. If you are going to dehumanize and enslave an entire continent, it would certainly help your cause if their skin color continues to be associated with "evil". Consider also that the Latin word "niger" had many of the same figurative senses ("gloomy; unlucky; bad, wicked, malicious") as black is often used to mean. We don't need to rename the color black. What we do need to do is to stop using it to mean "bad" or "evil" and using white to mean "good" when there are actually far better and clearer words. Denylist says exactly what it does. Blacklist far less so, unless we are happy with continuing to use the word "black" to mean "evil". I leave it up to the reader to decide how it might psychologically affect someone if their skin color also means evil, and they are reminded of this on a regular basis by words used at work. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691619827499?journalCode=ppsa https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/174569161982749... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/
- tzs 6y ago
  That's actually been done, although it was more a case of someone not putting enough thought into their assignment than actually trying to rename a color. Target once sold a children's desk that was available in white or black. One day, that changed to being available in white or African-American. Target was made fun of for a few days on the internet over that, and presumably some employee learned that when a word has multiple meanings and you are only trying to replace one of those meanings, s/word/replacement/g is not the right approach. I'd expect that employee also got kidded about it for years afterwards, like if he's going to play a game of chess with a co-worker on their lunch break getting asked if he wants to play white or African-American, or if he shows up at a Halloween costume party as a pirate getting asked if he's African-American Beard.
  - mnm1 6y ago
    Not all black people, even in America, are African Americans. Which makes the term wrong even for people. This is a whole new level of stupidity, however, on par with say renaming the git master branch.
cameronbrown 6y ago
The terms have nothing to do with race.
- tchaffee 6y ago
  Take away the historical context of the words and how do you know which list is the denylist and which list is the allowlist? "blacklist" first started becoming popular during widespread slavery of Africans for European colonies. If you want to dehumanize and enslave an entire continent, it sure does help to have the word "black" mean "evil". If you are a black American, the word black does mean a lot to you for sure. What's the impact of seeing that word mean "bad" or "evil" or "not allowed" on a regular basis at the workplace? Does that experience have anything to do with race? Whether or not it was about race in the past, it is about race now. "denylist" is both more accurate and fixes a problem that we have right now.
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    The origins do not have anything to do with race: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#:~:text=Origins%20of%20the%20term,the%20execution%20of%20his%20father https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#:~:text=Origins%2.... I don't live in America, I don't care about the context there, I don't care to have newspeak forced on me without real evidence it causes harm to people of colour, when all I actually see is white people being offended on behalf of others.
    - tchaffee 6y ago
      > without real evidence it causes harm to people Here is evidence that microagressions cause psychological harm: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691619827499?journalCode=ppsa https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/174569161982749.... It's easy to find more where that came from. > when all I actually see is white people being offended on behalf of others. Also easy to find black people who are offended by these terms. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/

zinclozenge 6y ago

Allow/deny listing makes a lot more sense to me than white/black listing

anjc 6y ago
Why does it make more sense? Blacklist is used also as a verb, and I don't think "denylist" could be used as such. You could say "add to the denylist" but I don't think this is sensible.
- evan_ 6y ago
  Watch me: “hey can you denylist the ip range I just sent you?”
- WaltPurvis 6y ago
  It only sounds unfamiliar to you because it's unfamiliar to you. You can use any noun as a verb. Google it.
  - fhars 6y ago
    Isn‘t that usually written as “you can verb any noun”? /gd&r
- gregoriol 6y ago
  Why wouldn't "to denylist" be as good as "to blacklist"? It's only because we are used to the second one that the first one seems strange, but after some time it will seem as normal to use it
  - anjc 6y ago
    It seems awkward to have a verb as part of the noun, but as I write this I'm thinking of many.
GordonS 6y ago
These terms at least make as much sense as the old ones. But where would "greylist" fit in here? It slotted in nicely between whitelist and blacklist, and I'm not sure what a good name would be in the context of "allow list" and "deny/block list"?

lallysingh 6y ago

Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? The new names actually describe what they do. The reason it may seem ridiculous is that racism is very, very deep in American culture. The country's culture goes back hundreds of years and is still slowly working on being less so. Here's an example: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342/recall-that-ice-cream-truck-song-we-have-unpleasant-news-for-you https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342...

dingle3 6y ago
what's the racist background?
- waheoo 6y ago
  Black people = bad, white people = good. Rosstex posted a good explain below.
  - drdeca 6y ago
    The explanation that Rosstex posted does not refer to “black” people, or to “white” people?
    - libria 6y ago
      By "racist background" they mean "racist association". Perhaps it didn't start that way but due to history it can easily be twisted to be seen as offensive. I can't tattoo a swastika on my arm, despite its origins.
      - drdeca 6y ago
        “Easily twisted to be seen as offensive” is not the same thing as “offensive”. [edit: also, that doesn’t really explain citing Rosstex?] Also, my understanding is that that there are places in the world where the primary associations for a swastika are the earlier ones, not the nazi ones. I don’t see a reason to tell the people living in those places to stop using that symbol amongst themselves (though asking that they not use it in places where it is likely to be genuinely misinterpreted may be reasonable)

rosstex 6y ago

Some etymology: blacklist (n.) also black-list, "list of persons who have incurred suspicion, earned punishment, or are for any reason deemed objectionable by the makers and users of the list," 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (a sense attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.1). Specifically of employers' list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activity) is from 1884.

Accacin 6y ago
To be 100% honest, when I first read the changes to whitelist/blacklist I thought, "Well, that's pretty stupid" but after reading your comment and a few others, it does actually seem quite racist. Like someone else mentioned, without the racist connotations I wouldn't know whether black or white list was the 'good' one. Language evolves constantly, always has and always will do. I'm not going to get hung up on things being renamed and I honestly do not see why people should be. I'm still not sure about the 'master' branch change being required, as it's obvious (to me) the context in which master refers to (like a master copy or a key or something). There's no 'slave' branch (master/slave terminology is a problem).
- fhars 6y ago
  As argued elsewhere in this thread, there is plausible evidence that the name of the „master“ branch in git is directly derived from the bitkeeper concept of „master“ and „slave“ repositories: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/msg00066.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...
- j_4 6y ago
  >without the racist connotations I wouldn't know whether black or white list was the 'good' one. Please. Humans are diurnal animals, and we depend on sight as our main sense. The idea of light good, dark bad is present in infants. It's likely much older than consciousness. I'm not denying that there's an unfortunate racist element correlated with it all, with the trend over the past few centuries being pale-skinned people exploiting dark-skinned people, but it's certainly not the root cause of these associations.