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Twitter engineers replacing racially loaded tech terms like 'master,' 'slave'
- baggy_trough 6y agoTo say that these terms are racist, one must start with a racist point of view.
- botwriter 6y agoExactly!
- Certhas 6y agoNo, one just needs to live in a racist society with a racist history. I am not a fan of ignoring context but I get why American companies, with their specific history would want to do that.
- hw 6y ago+100. Race is a product of racism, not the other way around. One is not born of a particular race and the practice of racism is what makes being of certain colors the same as being associated with a certain race. Would recommend reading "Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life" by Karen E Fields.
- brink 6y agoI never in my twenty years of computing have thought of those words in terms of race until today. Race is being dragged into everything now and I hate it.
- Separo 6y agoMaybe if you are white and straight you never had to.
- bobthepanda 6y agocongratulations on having the privilege of not being reminded of your race every waking moment if you live in the US.
- zorpner 6y agoRace has always been everywhere. You've just been able to ignore it.
- monkpit 6y agoIf you hate it so much, maybe you’re a part of the problem.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- shahruz 6y agoI don't think of those words in terms of race either, but it's such an easy thing to change. It might be worth considering that a lot of the people who are speaking up have to feel that way about race being a part of everything all the time and they hate it too. Everyone's trying to get to a level playing field where race isn't an issue. Maybe equality can seem like it's oppression if you're used to not having to worry about that stuff.
- gokhan 6y agoAre you white? What if a black person finds those terms offensive?
- aplummer 6y agoSome people are constantly marginalised in their everyday, who are constantly reminded negatively of their race, and don’t have the luxury of forgetting about race for even a day. If changing branch names makes them even just a little bit more comfortable I don’t care if they rename master jiggerypokery.
- nickelbob 6y agoThis is your privilege. Here's a really great article that helped me notice my own privilege - https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf
- emerged 6y agoIt's the most absurd waste of human energy. Nothing is being solved, it's energy which goes directly into amplifying whatever actual racial tensions there already were. Nobody who is actually racist goes "oh. I guess I shouldn't be racist anymore because they changed the name of the default Git branch" -- I refuse to pretend this is anything other than complete totalitarian Marxist nonsense.
- rvz 6y agoIt's likely that you have something that has a particular word that some how 'offends' someone. Given the word 'Master' would asking 'MasterCard' to change its name make it less racist? Can't say Masters degree anymore because someone has dragged race into it and has been 'offended' by it. Perhaps you know some academic who's in a dilemma and can't cite a quote from a paper because the terminology contains the scary 'Master' word in it due to fear of being called a 'racist' if they use it. See where this goes? Where do you draw the line and how far will this be taken? At some point, someone is going to draw the line somewhere and disagree with renaming for the sake of virtue signalling.
- baggy_trough 6y agoSorry astronomers, black holes and white dwarfs are cancelled.
- shahruz 6y agoSo it's not worth doing anything because there's a line somewhere ahead? At some point whatever startup you're working on will definitely reach an end in some form, so you should definitely stop working now.
- HappyDreamer 6y agoI'm wondering if "Master" isn't the problem — it's "Slave" that's not so good. And, when changing "Slave" to e.g. "Follower", it makes sense to rename "Master" to "Leader" too. I'm surprised some people want to rename the Git "master" branches to "main", although the word "slave" is absent in this context. That's similar to your MasterCard example? (Rename to "MainCard".) But I'm not a native speaker or color minority person where I am currently, so what do I know. At the same time, "main branch" is shorter than "master branch" and simpler to understand for beginners? I think it's a better name.
- nappy 6y agoA lot of flagged responses to this that are completely reasonable and respectful. I would encourage the moderators to take a look here.
- historyremade 6y agoWhat about Puppet?
- bluedevil2k 6y agoThere were masters and slaves thousands of years before it existed here in America. To claim the terms are only referencing slavery in America is rather short sighted.
