7 ms·

I believe the people those terms affect that they hurt them and subtly reinforce bias. That doesn't feel unimportant to me. What's unimportant is using antiquat

I believe the people those terms affect that they hurt them and subtly reinforce bias. That doesn't feel unimportant to me. What's unimportant is using antiquated, hurtful terms when it would be easy to simply not do that.

loceng 6y ago
Instead of actually helping these people we coddle them further by changing words? That's equivalent to defunding the police, a simple shallow action, but doesn't actually address the actual racism and lack of accountability (that affects all races) of police actions. It's coddling and it's lazy - and the mob will start calling people, if they haven't already started, people and organizations who don't change the language as racists - a false accusation but it rallies the mob and doesn't lead to critical thinking.
- rschneid 6y ago
  False dichotomy. Progress can be made along multiple fronts simultaneously. 'Defunding police' isn't a single action so can hardly be labeled 'shallow' but it's definitely a step towards addressing racism since it's quite clear to anyone who's been paying attention that ridiculous levels of over-policing in America is a major propagator of racial inequality. All of this stuff is related. Nobody is wrong for focusing more or less on one battle than another...
  - loceng 6y ago
    Are you saying we should coddle people as an option? I wasn't arguing an either/or, we can and should look at all options - I was highlighting the shallow nature of both actions vs. actually changing systems - and arguably defunding the police is the wrong mantra, inaccurate; demilitarize the police, yes. That doesn't mean we should give into unreasonable options. Is there a net benefit of coddling unreasonable people to such a degree that we're no longer allowing words to have different meanings, and holding integrity through requiring critical thinking to understand language properly? Organizations playing into this are either pandering to the mob and/or aren't grounded in reason. Let's be strong for our brothers and sisters, even if discomfort increases temporarily due to a mob. Edit to add: it's interesting my top comment was quickly downvoted 3 times right around the time of the above reply, and then my reply here got 3 downvotes quickly too.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
      Again, why are you framing this as coddling? Why is your position the one of critical thinking and "understanding language properly" while the people you disagree with want "unreasonable options?" As the original article shows, what's being asked for is straightforward and simple to do. There's no mob. No one is getting canceled. We're just changing some terms we use in a software project to be more appropriate. The phrase "he doth protest too much" comes to mind every time I see comments like the above.
      - loceng 6y ago
        More appropriate? Don't you think people should be able understand these words have different contexts than race related, instead you want to shelter them in case they haven't developed that capability yet? You're argument tactic is to just dismiss which at minimum is lacking integrity.
        klyrs 6y ago
        > You're argument tactic is to just dismiss which at minimum is lacking integrity. Sorry, but your framing of this as "coddling" is itself dismissive. That, combined with complaining about downvotes, might be driving the unpopularity of your comments.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Reducing funding of police is almost entirely orthogonal to action against racism. It can reduce the harm caused but it's not going to reduce racism. I can't see how you can demilitarise police in USA without restricting access to deadly weapons across the board. Who's going to enforce the law if the citizenry have access to disproportionately greater force than the police do. USA needs to start with rule of law, as the current administration, at least, has subverted that you've no chance to move forward IMO.
    - ball_of_lint 6y ago
      Although access to force is important in some cases, it's not the most important issue here and not the most important effect that would come from defunding the police. One more important issue here is that police have been trained only to use force to execute their duties. An alternative would be for cops to focus on de-escalating conflict. Another more important issue here is that police forces are used to handle problems that are better served by smaller, more specialized agencies. Psychologists and Psychiatrists for mentally ill people. Social workers for the homeless. A third issue here that is more important than access to excessive force is the rampant and catastrophic lack of oversight for cops. Protests went on for days before George Floyd's murderer was arrested. If video hadn't made the news that man would still be policing today. George Floyd's death didn't involve a gun, it involved a cop who didn't expect consequences. Beyond all that, police agencies have empirically demonstrated that they have significant and deep seated racial bias across the board. Even if that can be fixed the simplest way to stop the bleeding is to reduce the funding and therefore power of the police. Once they show they can uphold the law without a tax of innocent lives they can have their funding back, but TBH at that point I doubt they'll need it.
