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<rant> > blacklist/whitelist Thanks for bringing race into something that has absolutely nothing to do with it. As a person of color I also don't see how thi

<rant> > blacklist/whitelist Thanks for bringing race into something that has absolutely nothing to do with it. As a person of color I also don't see how this is "inclusive" at all, like yeah, the only reason I don't commit to the Linux kernel is because of the presence of words such as master/slave... Maybe I'm wrong but why do we have to shame everyone into changing things when there isn't proof that those things were actually harmful to minorities. But oh well, I guess we'll call this a win and continue to ignore the root of the problem. </rant>

techntoke 6y ago
What is the new name for the dark web?
- eps 6y ago
  This is actually a valid comment. Black/white in black/whitelist has to do with something being illuminated rather than with the color. Same with the dark web.
- rapnie 6y ago
  opaque web? obscure web? cloaked web? There is a rationale for different terminology here, other than race-related. Tor is encouraging more 'regular folks' to become users, rather than mostly usual suspects such as journalists, activists, opsec etc. But the connotation of dark web is too much related to sinister / criminal / illegal / dangerous (and yes there is a lot of that too).
- sebazzz 6y ago
  Dark matter could be renamed to invisible matter. And before we know it we can't say anything.
hrktb 6y ago
> nothing to do with it It never has to do with race until il does. The same way slave/master wasn’t about race in different contexts, being free or not would just a lineage or economic status. But the moment it takes a specific cultural context, you can’t argue it’s wrong because it was different originally. Things change.
- flobosg 6y ago
  > The same way slave/master wasn’t about race in different contexts, being free or not would just a lineage or economic status. The etymology of slave suggests otherwise. Ethnicity usually played a role.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    Yes and interestingly those slaves were White. There are a lot of shortcuts taken in the Western world right now such as amalgamation of slavery with Black people. Moreover, slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago, which mean it has been abolished for more than half the existence of the United States... that’s quite a lot of generations ago. All of these sterile polemics are created by a certain political group for their political gain, they don’t even care about the people they are using in their narrative. As a racial and religious minority myself I would find totally laughable if a local political party were to use the persecution of people of the same religion and the killings of people of my ethnicity centuries before to justify changing the language, especially the speciality language of a narrow field.
    - belltaco 6y ago
      > Moreover, slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago, which mean it has been abolished for more than half the existence of the United States... that’s quite a lot of generations ago. Yet we have so many people today celebrating the ideas, symbols and folks that were involved in a war to keep owning slaves. Many of the statues have been erected closer to today than the war.
  - hrktb 6y ago
    Good point. I had in mind greek/roman slaves while writing the comment, while as you say the word slave itself comes from a later period, when slavs where conquered and traded as goods. Goes to show how different a word can look depending on the person’s knowledge and/or what they’re the most aware of.
- nabla9 6y ago
  Why slavery can't be used as metaphor in a context where it's not offensive? Master/slave seems like perfect metaphor. Enslaving a thing is not racist of offensive concept. It's offensive practice among humans. Not in computing.
lucideer 6y ago
