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> 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

by 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.

by hrktb 6y ago

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.