- abootstrapper 6y agoWho claimed that? The straw man you built?
- bmm6o 6y agoI'm not sure i saw that claim in TFA. Did i miss it?
- therealdrag0 6y agoIt’s only “racial” if master/slave is racial. There has been racial slavery in America. But the master/slave are themselves are not inherently racial words. To be hyperbolic, it’d be like avoiding the use of the word “cotton”.
- hw 6y agoRight. How are these terms 'racially loaded'? The concept of masters and slaves have been a part of humanity for a long time in many different cultures and countries. Great that they're working on this, but how about them engineers work on improving their API stability.
- grawprog 6y agoTl'dr the list of words to be replaced: >Whitelist becomes allowlist. >Blacklist becomes denylist. >Master/slave becomes leader/follower, primary/replica or primary/standby. >Grandfathered becomes legacy status. >Gendered pronouns (for example "guys") become folks, people, you all, y'all. >Gendered pronouns (for example "he" or "his") become they or their. >Man hours becomes person hours or engineer hours. >Sanity check becomes quick check, confidence check or coherence check. >Dummy value becomes placeholder value or sample value.
- dlbucci 6y agoWonder if "yinz" would be acceptable, too...
- Certhas 6y agoSeems like mostly also strictly better names. Though being German replacing master with leader is ironic in our cultural context (the literal translation of leader is Führer...).
- ethbro 6y ago>Gendered pronouns (for example "he" or "his") become they or their. For the love of grammar, just invent a neutral pronoun. "He" or "she" is singular. "They" is plural. These things are not like each other.
- zorpner 6y ago"The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375" https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...
- ethbro 6y agoIf thou takest thy authority from a 1375 education, methinks the chasm betwixt us doth yawn overbroadly for debate.
- monkpit 6y ago
- ibejoeb 6y ago>Sanity check becomes quick check, confidence check or coherence check why?
- natdempk 6y agoSimilar to how we no longer use "retarded" to be sensitive to the disabled, people have been rethinking words like "crazy", "insane", or "sanity" to be sensitive towards those with mental illness. Update: Not sure why I got downvoted for stating the rationale for why people are making this change. Objectively I haven't even stated my opinion on the change, just the rationale I've seen for it. If you want a source here's one from NPR around this language: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-arguing-to-stop-using-the-words-crazy-and-insane https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-argu...
- bobthepanda 6y agoalso the US has a pretty ugly history of throwing up nonconforming people in mental institutions when it's convenient (see: suffragettes, gay people, etc.)
- mlyle 6y agoAn interesting tangent is-- "retarded, moron, imbecile" all were relatively neutral medical terms once upon a time. Labels applied to disadvantaged groups linguistically develop a pejorative connotation over time.
- bobthepanda 6y agoIt doesn't really help that a lot of what we used to consider mental illness was mostly just behavior not conforming with the mainstream. US suffragettes hunger-striking were institutionalized and force-fed under the guise of mental illness, and being gay itself used to be classified as a mental illness.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 6y ago
- chris_wot 6y agoAnd yet they allow Trump to tweet his hatred.
- cobbzilla 6y agoCould "Spartan" and "Helot" work? Or would Greeks be offended?
- kache_ 6y agoThis endeavor is doubleplus good!
- jakelazaroff 6y agoTo everyone whose first reaction to this is negative, can I ask why? Do you really have an emotional investment in these specific terms? We have the opportunity to make tech marginally more hospitable to Black developers at basically zero cost to everyone else. Let’s not mess it up!
- f3295cde 6y agoIt is not about the specific words, it is language and the use of words. Let's say ESPN came out tomorrow and said they will replace the word 'football' as it is offensive to people with limb difference - would you nod and toe the line without raising an eyebrow?
- monkpit 6y agoNo, it’s more like trying to get the Redskins to change their name - which many people support.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoSure. Again, why is that a problem? I have literally zero emotional investment in being able to call football “football”. Why would I not make a tiny change that has no pragmatic impact on my life in order to be more considerate?
