5 ms·

Some etymology: blacklist (n.) also black-list, "list of persons who have incurred suspicion, earned punishment, or are for any reason deemed objectionable by

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.
  - metrokoi 6y ago
    Incredible that this is the only comment I see that correctly states the reason why black is associated with negativity. Darkness is danger and death because the primates we evolved from faced much greater danger in the dark from predators. We evolved to fear things that are black because we receive less information about things that are dark, and similarly are less afraid of things that are white because we have more information about things that are light. Things that we have less information about have a greater potential risk of danger, just as everyone fears a dark alley more than a lit one. Remember, black is not a color; it is a shade or absence of color just as white is a maximal amount of color. As you say, these associations developed perhaps tens of millions of years ago far before European people even evolved to be white. Any other associations developed in the relatively infinitesimal time of hundreds of years are peripheral.
  - AndrewOMartin 6y ago
    > Humans are diurnal animals. Humans, maybe. But programmers?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
haspoken 6y ago
Are these racially derived, or just the idea of opposing forces or other connotations of white and black? Games such as Go, Chaturanga, Chess, Reversi commonly use black vs white pieces and are depicted as such in early illustrations. I think that there are other reasons for black vs white than race. I did find the article "The light and dark of language" that touches on this. ( https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/12/the-light-and-dark-of-language.html https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/12/the-light-and-dar... )
- mnm1 6y ago
  Obviously the black side will have to start first in chess now. Reparations. We can also swap the black and white keys on all pianos. So many things to do to fight racism. /s
  - GuB-42 6y ago
    Interestingly, black starts first in go. Also black and white keys used to be reversed in early keyboards, they changed it to make it easier to see the separation between keys.
  - alboy 6y ago
    It's all fun and games until you realize that the convention of White making the first move is very recent (mid-to-late 19th century) and was invented by white people.

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.
- metrokoi 6y ago
  Incredible that this is the only comment I see that correctly states the reason why black is associated with negativity. Darkness is danger and death because the primates we evolved from faced much greater danger in the dark from predators. We evolved to fear things that are black because we receive less information about things that are dark, and similarly are less afraid of things that are white because we have more information about things that are light. Things that we have less information about have a greater potential risk of danger, just as everyone fears a dark alley more than a lit one. Remember, black is not a color; it is a shade or absence of color just as white is a maximal amount of color. As you say, these associations developed perhaps tens of millions of years ago far before European people even evolved to be white. Any other associations developed in the relatively infinitesimal time of hundreds of years are peripheral.
- AndrewOMartin 6y ago
  > Humans are diurnal animals. Humans, maybe. But programmers?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

haspoken 6y ago

Are these racially derived, or just the idea of opposing forces or other connotations of white and black? Games such as Go, Chaturanga, Chess, Reversi commonly use black vs white pieces and are depicted as such in early illustrations. I think that there are other reasons for black vs white than race. I did find the article "The light and dark of language" that touches on this. ( https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/12/the-light-and-dark-of-language.html https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/12/the-light-and-dar... )

mnm1 6y ago
Obviously the black side will have to start first in chess now. Reparations. We can also swap the black and white keys on all pianos. So many things to do to fight racism. /s
- GuB-42 6y ago
  Interestingly, black starts first in go. Also black and white keys used to be reversed in early keyboards, they changed it to make it easier to see the separation between keys.
- alboy 6y ago
  It's all fun and games until you realize that the convention of White making the first move is very recent (mid-to-late 19th century) and was invented by white people.