    - altacc 6y ago
      The rule of law doesn't need an arms race to enforce it. If anything that's an unwinnable war. Police typically enforce the law after it has been broken. It appears that in the US there many low impact changes to society and communities which would significantly reduce the crime from happening in the first place.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  How is this coddling anyone? And why are you viewing "these people" as somehow separate rather than just "us?" Defunding the police is a simple to understand slogan that covers a lot of possibilities. Plenty of places have abolished their police and rebuilt from the ground up. When people use the slogan that's generally what they mean. Saying they literally expect there to be no police and everything is anarchy is a strawman position no one besides a couple bros in hoodies in seattle actually takes seriously.
  - loceng 6y ago
    You're conflating my arguments and you're arguing that people shouldn't be clear with their language and we should assume 100% of people mean what you claim they generally mean?
    - TeaDrunk 6y ago
      Frankly, blacklist/whitelist is actually less clear than blocklist/allowlist in the most strict and rhetorical language. Similarly, master/slave is actually less clear than alternatives, because it implies single points of failure that technology has already resolved. I don't actually have an opinion on the language change (I'm not black so how could I have an opinion on if it empowers black people?) but strictly speaking the rationale based on clarity isn't true.
      - yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
        > I'm not black so how could I have an opinion on if it empowers black people? Have you tried listening to them?
  - concordDance 6y ago
    Being specially catered for sets you apart from the rest, promoting a damaging us vs them distinction.
- geofft 6y ago
  I don't really think framing one side of the discussion as "the mob" particularly encourages critical thinking.
xgbi 6y ago
Are you ready to loose the black and red in red black tree? Because that’s skin color right there... Are you willing to rename all your code variables when you used « whitelist » or « blacklist »? This has to stop. Slavery was long gone and finished when master/slave began being used in computer science. They were not used as a meaning to reproduce and glorify the past, they are simple words that explain how the protocol works. Would you rather « master » and « servant »? King and serf? Bully and victim? This is to me just as irrelevant as continuing the superstitions about 13 and 666: a reactionnary behavior that people should tame and focus on something more important, like actual code correctness, fuzzing or something actually useful.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Have we actually asked the demographics these changes are supposed to empower? We definitely have black engineering organizations. What does the National Society of Black Engineers say about this? What does Black In Tech say about this? Before we assume that such things are stupid superstitions or applying race on a term (or choosing not to apply terms in race context) we should listen to the other side of the plate.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    Sounds like more work to me, than just accepting that PR
    - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
      If we follow that line of argument to its conclusion, declining the PR is the least work of all.
  - ryanobjc 6y ago
    I find the terminology uncomfortable. I dislike it. Keeping those names is lazy naming, and we can do a hell of a lot better. The words have a ton of emotional imagery tied up, and no need to invoke it just when we are talking about IDE disk protocols. We don't have to rename it all immediately, but let's start with the easy stuff and ripple it thru. How hard can it be? In any case, blocklist, allowlist is way more descriptive than blacklist and whitelist. It describes WHAT the thing does, whereas the black/white relies on a cultural mnemonic that black is bad and white is good. Just name things for what they do, how hard is that?
goldforever 6y ago
"Hurtful" terms? Seriously? Dumbest response here.

