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Thank you for this well written non-inflammatory response, I really appreciate it. I can see your point, but I guess we just have a different idea 'how high' se

Thank you for this well written non-inflammatory response, I really appreciate it. I can see your point, but I guess we just have a different idea 'how high' sensitivity should be. Obviously you don't name something in programming 'pimp' / 'bitch', or even more extreme I suppose: 'white_guard' / 'n_____', that's obviously childish, unwarranted, and just for the sake of provocation. Like I've said though I think of 'master/slave' as perfectly fine descriptions regarding their function and I have always thought of them as racially neutral terms, and if you want to change long-standing naming convention there should be a case for it. And I just think it isn't there. By the way: For the very first time in my life, a few days ago, have I ever thought of 'whitelist'/'blacklist' in terms of skin color. white vs black, bright vs dark, , "shining bright light" vs "tempted by darkness", etc, it was almost a Eureka moment: "How can people think of skin color there?" That makes me think that people are spurted into activism, blindly 'looking for problems', and once you start looking it's easy to see it everywhere. We are pattern seeking animals - if I believe in conspiracy theories, I will over evaluate whatever confirms my beliefs - and I honestly think the same happens in cases of people who take social justice too far (thinking of 'master/slave' as inappropriate naming conventions in programming after decades of use) ; (and I hope it's unnecessary to add: I am not denying the reality of racism ; just trying to doubt the usefulness and legitimacy of taking the sensitivity into far off areas and to a degree that is unwarranted) I guess I am just emotionally detached from this as can be, as someone who doesn't follow daily news, and is not an American. It's weird for me to accept: 'why can't I use master/slave anymore?' 'because a black man was murdered by police in a country across the Atlantic, and now they are looking to prune any mention of slavery from everywhere they can find it' 'what?' You can't clean up the language to a point of where 'no one' is offended. Master/Slave seems like such a low level of 'potential for controversy' to me, that I am really worried about 'if that one isn't acceptable after decades of use anymore, what next'