- PeterisP 6y agoI presume the reaction is not about investment in any specific term but against the general principle of changing names because someone feels that they're somehow related to something offensive. And of course there's the general natural resistance to someone else demanding that you change your behavior. In essence, it's a defence of the slippery slope. And not the slippery slope fallacy, as the list included in this article already demonstrates that the slippery slope is very real, extending the approach from terms where the connection makes sense (e.g. the master/slave relationship) to terms where the connection is much weaker (e.g. dummy value). I'll gladly support the changing of a particular term e.g. master/slave if we draw the line at discussing that term alone on it's merits and justify it's change with specific arguments that for this particular case the benefits outweigh the cost - and the cost is not "basically zero", it requires work on many, many people to change many, many things, it's a nontrivial cognitive cost of changing the habitual terminology of literally millions of people. If it's only about this particular case and we don't concede that "word policing" is generally acceptable behavior. But if the position is explicitly about the general case, as it seems to be in the article; if we lump together the master/slave terminology with dummy value and expect to extend it further (e.g. the RuboCop debacle not so long ago), then I can't consider that acceptable. If it's piecemeal, then we can discuss specific cases, but if it's all-or-nothing, then I'm strongly on the side of free speech and against the policing of what words are permitted. If there's no clear, defensible line of changing master/slave terminology that ensures that neutral-seeming (to me) terms won't be attacked as well, then I must defend the general concept and assert that no terms should be changed. The big issue at stake here is whether it's appropriate to make demands to change terminology because someone feels offended, as opposed to making requests (where "no" is accepted) and awaiting consensus. So there's some "line in the sand" (which I don't want to see crossed) at the implied moral right to make demands at the choice of words others use for technical terms. Because it's absolutely unacceptable to have people verbally assaulted and 'cancelled' for things that weren't meant in offence, it's absolutely unacceptable to require everyone to self-censor everything that might be misinterpreted. I've seen how it went back some decades ago in USSR, trust me, we don't want that. If ensuring this means that we'll also have to permit racists to say racist things, oh well, too bad; some things are more important than others, and freedom of speech (practical freedom, including social consequences, not the first amendment about government restrictions) is far more important than freedom from being offended. I strongly support a social climate where misinterpretable things are tolerated and people are free to just live their lives without worrying about stepping on social landmines. So if person A uses a misinterpretable term (like most of this list) in a technical discussion and person B loudly protests its use and calls for social ostracism, I'd want person A to be safe and person B to be ostracized for making unreasonable demands. And to put it clearly, if someone demands the rest of the world to change from "dummy value" to "placeholder value", then that is an unreasonable demand. If you want to speak differently, you're free to do so, but requiring a whole field to change without a very strong reason is unreasonable chutzpah that should not even warrant attention - and it's sad that here it is, requesting attention.
- draugadrotten 6y agoThere is a lot of "white" and "black" out there to replace, especially on paper.
- Raed667 6y ago(Non-US opinion) I don't mind changing the usage of loaded terms, either racially or in other ways (like grooming). Changing the usage doesn't harm me in any way and if it arguably provides a more welcoming environment for people then why not.
- shahruz 6y agoThis is the crux of it. If something that takes nothing away from you makes things better for others why argue against it?
- f3295cde 6y agoIt is not at all a fact this this takes away anything from anyone. It is not clear to me at all there is anything even close to a significant fraction of public opinion that agrees that using these words in this way is a problem.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoWhere are you getting that number from? Is it just your gut?
- blackbrokkoli 6y agoBecause of opportunity cost, wasted space. Here we have 50+ HN readers and hundreds of OC readers wasting part of their limited patience/passion/tolerance/love for the topic of racial unjustice because someone is using their etymological ignorance (and inability to use Wikipedia) to project their own bias into completely unrelated matters.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoWhat makes you the arbiter of it?