loceng 6y ago

Instead of actually helping these people we coddle them further by changing words? That's equivalent to defunding the police, a simple shallow action, but doesn't actually address the actual racism and lack of accountability (that affects all races) of police actions. It's coddling and it's lazy - and the mob will start calling people, if they haven't already started, people and organizations who don't change the language as racists - a false accusation but it rallies the mob and doesn't lead to critical thinking.

rschneid 6y ago
False dichotomy. Progress can be made along multiple fronts simultaneously. 'Defunding police' isn't a single action so can hardly be labeled 'shallow' but it's definitely a step towards addressing racism since it's quite clear to anyone who's been paying attention that ridiculous levels of over-policing in America is a major propagator of racial inequality. All of this stuff is related. Nobody is wrong for focusing more or less on one battle than another...
- loceng 6y ago
  Are you saying we should coddle people as an option? I wasn't arguing an either/or, we can and should look at all options - I was highlighting the shallow nature of both actions vs. actually changing systems - and arguably defunding the police is the wrong mantra, inaccurate; demilitarize the police, yes. That doesn't mean we should give into unreasonable options. Is there a net benefit of coddling unreasonable people to such a degree that we're no longer allowing words to have different meanings, and holding integrity through requiring critical thinking to understand language properly? Organizations playing into this are either pandering to the mob and/or aren't grounded in reason. Let's be strong for our brothers and sisters, even if discomfort increases temporarily due to a mob. Edit to add: it's interesting my top comment was quickly downvoted 3 times right around the time of the above reply, and then my reply here got 3 downvotes quickly too.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Again, why are you framing this as coddling? Why is your position the one of critical thinking and "understanding language properly" while the people you disagree with want "unreasonable options?" As the original article shows, what's being asked for is straightforward and simple to do. There's no mob. No one is getting canceled. We're just changing some terms we use in a software project to be more appropriate. The phrase "he doth protest too much" comes to mind every time I see comments like the above.
    - loceng 6y ago
      More appropriate? Don't you think people should be able understand these words have different contexts than race related, instead you want to shelter them in case they haven't developed that capability yet? You're argument tactic is to just dismiss which at minimum is lacking integrity.
      - klyrs 6y ago
        > You're argument tactic is to just dismiss which at minimum is lacking integrity. Sorry, but your framing of this as "coddling" is itself dismissive. That, combined with complaining about downvotes, might be driving the unpopularity of your comments.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Reducing funding of police is almost entirely orthogonal to action against racism. It can reduce the harm caused but it's not going to reduce racism. I can't see how you can demilitarise police in USA without restricting access to deadly weapons across the board. Who's going to enforce the law if the citizenry have access to disproportionately greater force than the police do. USA needs to start with rule of law, as the current administration, at least, has subverted that you've no chance to move forward IMO.
  - ball_of_lint 6y ago
    Although access to force is important in some cases, it's not the most important issue here and not the most important effect that would come from defunding the police. One more important issue here is that police have been trained only to use force to execute their duties. An alternative would be for cops to focus on de-escalating conflict. Another more important issue here is that police forces are used to handle problems that are better served by smaller, more specialized agencies. Psychologists and Psychiatrists for mentally ill people. Social workers for the homeless. A third issue here that is more important than access to excessive force is the rampant and catastrophic lack of oversight for cops. Protests went on for days before George Floyd's murderer was arrested. If video hadn't made the news that man would still be policing today. George Floyd's death didn't involve a gun, it involved a cop who didn't expect consequences. Beyond all that, police agencies have empirically demonstrated that they have significant and deep seated racial bias across the board. Even if that can be fixed the simplest way to stop the bleeding is to reduce the funding and therefore power of the police. Once they show they can uphold the law without a tax of innocent lives they can have their funding back, but TBH at that point I doubt they'll need it.
  - altacc 6y ago
    The rule of law doesn't need an arms race to enforce it. If anything that's an unwinnable war. Police typically enforce the law after it has been broken. It appears that in the US there many low impact changes to society and communities which would significantly reduce the crime from happening in the first place.
jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
How is this coddling anyone? And why are you viewing "these people" as somehow separate rather than just "us?" Defunding the police is a simple to understand slogan that covers a lot of possibilities. Plenty of places have abolished their police and rebuilt from the ground up. When people use the slogan that's generally what they mean. Saying they literally expect there to be no police and everything is anarchy is a strawman position no one besides a couple bros in hoodies in seattle actually takes seriously.
- loceng 6y ago
  You're conflating my arguments and you're arguing that people shouldn't be clear with their language and we should assume 100% of people mean what you claim they generally mean?
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    Frankly, blacklist/whitelist is actually less clear than blocklist/allowlist in the most strict and rhetorical language. Similarly, master/slave is actually less clear than alternatives, because it implies single points of failure that technology has already resolved. I don't actually have an opinion on the language change (I'm not black so how could I have an opinion on if it empowers black people?) but strictly speaking the rationale based on clarity isn't true.
    - yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
      > I'm not black so how could I have an opinion on if it empowers black people? Have you tried listening to them?
- concordDance 6y ago
  Being specially catered for sets you apart from the rest, promoting a damaging us vs them distinction.
geofft 6y ago
I don't really think framing one side of the discussion as "the mob" particularly encourages critical thinking.

xgbi 6y ago

Are you ready to loose the black and red in red black tree? Because that’s skin color right there... Are you willing to rename all your code variables when you used « whitelist » or « blacklist »? This has to stop. Slavery was long gone and finished when master/slave began being used in computer science. They were not used as a meaning to reproduce and glorify the past, they are simple words that explain how the protocol works. Would you rather « master » and « servant »? King and serf? Bully and victim? This is to me just as irrelevant as continuing the superstitions about 13 and 666: a reactionnary behavior that people should tame and focus on something more important, like actual code correctness, fuzzing or something actually useful.

TeaDrunk 6y ago
Have we actually asked the demographics these changes are supposed to empower? We definitely have black engineering organizations. What does the National Society of Black Engineers say about this? What does Black In Tech say about this? Before we assume that such things are stupid superstitions or applying race on a term (or choosing not to apply terms in race context) we should listen to the other side of the plate.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  Sounds like more work to me, than just accepting that PR
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    If we follow that line of argument to its conclusion, declining the PR is the least work of all.
- ryanobjc 6y ago
  I find the terminology uncomfortable. I dislike it. Keeping those names is lazy naming, and we can do a hell of a lot better. The words have a ton of emotional imagery tied up, and no need to invoke it just when we are talking about IDE disk protocols. We don't have to rename it all immediately, but let's start with the easy stuff and ripple it thru. How hard can it be? In any case, blocklist, allowlist is way more descriptive than blacklist and whitelist. It describes WHAT the thing does, whereas the black/white relies on a cultural mnemonic that black is bad and white is good. Just name things for what they do, how hard is that?

goldforever 6y ago

"Hurtful" terms? Seriously? Dumbest response here.