7 ms·

Same here in germany. When we hear the word master, most people think of the master in karate kid or the master degree of a university. I think only in the usa

Same here in germany. When we hear the word master, most people think of the master in karate kid or the master degree of a university. I think only in the usa people are so full of hate that they directly think of bad stuff.

Tomte 6y ago
I wouldn't say they are full of hate. Slavery has defined the country and has repercussions still. But I'm really worried about how we import everything American to Germany without thinking twice. Left newspapers have started to write BIPoC everywhere when it comes to domestic issues. What exactly are the indigenous people of Germany? Even blacks are relatively rare. It would make much more sense to coin an acronym that includes Jews, Sinti and Roma, given our sordid history. But we simply take what American culture has thought up.
- cabite 6y ago
  Same here in France. We've had our first trans kid on what would be the equivalent of Oprah's show audience-wise just a few days ago.
- myspy 6y ago
  We have problems to integrate Turkish or Russian immigrants and their children as Germans, not as people from elsewhere. As well as the refugees from Syria.
  - fho 6y ago
    Having lived in a mostly Turkish neighborhood for five years (as a German, Turkish landlord, Turkish "housemates" (?)) I think some just don't want to be integrated... Landlord was pretty chill and I kind of miss being able to just ask anything and he would try to make it happen (including things like repairing car motors). Housemates were of the mildly radicalized religious kind, with daughters that did not attend the normal school system and are now being married of early. I don't know if the German "integration system" has failed for the later ... they have the freedom to chose and they chose a path that is different from what is considered "normal" in the "West".
    - ficklepickle 6y ago
      I think "integration" is a sham. Integration implies a give and take, a compromise. It seems actually assimilation or submission is what many Euro countries want. As a Canadian (Vancouver), I can tell you true integration happens over generations of people working together and respecting each other. In those conditions, it is unavoidable. If either group lacks respect, the outcome is always conflict. You put their kids into school together young and they won't know not to be friends until you tell them. That was my experience, anyway.
      - bad_good_guy 6y ago
        And yet you've ignored the person you're responding to in their claim that turkish immigrants don't send their children to the same schools. I'm all for give and take but I wouldn't want the "give" to result in backwards steps for woman's rights being imported from the countries of origin
      - nix23 6y ago
        >It seems actually assimilation or submission is what many Euro countries want. No we think that forced marriage has no place in Europe, or the oppression of woman's. And yes, that's our culture..so is the freedom to choose your religion and to have free speech. If someone from another culture comes we are happy to integrate it into ours, but NOT when it clashes with our Laws. >You put their kids into school together young and they won't know not to be friends until you tell them. And what when they go into different schools (Jewish or Muslim etc), live in different parts of the City (look at Paris or Berlin), and never met someone outside of their bubble until 20 or later? BTW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_Canada
        fho 6y ago
        > but NOT when it clashes with our Laws I said it in another post ... it's not about being forced into something, it's about freedom of choice. And that is something universal, it's just codified in our laws. It's completely fine if a women decides to become married and have children early ... it's probably not a good choice ... but morally there is no way to reject that. The problem arises when people never learn that they have a choice ... I have (female) friends from rural Germany that think it's perfectly reasonable to go study and once finished move in with their husband and be the perfect stay-at-home mom. edit: heck ... I even have friends from larger cities who would just prefer to be stay-at-home moms because that gives an excuse to sloth on the couch for half of the day :-)
  - clusterfish 6y ago
    The point is, "BIPoC" means specifically "Black, Indigenous, People of Color". It does not mean "immigrants" or "refugees" or "all marginalized groups" or whoever else needs social justice in Germany. Borrowing that specific term for other purposes is stupid.
  - jokethrowaway 6y ago
    As an immigrant, I didn't want to leave my country, let alone integrate where I did. I was forced to because the government in my country steals and wastes so much money that the economy breaks and you can't make money there. Still the quality of life is much better at home and I'd rather stay there. All my friends are immigrants, I couldn care less to integrate here. Ideally I'd just rather live in a town with just immigrants from my country. As long as you keep them out of politics they'll probably won't rob you.
    - nlitened 6y ago
      > Ideally I'd just rather live in a town with just immigrants from my country. That town was in your country which you fled though.
    - stuaxo 6y ago
      Having met some white people in Asia, it's not like immigrant (ex-pat) community all make that much effort to integrate.
      - lokedhs 6y ago
        Just like any other immigrants, westeners in Asia integrate do different degrees. Some only hang out with people from their own country and refuse to go to anything but restaurants that serve their own food. While others practically become locals. Some nationalities integrate more than others. This goes for different European countries even, so it has very little to do with "race".
    - jdmoreira 6y ago
      Interesting. I also left my country but mostly because there wasn’t really anything left for me there and I met my girlfriend and she was from somewhere else... So I moved to her country. Her country is clearly superior in almost everything except for weather and food. I like living here and I've made good friends and enjoy my life here. Now the curious part comes... I have zero attachment to both countries, their culture and their national identities. I couldn’t care less about their language or customs. I just see myself has some kind of post-nationalistic person that would much rather speak English with everyone, hang out on the internet and live wherever. As far as I'm concerned national identities and culture are useless and holding us down as a species. I really wish people could outgrow this nonsense.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  Slavery has defined the country I don't think this is true. What percentage of White Americans, during the period of slavery, owned any slaves? Was it even 1%? It is one facet of American history yes, but it is very far from the "definition" of the country.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > What exactly are the indigenous people of Germany? Ha! I remember a drunken night with a north-american colleague; he asked why didn't we have indigenous people here in Europe. Then he suddenly realized the answer: oh, but it is you, you all are!
- gsich 6y ago
  I haven't heared anyone using those terms in spoken conversations.
powerapple 6y ago
Of course everyone would have a different feeling towards those words. Every country has their own history. I think it is a positive step in the US going through all these hurdles to address their past. US has the power and the economic leverage to really step to next level, it can afford it. Every country is different. Developing world wouldn't care about rights, because they have to make cakes as fast as possible, and developed world can spend much time on being fair. It is something we should do. Is a name change really that difficult for everyone? I remember when I first saw 'main' branch on Azure, yes, I have to slow down a bit, is it the end of world? It means something important for the US, and would be good for the future generation, I think I can afford the personal inconvenience. We, developers, are having the best job in this world, do we really need to get pissed off for this?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bildung 6y ago