> like yeah, the only reason I don't commit to the Linux kernel is because of the presence of words such as master/slave... I'm not certain about this but personally I don't think this is the intent. I see two big benefits of these big language changes: 1. Much of anti-black racism in history has been accompanied by associations of skin colour to other unrelated elements based on their "illumination". Negative associations have been highlighted by virtue of the darkness and unilluminated things in general being traditionally considered negative. So the original meaning or intent of blacklist/whitelist doesn't need to have been race-related for it to reinforce the idea of black=negative & white=positive. This is an association that's as natural as kids being afraid of the dark, but an association that is helpful for us to subvert and overcome as adults (for a plethora of reasons, one of those being to do with race) Having discussions about language and naming things helps with that subversion. 2. In my case, as I work for a company that is bringing in these name changes internally, I've found this a curious and positive rare opportunity to discuss & hear team members' views on this issue. It's not the type of topic that would normally be easy to bring up in a corporate environment and this makes it natural and "safe" to do so in a not-combative way.
- scrollaway 6y ago
  Normally I'd call reductio ad absurdum but we're pretty much already there. This idea that dark is negative is kind of silly. Things that are done in the shadows tend to be referred to as black, such as a black market. You want to call it a shadow market? (And don't get me wrong that sounds cool as hell, but also, wtf) Look at the positives instead, unless the color is the problem in which case your accountants I'm sure will be overjoyed to hear that they should no longer say the company is "in the black" either. I don't mean this to sound combative but rather simply make you think about what it is that time is being spent on. Remember that whenever this particular change is brought up, whenever people talk about it, all the energy being expended on it etc. It all draws away from much more important business such as the George Floyd protests. Black lives matter. This doesn't.
  - hrktb 6y ago
    We have a ton of these connotations: - left/sinister is negative compared to right - low is negative compared to high (“moral highground”) - south is negative compared to north (“things going south lately”) Regardless of neutral usages of these words, or their factual meaning, we should acknowledge the more connotated meaning are not completely separate, and bleed on the other uses of the words. It doesn’t mean they can’t be used with their actual meaning, but I think we should be open to the risk we’d need to stop using them in context where the connotations bleed too strong. And I guess we reached that point for white/black/dark.
linza 6y ago
I think shame is the actual reason why so many oppose these changes and why they are adopted in the end. The change itself is often interpreted as finger waggling, implying something was done wrong. In technical fields, one expects technical answers for why changes should be adopted, and engineers are largely not equipped to have this intently non technical discussion. And many feel that the Linux kernel is not the right place for these discussions, but it's hard to argue that because... shame.
- crististm 6y ago
  Yes, engineers are ill equipped to judge such topics, obviously well beyond they capabilities. They should touch bits not English semantics. Others, more prepared and versed in 'inclusivity' topics will make value judgements in their place and decide what's best for them and for us. Or maybe not.
- nabla9 6y ago
  Please present some solid arguments in flavor of name changes. These changes are just proposed without anything backing them up.
  - linza 6y ago
    Did you mean to reply to another comment perhaps? I'm against these changes and as an engineer and as my comment suggested, I'm ill equipped bring useful arguments against or in favor.