mplanchard 6y ago
So what’s interesting to me here is that you note that some names are inappropriate to use, because of the cultural context surrounding them: > Obviously you don't name something in programming 'pimp' / 'bitch', or even more extreme I suppose: 'white_guard' / 'n_____', that's obviously childish, unwarranted, and just for the sake of provocation. These are all words with literal meanings that could theoretically apply to some aspect of some system. But you admit that these words are inappropriate to use, presumably because of the additional connotation and cultural context that comes along with them. Is it so difficult to imagine that other words, words that you do not personally have the cultural context to find offensive, could feel the same way to other people who have lived through different experiences? I am glad that you realized that it’s theoretically possible that the bias in our language of associating blackness with evil or badness might be something that affects people. I think it’s easy to say something like, “oh it’s never been about skin color, don’t be so touchy” when you’ve never had that language constantly around you while society is also actively telling you that you are worth less because you are black. But if you’re a black child being bullied in school for your skin color, that language might take on shades of meaning that seem much more sinister.
- artistsvoid 6y ago
  It's not at all difficult to assume that something is offensive to someone, but not to me. It's extremely easy that for any different person, different phrases are considered offensive. But the solution of 'let's create a world where nothing is offensive anymore' seems ludicrous. I don't think there is a racial bias in associating blackness w/ evil or 'whiteness' with good, I rather think it has to do with night/darkness vs day/light. Do you think 'red' as a widely used 'warning light' somehow relates to 'native Americans'? Like I've said, I never thought of it in terms of race ; once you start actively believing that biases are EVERYWHERE, you will see them everywhere, automatically. And I think for one, that this is an extremely obsessive way to live, and also a battle one can never ever win, and the question 'where does your quest for justice stop', is warranted. I always thought there was a 'common sense' approach, pruning any mention of 'slave' as terminology in programming / system administration after decades of use for me seems to be extremely far away from it. Whatever happens w/ naming conventions here, I will eventually adapt. But I seriously fear that this quest for justice, especially in 'language' goes far beyond common sense and is about actively looking for problems, that are none until identified.
  - mplanchard 6y ago
    > I don't think there is a racial bias in associating blackness w/ evil or 'whiteness' with good, I rather think it has to do with night/darkness vs day/light. Do you think 'red' as a widely used 'warning light' somehow relates to 'native Americans'? I think maybe I didn’t make my point clear here. I don’t think that in these particular examples there exists racial bias in the language. The language (most languages) is biased (but not racially) towards associating darkness with evil and light with good. If you personally are experiencing racial bias due to having darker skin, I think language like this can feel very different than it would otherwise, even if the language itself is not explicitly racially biased. I’m not saying we should abandon the whole light/dark evil/good dichotomy, but just pointing out that things built in to the culture that aren’t technically related to race in any way may feel very different if you’re on the “good” side than if you’re on the “bad” side. > It's not at all difficult to assume that something is offensive to someone, but not to me. It's extremely easy that for any different person, different phrases are considered offensive. But the solution of 'let's create a world where nothing is offensive anymore' seems ludicrous. I agree that it seems impossible to avoid offending every individual. But, when it’s so easy to avoid using language that has negative connotations for a significant portion of the population, why shouldn’t we? Why cling so tightly to not being kind, out of some kind of slippery-slope assumption that if we give ground and have empathy this once, the word will end? It’s really odd to me how offended people get by the suggestion that there might be something offensive about the language they use. I have no ties to the words I use. If I want to be friends with someone or to include them in what I’m doing, and they have a problem with some word I use because of some context that I haven’t experienced, it does me no harm to use a different word. > I always thought there was a 'common sense' approach, pruning any mention of 'slave' as terminology in programming / system administration after decades of use for me seems to be extremely far away from it. Here I think you’re taking offense at a situation that doesn’t exist. What I’ve seen is people trying to avoid perpetuating the problem by not adding new instances of the world slave to new code/systems, or making updates to use different language when it’s convenient and someone’s already touching the code. These actions hardly seem to me to be pruning any mention of the term from decades’ worth of software. Language, it’s important to remember, is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is always changing along with society and culture. It’s therefore natural that what is considered acceptable or not is going to change over time, and we’ve always had to deal with this as a society. Look at people wanting to ban books for using words that have become offensive, as an example. The interesting thing about software, as opposed to books or words engraved in stone on monuments, is that it’s often very easy to change the words that are used, because software isn’t a historical artifact but a living thing. And as a living thing, people are going to want it to reflect their own current societal norms. So changes like this seem an inevitable part of a long-lived industry that creates such mutable products. Regardless, it hardly seems worth getting so worked up over someone else choosing to make this decision in the codebase that they maintain. It is their right as maintainers to do so, and if you disagree so strongly with them making this small token of empathy, you can of course choose to use another filesystem.
guybedo 6y ago
good to see i'm not the only one, i had the exact same epiphany about the whitelist/blacklist thing a few weeks ago.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Honestly, I think that a lot of the confusion is going to come down to the fact that you're not an American who is getting dragged into socio political issues that are largely centered on America and American society. That is going to be extremely confusing for you, but understand that most of this discussion is by Americans to other Americans. > Like I've said though I think of 'master/slave' as perfectly fine descriptions regarding their function I disagree with this. Master/Slave is in fact a pretty terrible description of most of these systems, and appears to have been shoe horned in. In most master/slave systems the master does all of the work, and the slave nodes exist either for duplicate read capacity, or as a hot standby in case the master fails. This is not the way that historical masters and slaves interacted, to say the least. I believe that "primary/secondary" or "primary/standby" is actually a much better description of the actual function of these systems. > white vs black, bright vs dark, , "shining bright light" vs "tempted by darkness", etc, it was almost a Eureka moment: "How can people think of skin color there?" Some of those are tricky, because lightness and darkness is also a good faith description of how human vision works. But who would see black and white as a description of skin color? Pretty much every American. There is some nuance to terms like whitelist and blacklist (that I have not yet made up my mind on, btw), but when it comes to naked terms like "black" and "white", that is exactly how Americans refer to each other's skin color. Maybe it's different in your culture. Again, a lot of the people discussing these things are Americans talking to other Americans. > 'because a black man was murdered by police in a country across the Atlantic, and now they are looking to prune any mention of slavery from everywhere they can find it' That is a pretty poor explanation of the phenomena at hand. A better description would be "a murder of a black man triggered massive social upheaval and a society wide moment of soul searching about the nation's history both of slavery and poor post-slavery treatment of black Americans. This change has included everything from significant reversals in opinions on policing, the Black Lives Matter movement, the naming of military bases, public display of confederate monuments and flags, all the way down to an investigation of the use of language in software engineering." The discussion around the use of terms in software isn't because "a black man was murdered", it is because America is experiencing massive social shifts around how we treat race in America. A discussion of how we name pieces of software is probably the absolutely smallest portion of a massive change.
- 6y ago