- shahruz 6y agoIs etymology more important to you than the people who are telling you they find something offensive, unwelcoming, and a factor (regardless of size) in racial equality? Do you believe that there is limited space on the internet? Or that in the absence of this discussion every person here would instead be doing something highly productive?
- r721 6y agoAnother discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723433
- gator-io 6y agoWe now live in clown world.
- dijit 6y agoThis is going to be controversial; thus flagged, but I'd like to have an actual conversation about this. It's my understanding that slavery has very little to do with race, blacklist has nothing to do with black people and "man" is the default term of humanity that comes from a completely different etymology than the word we use to refer to a male person. I'm generally pretty stubborn but given the amount of traction this is getting, can someone _please_ explain to me the logic here? I'm perfectly willing to change my mind but right now I cannot fathom that these terms were harming people- unless those people were looking for reasons to be harmed.
- Veen 6y agoThis might shed some light on the thinking that motivates this sort of thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
- frandroid 6y agoThere were eras where slavery had little to do with race (see: the Roman Republic and Empire) but the history of slavery in the last half-millennium had everything to do with race; it is the edifice on which white supremacy was built. You're not "controversial" for skipping over the blindingly obvious, but we're not allowed to insult people on this forum, so feh!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago> but the history of slavery in the last half-millennium had everything to do with race; Slaves in Russian Empire were freed a few years earlier than slaves in the USA. There were roughly 5 times more slaves in Russia than in USA, and I can pretty confidently say that zero of them were black. Even if you add ~2 million black slaves from Brazil, the number of black slaves would be dwarfed by the white slave population from Russia. Based on this calculation, I don't think that your thesis about the history of slavery in the last 500 years holds well.
- f3295cde 6y agoPlease explain to me how "sanity check" or "dummy value" can reasonably be considered non-inclusive. There are multiple definitions of these words including: Sanity - reasonable and rational behaviour. Dummy - an object designed to resemble and serve as a substitute for the real or usual one. It strikes me as incredibly sensitive to say these are unacceptable for use. Sure, we can use different words but that is not the point - the point is how can words used as commonly defined and with no spite or foul intention be banned? The comedian Stewart Lee has an excellent routine on this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zdyz5 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zdyz5
- natdempk 6y agoCopy-pasted my comment here, but similar to how we no longer use "retarded" to be sensitive to the disabled, people have been rethinking words like "crazy", "insane", or "sanity" to be sensitive towards those with mental illness. For people with mental illness those words may be loaded with negative meaning and there are often more neutral or descriptive terms that can be used instead. Update: Not sure why I got downvoted for stating the rationale for why people are making this change. Objectively I haven't even stated my opinion on the change, just the rationale I've seen for it. If you want a source here's one from NPR around this language: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-arguing-to-stop-using-the-words-crazy-and-insane https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/739643765/why-people-are-argu...
- f3295cde 6y agoI fundamentally disagree that you can't use a word in one context because of its use in another. If I call someone a bastard I do not mean that they were born out of wedlock the context and use of the word are entirely different.
- natdempk 6y agoSure, I agree everything has nuance and context to it. I was really just stating the rationale I've seen given for avoiding those words rather than offering my opinion. That being said, given your example I'd ask you to consider this situation: If you call someone a bastard jokingly and they happened to be a child who was born out of wedlock and it was a sensitive subject for them, do you think it would potentially be hurtful? Is there another word you could choose to get the same point across that might have been less hurtful? If so, is there a significant downside to using that other word instead? If you found out that someone was literally a bastard and the word made them unhappy, would you continue to use it when talking with them?
- Romanulus 6y agoWe need to refer to currying functions in some other way, some Deloitte developers may take offence!
- Arcuru 6y agoThere's been a movement at my employer to replace some of these terms for years, though it seems to be getting more widespread attention lately. Some of the terms, especially 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', are also very confusing to many non-native english speakers. 'Allowlist' and 'denylist' are just a lot clearer in those cases.
