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What I really have to wonder about specifically this instance of political correctness was, how many people were honestly and truly offended by the term 'blackl

What I really have to wonder about specifically this instance of political correctness was, how many people were honestly and truly offended by the term 'blacklist' or 'whitelist' before some lignustics, sociology, whatever professer sat down and figured out it should be offensive and told people to be offended? I feel like this about many attempts to make language politically correct, but I really do wonder, was there actually anyone out there sitting there being offended by this usage of those words before someone told them they should be? Like was there actually someone sitting there, using an app, seen the term blacklist and immediately started thinking it was an insult to them?

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
> Like was there actually someone sitting there, using an app, seen the term blacklist and immediately started thinking it was an insult to them? My belief is absolutely not. It comes from an ideology that ascribes simple moralistic explanations to things. “This word has man in it so it must mean it excludes women”. “The word ‘master’ reminds people of slavery”, etc. Good luck speaking out “publicly” about it in the modern corporate environment. You have to not just accept it as true but actively parrot its talking points. Everyone has to be a believer. That’s how the whole thing works.
- grawprog 6y ago
  I don't want to go on too much, I know this topic can be rather divisive and people get sort of heated about it but I really think in many cases things like the black/white list changes are counterproductive. There are actual race issues genuinely affecting people every day. Making a big deal out of what are essentially non-issues i'd be willing to bet 99% of people never think about or genuinely care about is just going to make the average person roll their eyes and not bother caring. Which again, is counterproductive. If you want the average person to care about the actual systemic issues, violence and actual racial oppression, forcing them to adjust their language and take time to address issues like the gp's comment is not the way to do it. Policing every word people say and making them feel guilty for using the wrong ones will not make them care, if anything it's going to make people who are otherwise neutral, who would maybe care, turn hostile. It pushes people to extremes and leads to places like 8chan or Parler, where people take their language to utter extremes and the opposite extreme where people are finding offense in nearly every little thing. Both are unreasonable.
goblin89 6y ago
Do a thought experiment and imagine that there was a negatively tinted term in software engineering with %YOURCOUNTRY% or %YOURNATIONALITY% or %YOURPHENOTYPICTRAIT% in the name. E.g., if you’re from the US, “American pointer dereference” or something like that. (A bit far-fetched; to really resonate the experiment should include some invented cultural baggage which is difficult to do on the spot.) I want to think I personally wouldn’t be insecure enough to be concerned by something like that, but I have to agree that some might feel uncomfortable even if the intent behind that term was benign. Whether getting rid of that term entirely is worth it or not is another question (how far should we go? do we spend human-months rewriting all Git histories to replace this term with an alternative currently in fashion? what if it changes again? etc.), but just stopping using it in new codebases might be relatively low-effort.
- grawprog 6y ago
  Yeah, you know what, i've personally experienced that more than once, it's not politically correct to say, but i'm not american so... and it happened in Richmond so meh... I've also met enough people from different places in the world to understand it happens to everybody for different reasons. Hell there's racism in the world I bet a lot of people don't even realize is an issue. An old Iranian coworker and a chinese coworker of mine hated eachother, for absolutely no reason other than racism. I also live in a place where the prevalent racism isn't the black/white stuff that goes on in america and where generally black and white people get along reasonably well. You're right, it's about culture and perspective. And that's what bugs me most about PC culture. It doesn't take into account culture and perspective. It doesn't take into account the fact that prejudice and racism depend heavily on where you are exactly in the world and it doesn't take into account the fact that a good majority of the things PC culture would consider racist isn't. All I know is, i've had a lot of great conversations that started with me or someone else asking. 'Hey, where are you from?' I can't think of one time when either me or someone else was offended by this yet... https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-racial-microaggressions/ https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-r...
  - goblin89 6y ago

__blockcipher__ 6y ago

> Like was there actually someone sitting there, using an app, seen the term blacklist and immediately started thinking it was an insult to them? My belief is absolutely not. It comes from an ideology that ascribes simple moralistic explanations to things. “This word has man in it so it must mean it excludes women”. “The word ‘master’ reminds people of slavery”, etc. Good luck speaking out “publicly” about it in the modern corporate environment. You have to not just accept it as true but actively parrot its talking points. Everyone has to be a believer. That’s how the whole thing works.

grawprog 6y ago
I don't want to go on too much, I know this topic can be rather divisive and people get sort of heated about it but I really think in many cases things like the black/white list changes are counterproductive. There are actual race issues genuinely affecting people every day. Making a big deal out of what are essentially non-issues i'd be willing to bet 99% of people never think about or genuinely care about is just going to make the average person roll their eyes and not bother caring. Which again, is counterproductive. If you want the average person to care about the actual systemic issues, violence and actual racial oppression, forcing them to adjust their language and take time to address issues like the gp's comment is not the way to do it. Policing every word people say and making them feel guilty for using the wrong ones will not make them care, if anything it's going to make people who are otherwise neutral, who would maybe care, turn hostile. It pushes people to extremes and leads to places like 8chan or Parler, where people take their language to utter extremes and the opposite extreme where people are finding offense in nearly every little thing. Both are unreasonable.

goblin89 6y ago

Do a thought experiment and imagine that there was a negatively tinted term in software engineering with %YOURCOUNTRY% or %YOURNATIONALITY% or %YOURPHENOTYPICTRAIT% in the name. E.g., if you’re from the US, “American pointer dereference” or something like that. (A bit far-fetched; to really resonate the experiment should include some invented cultural baggage which is difficult to do on the spot.) I want to think I personally wouldn’t be insecure enough to be concerned by something like that, but I have to agree that some might feel uncomfortable even if the intent behind that term was benign. Whether getting rid of that term entirely is worth it or not is another question (how far should we go? do we spend human-months rewriting all Git histories to replace this term with an alternative currently in fashion? what if it changes again? etc.), but just stopping using it in new codebases might be relatively low-effort.

grawprog 6y ago
Yeah, you know what, i've personally experienced that more than once, it's not politically correct to say, but i'm not american so... and it happened in Richmond so meh... I've also met enough people from different places in the world to understand it happens to everybody for different reasons. Hell there's racism in the world I bet a lot of people don't even realize is an issue. An old Iranian coworker and a chinese coworker of mine hated eachother, for absolutely no reason other than racism. I also live in a place where the prevalent racism isn't the black/white stuff that goes on in america and where generally black and white people get along reasonably well. You're right, it's about culture and perspective. And that's what bugs me most about PC culture. It doesn't take into account culture and perspective. It doesn't take into account the fact that prejudice and racism depend heavily on where you are exactly in the world and it doesn't take into account the fact that a good majority of the things PC culture would consider racist isn't. All I know is, i've had a lot of great conversations that started with me or someone else asking. 'Hey, where are you from?' I can't think of one time when either me or someone else was offended by this yet... https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-racial-microaggressions/ https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-r...
- goblin89 6y ago