mplanchard 6y ago

So what’s interesting to me here is that you note that some names are inappropriate to use, because of the cultural context surrounding them: > Obviously you don't name something in programming 'pimp' / 'bitch', or even more extreme I suppose: 'white_guard' / 'n_____', that's obviously childish, unwarranted, and just for the sake of provocation. These are all words with literal meanings that could theoretically apply to some aspect of some system. But you admit that these words are inappropriate to use, presumably because of the additional connotation and cultural context that comes along with them. Is it so difficult to imagine that other words, words that you do not personally have the cultural context to find offensive, could feel the same way to other people who have lived through different experiences? I am glad that you realized that it’s theoretically possible that the bias in our language of associating blackness with evil or badness might be something that affects people. I think it’s easy to say something like, “oh it’s never been about skin color, don’t be so touchy” when you’ve never had that language constantly around you while society is also actively telling you that you are worth less because you are black. But if you’re a black child being bullied in school for your skin color, that language might take on shades of meaning that seem much more sinister.

artistsvoid 6y ago
It's not at all difficult to assume that something is offensive to someone, but not to me. It's extremely easy that for any different person, different phrases are considered offensive. But the solution of 'let's create a world where nothing is offensive anymore' seems ludicrous. I don't think there is a racial bias in associating blackness w/ evil or 'whiteness' with good, I rather think it has to do with night/darkness vs day/light. Do you think 'red' as a widely used 'warning light' somehow relates to 'native Americans'? Like I've said, I never thought of it in terms of race ; once you start actively believing that biases are EVERYWHERE, you will see them everywhere, automatically. And I think for one, that this is an extremely obsessive way to live, and also a battle one can never ever win, and the question 'where does your quest for justice stop', is warranted. I always thought there was a 'common sense' approach, pruning any mention of 'slave' as terminology in programming / system administration after decades of use for me seems to be extremely far away from it. Whatever happens w/ naming conventions here, I will eventually adapt. But I seriously fear that this quest for justice, especially in 'language' goes far beyond common sense and is about actively looking for problems, that are none until identified.
- mplanchard 6y ago
  > I don't think there is a racial bias in associating blackness w/ evil or 'whiteness' with good, I rather think it has to do with night/darkness vs day/light. Do you think 'red' as a widely used 'warning light' somehow relates to 'native Americans'? I think maybe I didn’t make my point clear here. I don’t think that in these particular examples there exists racial bias in the language. The language (most languages) is biased (but not racially) towards associating darkness with evil and light with good. If you personally are experiencing racial bias due to having darker skin, I think language like this can feel very different than it would otherwise, even if the language itself is not explicitly racially biased. I’m not saying we should abandon the whole light/dark evil/good dichotomy, but just pointing out that things built in to the culture that aren’t technically related to race in any way may feel very different if you’re on the “good” side than if you’re on the “bad” side. > It's not at all difficult to assume that something is offensive to someone, but not to me. It's extremely easy that for any different person, different phrases are considered offensive. But the solution of 'let's create a world where nothing is offensive anymore' seems ludicrous. I agree that it seems impossible to avoid offending every individual. But, when it’s so easy to avoid using language that has negative connotations for a significant portion of the population, why shouldn’t we? Why cling so tightly to not being kind, out of some kind of slippery-slope assumption that if we give ground and have empathy this once, the word will end? It’s really odd to me how offended people get by the suggestion that there might be something offensive about the language they use. I have no ties to the words I use. If I want to be friends with someone or to include them in what I’m doing, and they have a problem with some word I use because of some context that I haven’t experienced, it does me no harm to use a different word. > I always thought there was a 'common sense' approach, pruning any mention of 'slave' as terminology in programming / system administration after decades of use for me seems to be extremely far away from it. Here I think you’re taking offense at a situation that doesn’t exist. What I’ve seen is people trying to avoid perpetuating the problem by not adding new instances of the world slave to new code/systems, or making updates to use different language when it’s convenient and someone’s already touching the code. These actions hardly seem to me to be pruning any mention of the term from decades’ worth of software. Language, it’s important to remember, is descriptive, not prescriptive. It is always changing along with society and culture. It’s therefore natural that what is considered acceptable or not is going to change over time, and we’ve always had to deal with this as a society. Look at people wanting to ban books for using words that have become offensive, as an example. The interesting thing about software, as opposed to books or words engraved in stone on monuments, is that it’s often very easy to change the words that are used, because software isn’t a historical artifact but a living thing. And as a living thing, people are going to want it to reflect their own current societal norms. So changes like this seem an inevitable part of a long-lived industry that creates such mutable products. Regardless, it hardly seems worth getting so worked up over someone else choosing to make this decision in the codebase that they maintain. It is their right as maintainers to do so, and if you disagree so strongly with them making this small token of empathy, you can of course choose to use another filesystem.