- bigpumpkin 6y agoOrange is the New Purple
- klagan 6y agoridiculous. context is king
- jyriand 6y agoI would think racism and slavery are two different things. Usually slaves and masters are of the same race. But I understand why this might be a good move, the word “slave” itself is pretty loaded with negative connotations.
- frandroid 6y ago> Usually slaves and masters are of the same race. Not for the last 500 years.
- dijit 6y agoMy friend, I'm sure you mean well, but there are more slaves today than any other time in history, and I can assure you; they are not of one race. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-trafficking-persons-one-in-200 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-...
- jyriand 6y ago"Usually" is not the best word here, I agree. What I meant is that it's "often the case". There are multitude of examples from Middle Ages in Europe(and before that), and Vikings etc. Not only people from Africa were were victims of slave trade.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoIn the last 500 years, too, without any doubt. There were 21 million white slaves in Russia, emancipated only in 1861. USA and Brazil had ~4,5+2 million black slaves, combined.
- senthil_rajasek 6y agoThank you twitter engineers. To the people trying to deflect, consider this as an opportunity to learn and progress. So much of the tech language is filled with insensitivity.
- caned 6y agoIt seems that there is a movement that values "sensitivity" more than understanding. How does this so-called progress lead to greater understanding?
- senthil_rajasek 6y agoAhhh it allows minorities feel welcome, more involved and free to be themselves. It certainly was a relief for me ( I am a dark Indian) when SQLServer went from master/slave to publisher/subscriber. I don't have to second guess intonations when people say master/slave as a sly joke or a sincere discussion in tech meetings.
- pseudalopex 6y agoMost of the replacement terms are more accurate or more precise.
- patmcc 6y agoI'm very much fine with this, but the impact it will have pales in comparison to the good Twitter could do by, oh, let's say banning Trump, white supremacists, racists, etc. from their platform.
- monkpit 6y agoThere is a lot of downvoting going on in here on very valid comments. I know it goes against the guidelines to complain about downvotes, but it’s surprisingly toxic in this comment section. I expected better on HN, it’s pretty disappointing.
- dang 6y agoPeople on each side are downvoting the other side. I changed that in a few cases, but I'm also not seeing a lot of fine comments here that are downvoted. It's mostly flamewar stuff that breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you have links to other examples, I'd appreciate them. You can always send them to hn@ycombinator.com.
- AzzieElbab 6y agoReally sad seeing a flagship company making headlines with something this superficial.
- Anthony-G 6y agoWith its 140 character limit and its desire for "engagement", I always felt that Twitter was optimising for superficiality.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agogithub (owned by Microsoft) also was on the FP just recently for renaming master. this feels like empty (if not hypocritical) when (as Cory Doctrow writes) the same companies: "spend 20-45% of their budgets on policing on but cops run foundations that solicit millions from large corporations, which then take tax breaks for their donations. The money goes into a slushfund used to procure off-the-books military and surveillance gear. " -- https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1278391796733669378 https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1278391796733669378 this just fuels the culture wars but does nothing to address the problem of racism
- blackbrokkoli 6y agoSaying that these terms are racially loaded is, well, racist. I can kind of understand the argument that there is a history of racism connected with slavery, but the concept of "slave" predates discrimination of coloured people by millenia, closely followed by the word itself, which is actually derived from "Slav" (like you sometimes hear Russians being referred as). But fair enough, seeing a connection to racism is maybe just misinformed. But "blacklist" (and "whitelist") is just completely absurd. "Blacklist" is a term from a play, referring to a literally black list. Whitelist is just an antonym. Such color metaphors are incredibly common, think wedding dresses or "black death", or black flags, or white lie. Obviously, none of this is connected to skin color. How exactly does your mind have to be wired to come to the opposite conclusion? As one of the largest (and most criticized) players in political information, one would think that Twitter could maybe do something better about the current situation than engaging in etymological misinformation...