  > Is a name change really that difficult for everyone? It's just a complete misunderstanding of the topic. Changing "master" branches simply confuses signified and signifier, and the fact that multiple signified can have the same signifier (like the signifier stool and the signified faeces and a thing to sit on. Removing the word doesn't remove the concept. If these companies actually wanted to work for diversity, they could just do exactly that: employ more people from other backgrounds, or have extra internships for early orientiation in high school, or fund computer labs schools in poor neighbourhoods and so on. Edit: As an illustration of how this doesn't affect the underlying meaning: In Germany there's a similar discourse going on, and the result is that the German radical right also started to talk about migrants instead of aliens or foreigners. But they didn't change their attitudes at all! They just adapted to the new word and kept their old concept.
- tester34 6y ago
  >Is a name change really that difficult for everyone? So whole world has to change because US has its core problems? >We, developers, are having the best job in this world, do we really need to get pissed off for this? do we? spend thousands of hours of your free time in front of computer just to learn stuff, then spend 3.5/5 or even more years for degree then stay competitive / in touch with tech as a part of life style just to have office/remote job with good pay? is this "best job"? seems decent, but I wouldn't call it "the best", especially in countries where programmers do not have really outstanding pay like in SF.
yosamino 6y ago
Germany is a really bad example though. The German way is to pretend racism just doesn't exist - today is the aniversary of a racist, arson attack that happened in 1994 killing 7 people (one of them pregnant) where the official line is still "the guy was just crazy what can you do ?!". If you want to transplant the "master"-example, look at all the discussions of how they name certain sauces,schnitzels and deserts as well as a weird insistance that offensively named streets, underground-stations and (for some reason) pharmacies "must not need to be renamed, why would you even be offended". Germany is not the example to go with concerning offensive language.
- linza 6y ago
  I don't buy the assertion that the German way is to pretend racism just doesn't exist. There are racists, and fascists, neo-nazis and old-nazis. They do exist, it's just that they don't pose that widespread of a problem in every day life, like it does in other western countries. I'd say gender (in)equality is something you will encounter much more often in every day life over there.
  - Brotkrumen 6y ago
    We've got a far right party that gets around 13% in national elections, in some states around 25%. We've got a minister of interior that does not want to start a study on racism in the police forces. That's two of the big issues, that's not even every-day racism where it's hard to get an apartment or a job with a "foreign name", underrepresentation in leading positions or that in some parts you'll get at least hassled for walking with brown skin. Germany is and always has been extremely conservative and integration/racism is an issue precisely because the largest party always saw imported skilled labor as people that should be forced back "home" again, even with a second and third generation growing up in Germany.
  - fho 6y ago
    Something about gender equality to keep in mind: It's about choice ... there are women (also in Germany) that gladly _chose_ to stay at home, _chose_ to prepare meals for their husband and _chose_ to care for the kids. On the other hand there are women that _chose_ to give their children into daycare weeks after birth to go back to work. It's not about condemning any lifestyle as wrong, it's about given everybody (males included) the ability to life their live as they want. Sadly this is far from the reality with median wages being barely high enough to sustain one person, forcing women (and men) to work and robbing them of their agency.
creato 6y ago
The funny thing is, I don't think very many people thought of "bad stuff" before this idiotic culture war planted it in everyone's mind, even if in a negative light. I would bet that most people didn't have any idea that words like "grandfather" or "blacklist" had (or didn't have) any racist history. Wouldn't it have been better to just let the words outgrow their history? These words were already dead or dying as racist terms. Not any more.
- pydry 6y ago
  I think the point was to generate a lot of noise that distracts away from the whole awkward "selling software to concentration camp" thing. And, policing language generates a spectacular amount of distracting, harmless (to Microsoft) controversy.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > I would bet that most people didn't have any idea that words like "grandfather" or "blacklist" had (or didn't have) any racist history. Faulty pattern recognition machine at blame.
- offby37years 6y ago
  The idiotic culture war is media led: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great-racial-awakening https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great... > In 2011, just 35% of white liberals thought racism in the United States was “a big problem,” according to national polling. By 2015, this figure had ballooned to 61% and further still to 77% in 2017.
- caf 6y ago
  I don't know, but it seems plausible that awareness of the term's origin might well be considerably higher among those whose own father or grandfather was disenfranchised by one of the original grandfather clauses. I at least was intellectually gratified to learn about it.
sgtnoodle 6y ago
"I'm in the USA. I think only in Germany are people so full of themselves that they over-generalize entire nations with their own ignorant assumptions." That would be a rather rude, dare I say hateful thing for me to say, wouldn't it? In reality, I really enjoyed all the places in Germany I've visited, and most of my interactions with German folk that I've interacted with socially and professionally over the years. I especially enjoyed taking a technical and engineering German language course, so I can appreciate words like "Kaftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung" and "benzinbetriebenes Motorsystem". I wouldn't think to make such a comment about the German people, like you did about people in the USA.
- vermilingua 6y ago
  Interpreting that as a personal attack, and leaping straight to a retaliation would sorta be evidence for their statement, no?
  - sgtnoodle 6y ago
    The point I'm attempting to make is that stating blanket negative over-generalizations about any group of people isn't productive, and in this case it's seemingly ironic to me. If you think I'm a hateful person because of pointing that out, then by your definition I am hateful and I'm okay with you thinking that. I obviously disagree, though, and I'm happy to attempt to civilly discuss that with you if you'd like.
funcDropShadow 6y ago
Actually, my first association - as a German - with master is the craftsman title "Meister".
- ekianjo 6y ago
  It is the only right association because it's the same word coming from "magister" in Latin and which traveled to become maestro in Italian, meister in German, maestre and then maitre in French and finally master in English.
  - dsun180 6y ago
    And then somewhere in 2019 it suddenly became a racist word against people of color in northern amerika.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      Pretty sure next we are going to end up banning letters, because there's probably some letters that are intrinsically racist or something.
- mbeex 6y ago
  I'm in no way a native speaker - but even I recognize that in English 'master' has - and always had - many different meanings. One of them completely equal to the German 'Meister'. It is all about context. Question is, why certain groups emphasize - or better: impose deceivingly by altering him - the wrong context to a crystal-clear situation.
- mikaeluman 6y ago
  Same in Swedish: Mästare. Magister is also a word used in Sweden for teachers at schools.
Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
In the Netherlands, which unlike Germany was significantly involved in the transatlantic slave trade, AFAIK the word meester never had any connotations of slavery, only of expertise and teaching ability (as in a guild master). It's still used to refer to a male teacher, particularly in elementary schools, as well as being the title used by lawyers. A slave owner was simply a slavenhouder.
- brnt 6y ago
  Or slavendrijver, which is still a very derogatory way to point out exploitative behavior. I think an important difference between ex-colonial European powers and the US is that the (ethnic) slavery did not take place on European soil. Most colonies were operated with very few Europeans to oversee, and as such people were not as exposed to it as people in the US, where masters and slaves would perhaps not live in the same part of town, but also not a continent away. So this may explain why those terms seem inoffensive/only have their meaning outside of the slavery context in Europe.

