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Slow your horses. I happen to agree, and feel that this isn't the most impactful/helpful place to affect change. But we all agree that symbols have meanings. C

Slow your horses. I happen to agree, and feel that this isn't the most impactful/helpful place to affect change. But we all agree that symbols have meanings. Confederate emblems on state flags have meaning. The fact that you feel this case isn't worthwhile is fine, and you're entitled to your view and sharing it. But that doesn't magically change the concept of symbols into some plot of Kim Jong Il totalitarianistic mythology. You disagree with the changing of that symbol as an effective method for improving things. That's fine. Instead of just the symbolic, are you just as fired up about addressing the structural issues of discrimination that people of color in your field experience? Is the extent of your ire just the terminology change? Because many people feel they don't have the luxury of that being the largest issues they are facing in tech. That's just one small pebble of many issues out there. Are you helping out in those efforts? Are you only willing to get upset about a name change but none of the other issues present in our field?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I can't speak for the original commenter, but I'm fired up about this issue because of my fire for addressing structural issues in my field. Do you remember the controversy last year about the manager who said "I won't hire anyone who doesn't send a thank-you email"? Language policing is another manifestation of the same problem. It's a minor hurdle for those of us who follow the latest trends in upper-middle-class professional culture, and a huge structural barrier for anyone who can't or doesn't.
motohagiography 6y ago
Slow this. It's not the changing of the symbol, it's the legitimacy and standing of the people who wish to change it, the means they are using to do so, and the sincerity of their motives. This is the forum we have. I reject the standing of the critical theory underlying the problematizing of what it perceives as symbols in my field, because the ideology itself is designed to manufacture and inject conflict, as means to leverage itself into being an arbiter of purity, and its endgame has a lot of historical precedents. Dialectical materialism is an intellectual cancer. This is where change happens. It's in the culture, and we respond in the culture. This forum is public discourse. If you are concerned because it sounds "angry," I would recommend revisiting how that reflects as a style of argument. While this probably isn't the forum to re-litigate it, it is the forum to state unambiguously that the effort to hijack, co-opt, and subordinate Blackhat and the community it served to an ideology using an implied threat of political cancellation ( or "atomization" in the literature) has not gone unnoticed.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I can't speak for the original commenter, but I'm fired up about this issue because of my fire for addressing structural issues in my field. Do you remember the controversy last year about the manager who said "I won't hire anyone who doesn't send a thank-you email"? Language policing is another manifestation of the same problem. It's a minor hurdle for those of us who follow the latest trends in upper-middle-class professional culture, and a huge structural barrier for anyone who can't or doesn't.

motohagiography 6y ago

Slow this. It's not the changing of the symbol, it's the legitimacy and standing of the people who wish to change it, the means they are using to do so, and the sincerity of their motives. This is the forum we have. I reject the standing of the critical theory underlying the problematizing of what it perceives as symbols in my field, because the ideology itself is designed to manufacture and inject conflict, as means to leverage itself into being an arbiter of purity, and its endgame has a lot of historical precedents. Dialectical materialism is an intellectual cancer. This is where change happens. It's in the culture, and we respond in the culture. This forum is public discourse. If you are concerned because it sounds "angry," I would recommend revisiting how that reflects as a style of argument. While this probably isn't the forum to re-litigate it, it is the forum to state unambiguously that the effort to hijack, co-opt, and subordinate Blackhat and the community it served to an ideology using an implied threat of political cancellation ( or "atomization" in the literature) has not gone unnoticed.