- PeterBarrett 6y agoThe whole idea is to remove the subconscious bias that it creates in our minds, always associating black with bad and white with good in the case of blacklist and white list. None of this has any effect on me and I don't see the negative side of changing it.
- f3295cde 6y agoBlack is not always associated with bad and white is not always associated with good - their general associations with bad/good respectively are independent of race.
- PeterBarrett 6y agoJudging by your response (and the amount of comments you've made in this thread) I don't think you really took the time to think about my comment. We obviously didn't chose black list or white list to donate race but regardless it's another brick in wall for black to equate to bad. As a white European this has no impact on me in any way shape or form apart from wanting a more inclusive space for my friends. Out of interest why are you so against the idea of changing terms? In your comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=f3295cde https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=f3295cde) you make the comparison of "will replace the word 'football' as it is offensive to people with limb difference", you do realise these are fundamentally different issues right? People aren't looking to replace the words for the fun of it.
- WaxProlix 6y agoIt's a troll account made just to stink up this specific thread, report it and move on.
- iagovar 6y agoThat will change a lot of stuff. I really have an inside battle when I read this sort of stuff here on HN, because I don't want to post derailed political comments, I want this place to be like it is, keep it cool and avoid kulturwars, but man it's hard. Look, I'm not in the US, so maybe I can't even think how it is with racism there, but I just can't help to think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling. It feels like some bunch of uber-priviledged SV guys who think too high of themselves want to feel good about something and they come up with this BS that everyone will forget a week later. Man, it's so surreal. Don't you have poor people in your city? What about helping your local NGOs? What about working for them for free? One week you help feed the people, another in the kitchen and another one in accounting. Dunno, it feels sooooo far away from my reality. I don't know what is to be earning +100k year and thinking this is a great idea! It was even difficult to write this comment because I find it funny and just feel the impulse to mock this.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago> I just can't help to think this is kind of stupid-naive virtue signaling. It feels like some bunch of uber-priviledged SV guys who think too high of themselves want to feel good about something Except that’s not what happened. This was spearheaded by Black developers who don’t want to have to read about “slaves” being “rekicked” at their jobs. Is that not a reasonable request?
- iagovar 6y agoI think many words are polysemic (that's how it's called in english right?) and you shouldn't be offended by them, but who I am to judge, I'm not a black developer at Twitter.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoI don’t think they’re offended, per se — I just think they don’t want intermittent reminders of the atrocities committed against their ancestors at their workplace.
- headhuntermdk 6y agoI wonder how many of these initial sarcastic comments are from white people.. actually, we don't have to wonder
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoThe majority of people saying it’s virtue signaling are all Wasps.
- caned 6y agoSource?
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoThe tech field demographics. You can do a web search, I’m not gonna do it for you
- caned 6y agoSounds like a cop-out from someone who can't defend their assertion. Oops! I said "cop."
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoYou sound like a jackass.
- disposekinetics 6y agoIsn't that in itself a racist statement? You are using a stereotype to denigrate a group.
- Seb-C 6y agoThis is a very loaded and racist term against wasps, shame on you! EDIT: It is a joke (just saying because there is a lot of angry people here)
- dragonwriter 6y agoAssuming you mean WASPs (an offensive abbreviation of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and not wasps (assholes with wings), you are probably being overly specific as well as using a needlessly offensive term. “Speaking from a position of privilege by race, ethnicity, economic class, or some combination thereof” would probably be more accurate.
- micheljansen 6y agoMoving away from race a bit and totally anecdotally, but my wife was looking at my screen once while I was using the command line and she remarked how it seemed like all the commands were chosen by men: kill, terminate, spawn, mount, push etc. It may be subtle but words matter and they do attract or repel people. And then we complain why there are too few women in tech. Inclusion is not just about race.
