4 ms·

> Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? By basic knowledge of the English language. Terms like "black market", "black death",

> Without the racist background, how does one know which list does which? By basic knowledge of the English language. Terms like "black market", "black death", "black tuesday", etc. etc. By the expressions like "looking at things in black and white". It is a part of language, it has nothing to do with race. These colors are used in the same way in other languages of other countries that don't even have racial slavery history. What is your example supposed to prove? That there were in fact some racist songs? How does that make the whole American culture "racist"? If there is a song saying something bad about males in general, does that make the whole culture of that whole country anti-male for some reason?

Accacin 6y ago
I think where I see a difference is that there's no 'white market', 'white death' and 'white Tuesday'. Whereas with black/white list there's a clear separation that even may not be meant as racist, I can definitely see it coming across that way. Black and white thinking is often talking in terms of extremes, which neither being inherently 'better' than the other. It's not for me to say whether the whole of American culture is racist, but I do think the language we use has a lot of power to help people feel less marginalised and having to use some different words is a small price to pay for me.
- cs02rm0 6y ago
  White magic?
tchaffee 6y ago
It sure was convenient that both "black" in English and "niger" in Latin meant "evil" during times of dehumanizing and enslaving others based on the color of their skin. Basic knowledge of the English language also shows us that the word black does have to do with race. It means something for sure to black people. The word black is both a personal identity around race, and it is often used to mean "evil" or "bad" in the modern workplace. While "white" is used to mean "good" in the workplace: whitelist. And white is also a race. I would hope that just about anyone can see why moving away from using black to mean "evil" in the workplace and moving to using more accurate words like denylist is not just easy, it would also make the workplace feel intentionally more welcoming to our black colleagues.
- qbaqbaqba 6y ago
  It's really funny how you fail to realize that "slave" comes from "Slav".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tchaffee 6y ago
    I'll add that to my list of reasons for removing master/slave from technical terminology. Thank you.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sinity 6y ago
      Are you a Slav? Because I am, and I did not ask for this. Find me one Slav who requested this. And yet, you thinking about the word association is all it took to imagine you you're helping someone with that. Because, hypothetically, there might be someone who is offended. For some reason. Who thought about renaming master? As far as I know, a white person. Somehow, all these fuckups are started by white people in the US on behalf of minorities. I can imagine how it went: "master branch... hmm, where does this naming convention come from anyway? Maybe master/slave? Hm, slavery is bad. That means the term master here might possibly offend someone. Welp, let's change it then! Oh, and it'd also excuse my job role of Dev Relations. I'm definitively useful!" Or an academic in very-soft sciences instead of Dev Relations. I just saw some Dev Relations people on Twitter being very srs about this crap. Meanwhile, all the software is broken. Feeling like it's held together by duct tape. Consuming more and more resources as time goes on, while functionality decreases. All of this is excused by talking about programmer time. "Programmer time is more valuable". Yeah, so valuable we'll be wasting time on this crap. And some things will break, maybe. Some will be fixed, some not. Some manual/help resources will be left in their original, horribly racist form. Some will be rewritten. Oh, and there's the little cost of making politics just a tiny bit more toxic. Anyway: when I learned the term for my ethnicity is basically the same word as slave, I thought "Hmm, that's interesting/cool fact" I'm pretty sure all the people react this way if at all. I don't believe Blacks in the US are as unreasonable as you all paint them. I think you're all pretty damn racist for implying otherwise.
lallysingh 6y ago
The point was that a song that racist was played quite openly for decades, to children. I still hear it on ice cream trucks.

Accacin 6y ago

I think where I see a difference is that there's no 'white market', 'white death' and 'white Tuesday'. Whereas with black/white list there's a clear separation that even may not be meant as racist, I can definitely see it coming across that way. Black and white thinking is often talking in terms of extremes, which neither being inherently 'better' than the other. It's not for me to say whether the whole of American culture is racist, but I do think the language we use has a lot of power to help people feel less marginalised and having to use some different words is a small price to pay for me.

cs02rm0 6y ago
White magic?

tchaffee 6y ago

It sure was convenient that both "black" in English and "niger" in Latin meant "evil" during times of dehumanizing and enslaving others based on the color of their skin. Basic knowledge of the English language also shows us that the word black does have to do with race. It means something for sure to black people. The word black is both a personal identity around race, and it is often used to mean "evil" or "bad" in the modern workplace. While "white" is used to mean "good" in the workplace: whitelist. And white is also a race. I would hope that just about anyone can see why moving away from using black to mean "evil" in the workplace and moving to using more accurate words like denylist is not just easy, it would also make the workplace feel intentionally more welcoming to our black colleagues.

qbaqbaqba 6y ago
It's really funny how you fail to realize that "slave" comes from "Slav".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tchaffee 6y ago
  I'll add that to my list of reasons for removing master/slave from technical terminology. Thank you.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sinity 6y ago
    Are you a Slav? Because I am, and I did not ask for this. Find me one Slav who requested this. And yet, you thinking about the word association is all it took to imagine you you're helping someone with that. Because, hypothetically, there might be someone who is offended. For some reason. Who thought about renaming master? As far as I know, a white person. Somehow, all these fuckups are started by white people in the US on behalf of minorities. I can imagine how it went: "master branch... hmm, where does this naming convention come from anyway? Maybe master/slave? Hm, slavery is bad. That means the term master here might possibly offend someone. Welp, let's change it then! Oh, and it'd also excuse my job role of Dev Relations. I'm definitively useful!" Or an academic in very-soft sciences instead of Dev Relations. I just saw some Dev Relations people on Twitter being very srs about this crap. Meanwhile, all the software is broken. Feeling like it's held together by duct tape. Consuming more and more resources as time goes on, while functionality decreases. All of this is excused by talking about programmer time. "Programmer time is more valuable". Yeah, so valuable we'll be wasting time on this crap. And some things will break, maybe. Some will be fixed, some not. Some manual/help resources will be left in their original, horribly racist form. Some will be rewritten. Oh, and there's the little cost of making politics just a tiny bit more toxic. Anyway: when I learned the term for my ethnicity is basically the same word as slave, I thought "Hmm, that's interesting/cool fact" I'm pretty sure all the people react this way if at all. I don't believe Blacks in the US are as unreasonable as you all paint them. I think you're all pretty damn racist for implying otherwise.

lallysingh 6y ago

The point was that a song that racist was played quite openly for decades, to children. I still hear it on ice cream trucks.