techntoke 6y ago

What is the new name for the dark web?

eps 6y ago
This is actually a valid comment. Black/white in black/whitelist has to do with something being illuminated rather than with the color. Same with the dark web.
rapnie 6y ago
opaque web? obscure web? cloaked web? There is a rationale for different terminology here, other than race-related. Tor is encouraging more 'regular folks' to become users, rather than mostly usual suspects such as journalists, activists, opsec etc. But the connotation of dark web is too much related to sinister / criminal / illegal / dangerous (and yes there is a lot of that too).
sebazzz 6y ago
Dark matter could be renamed to invisible matter. And before we know it we can't say anything.

hrktb 6y ago

> nothing to do with it It never has to do with race until il does. The same way slave/master wasn’t about race in different contexts, being free or not would just a lineage or economic status. But the moment it takes a specific cultural context, you can’t argue it’s wrong because it was different originally. Things change.

flobosg 6y ago
> The same way slave/master wasn’t about race in different contexts, being free or not would just a lineage or economic status. The etymology of slave suggests otherwise. Ethnicity usually played a role.
- tasogare 6y ago
  Yes and interestingly those slaves were White. There are a lot of shortcuts taken in the Western world right now such as amalgamation of slavery with Black people. Moreover, slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago, which mean it has been abolished for more than half the existence of the United States... that’s quite a lot of generations ago. All of these sterile polemics are created by a certain political group for their political gain, they don’t even care about the people they are using in their narrative. As a racial and religious minority myself I would find totally laughable if a local political party were to use the persecution of people of the same religion and the killings of people of my ethnicity centuries before to justify changing the language, especially the speciality language of a narrow field.
  - belltaco 6y ago
    > Moreover, slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago, which mean it has been abolished for more than half the existence of the United States... that’s quite a lot of generations ago. Yet we have so many people today celebrating the ideas, symbols and folks that were involved in a war to keep owning slaves. Many of the statues have been erected closer to today than the war.
- hrktb 6y ago
  Good point. I had in mind greek/roman slaves while writing the comment, while as you say the word slave itself comes from a later period, when slavs where conquered and traded as goods. Goes to show how different a word can look depending on the person’s knowledge and/or what they’re the most aware of.
nabla9 6y ago
Why slavery can't be used as metaphor in a context where it's not offensive? Master/slave seems like perfect metaphor. Enslaving a thing is not racist of offensive concept. It's offensive practice among humans. Not in computing.

lucideer 6y ago

> like yeah, the only reason I don't commit to the Linux kernel is because of the presence of words such as master/slave... I'm not certain about this but personally I don't think this is the intent. I see two big benefits of these big language changes: 1. Much of anti-black racism in history has been accompanied by associations of skin colour to other unrelated elements based on their "illumination". Negative associations have been highlighted by virtue of the darkness and unilluminated things in general being traditionally considered negative. So the original meaning or intent of blacklist/whitelist doesn't need to have been race-related for it to reinforce the idea of black=negative & white=positive. This is an association that's as natural as kids being afraid of the dark, but an association that is helpful for us to subvert and overcome as adults (for a plethora of reasons, one of those being to do with race) Having discussions about language and naming things helps with that subversion. 2. In my case, as I work for a company that is bringing in these name changes internally, I've found this a curious and positive rare opportunity to discuss & hear team members' views on this issue. It's not the type of topic that would normally be easy to bring up in a corporate environment and this makes it natural and "safe" to do so in a not-combative way.

scrollaway 6y ago
Normally I'd call reductio ad absurdum but we're pretty much already there. This idea that dark is negative is kind of silly. Things that are done in the shadows tend to be referred to as black, such as a black market. You want to call it a shadow market? (And don't get me wrong that sounds cool as hell, but also, wtf) Look at the positives instead, unless the color is the problem in which case your accountants I'm sure will be overjoyed to hear that they should no longer say the company is "in the black" either. I don't mean this to sound combative but rather simply make you think about what it is that time is being spent on. Remember that whenever this particular change is brought up, whenever people talk about it, all the energy being expended on it etc. It all draws away from much more important business such as the George Floyd protests. Black lives matter. This doesn't.
- hrktb 6y ago
  We have a ton of these connotations: - left/sinister is negative compared to right - low is negative compared to high (“moral highground”) - south is negative compared to north (“things going south lately”) Regardless of neutral usages of these words, or their factual meaning, we should acknowledge the more connotated meaning are not completely separate, and bleed on the other uses of the words. It doesn’t mean they can’t be used with their actual meaning, but I think we should be open to the risk we’d need to stop using them in context where the connotations bleed too strong. And I guess we reached that point for white/black/dark.

linza 6y ago

I think shame is the actual reason why so many oppose these changes and why they are adopted in the end. The change itself is often interpreted as finger waggling, implying something was done wrong. In technical fields, one expects technical answers for why changes should be adopted, and engineers are largely not equipped to have this intently non technical discussion. And many feel that the Linux kernel is not the right place for these discussions, but it's hard to argue that because... shame.

crististm 6y ago
Yes, engineers are ill equipped to judge such topics, obviously well beyond they capabilities. They should touch bits not English semantics. Others, more prepared and versed in 'inclusivity' topics will make value judgements in their place and decide what's best for them and for us. Or maybe not.
nabla9 6y ago
Please present some solid arguments in flavor of name changes. These changes are just proposed without anything backing them up.
- linza 6y ago
  Did you mean to reply to another comment perhaps? I'm against these changes and as an engineer and as my comment suggested, I'm ill equipped bring useful arguments against or in favor.