- lollerka 6y agoI'm not american and don't know what do these words _mean_ for a lot of people. My sidestory that I only feel "bad" because as a non-native english speaker it's really hard sometimes to speak correctly PC-ish. For example my native tongue doesn't have gender pronouns. Grammatical gender doesn't exist at all. So third person singular doesn't make a difference between gender like english. It doesn't exist when I address that person. But when I go to Twitter or check people's profile they more and more ask how they should be addressed or what pronoun to use. Just interesting how the language can affect your way of thinking about the world.
- disposekinetics 6y agoIt is hard for native speakers to keep up with the demands too.
- GoodJokes 6y agoIts silly, but also really doesn't hurt anyone so I think as a white dude, I am not going to be fragile about this and just let it be.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoSoon: Chess is racist, blacks always move second and are thus at a disadvantage. Cancel chess. Daoism is racist, yin is black and has negative connotations. Cancel Daoism. Star Wars are racist. Droids are enslaved, C3P0 even calls his owner 'Master Luke', a racially-charged word. Cancel Star Wars. Education is racist. Issued Master's degrees use a racially-charged word. Cancel education. "To kill a mockingbird" is racist. It is full of insensitive language and it makes reader feel uncomfortable. Cancel "To kill a mockingbird". "Mysterious island" by J.Verne is racist. The only black character is a servant to a wise white engineer and serves mostly as a comedic relief. Cancel "Mysterious island". Coal industry is racist, miners are always mocking blacks wearing blackface after every shift. Cancel coal mining. (Good for environment, too!) Disclaimer: I'm so insensitive because I was born with a white privilege, which I greatly enjoyed since my early childhood in an industrial/mining town in the Ural Mountains, near the eastern border of Siberia.
- cyc116 6y agoAs an Asian American. I find Yellowstone national park offensive and oppressive.
- emerged 6y agoSorry but you have to wait your turn. We will burn down buildings, tear down statues, loot and protest for you after the blacks. I get dibs after Asians, as a person who has some rosacea. For too long we have been disadvantaged.
- nappy 6y agoThis is controversial but shouldn't be flagged. It's a link to a factual news story. Dang could you unflag this or otherwise explain why this remains flagged?
- Yetanfou 6y agoAre they going to rename their servers as well? The word 'server' comes from the Latin word 'servus' which means slave. Also, the word 'twit' has several meanings which might not fall so well with certain people. Ask Google Translate what it means and this is what you get: Twit: (noun) a silly or foolish person. Syonyms: idiot ass halfwit nincompoop blockhead buffoon dunce dolt ignoramus cretin imbecile dullard moron simpleton clod dope ninny chump dimwit nitwit goon dumbo dummy dum-dum dumbbell loon jackass bonehead fathead numbskull dunderhead chucklehead knucklehead muttonhead pudding-head thickhead wooden-head airhead pinhead lamebrain peabrain birdbrain zombie jerk nerd dipstick donkey noodle nit numpty clot goat plonker berk prat pillock wally git wazzock divvy nerk twerp charlie mug muppet nyaff balloon sumph gowk gobdaw schmuck bozo boob lamer turkey schlepper chowderhead dumbhead goofball goof goofus galoot dork lummox klutz putz schlemiel sap meatball gink cluck clunk ding-dong dingbat wiener weeny dip simp spud coot palooka poop squarehead yo-yo dingleberry wing nut drongo dill alec galah nong bogan poon boofhead mompara tomfool noddy clodpole loggerhead spoony mooncalf While I personally think they chose a name which fits the product very well indeed I do get the feeling that, if the current witch hunt continues, they'll eventually fall foul of the mob and be either forced to bend to their will or find themselves in the position now reserved for Facebook, i.e. the whipping boy of the social media giants.
- syshum 6y agoAnyone else find it ironic the official announcement on twitter about a major programming change about inclusivity was posted in a non-accessible way?