guybedo 6y ago

good to see i'm not the only one, i had the exact same epiphany about the whitelist/blacklist thing a few weeks ago.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Honestly, I think that a lot of the confusion is going to come down to the fact that you're not an American who is getting dragged into socio political issues that are largely centered on America and American society. That is going to be extremely confusing for you, but understand that most of this discussion is by Americans to other Americans. > Like I've said though I think of 'master/slave' as perfectly fine descriptions regarding their function I disagree with this. Master/Slave is in fact a pretty terrible description of most of these systems, and appears to have been shoe horned in. In most master/slave systems the master does all of the work, and the slave nodes exist either for duplicate read capacity, or as a hot standby in case the master fails. This is not the way that historical masters and slaves interacted, to say the least. I believe that "primary/secondary" or "primary/standby" is actually a much better description of the actual function of these systems. > white vs black, bright vs dark, , "shining bright light" vs "tempted by darkness", etc, it was almost a Eureka moment: "How can people think of skin color there?" Some of those are tricky, because lightness and darkness is also a good faith description of how human vision works. But who would see black and white as a description of skin color? Pretty much every American. There is some nuance to terms like whitelist and blacklist (that I have not yet made up my mind on, btw), but when it comes to naked terms like "black" and "white", that is exactly how Americans refer to each other's skin color. Maybe it's different in your culture. Again, a lot of the people discussing these things are Americans talking to other Americans. > 'because a black man was murdered by police in a country across the Atlantic, and now they are looking to prune any mention of slavery from everywhere they can find it' That is a pretty poor explanation of the phenomena at hand. A better description would be "a murder of a black man triggered massive social upheaval and a society wide moment of soul searching about the nation's history both of slavery and poor post-slavery treatment of black Americans. This change has included everything from significant reversals in opinions on policing, the Black Lives Matter movement, the naming of military bases, public display of confederate monuments and flags, all the way down to an investigation of the use of language in software engineering." The discussion around the use of terms in software isn't because "a black man was murdered", it is because America is experiencing massive social shifts around how we treat race in America. A discussion of how we name pieces of software is probably the absolutely smallest portion of a massive change.

6y ago