Tomte 6y ago

I wouldn't say they are full of hate. Slavery has defined the country and has repercussions still. But I'm really worried about how we import everything American to Germany without thinking twice. Left newspapers have started to write BIPoC everywhere when it comes to domestic issues. What exactly are the indigenous people of Germany? Even blacks are relatively rare. It would make much more sense to coin an acronym that includes Jews, Sinti and Roma, given our sordid history. But we simply take what American culture has thought up.

cabite 6y ago
Same here in France. We've had our first trans kid on what would be the equivalent of Oprah's show audience-wise just a few days ago.
myspy 6y ago
We have problems to integrate Turkish or Russian immigrants and their children as Germans, not as people from elsewhere. As well as the refugees from Syria.
- fho 6y ago
  Having lived in a mostly Turkish neighborhood for five years (as a German, Turkish landlord, Turkish "housemates" (?)) I think some just don't want to be integrated... Landlord was pretty chill and I kind of miss being able to just ask anything and he would try to make it happen (including things like repairing car motors). Housemates were of the mildly radicalized religious kind, with daughters that did not attend the normal school system and are now being married of early. I don't know if the German "integration system" has failed for the later ... they have the freedom to chose and they chose a path that is different from what is considered "normal" in the "West".
  - ficklepickle 6y ago
    I think "integration" is a sham. Integration implies a give and take, a compromise. It seems actually assimilation or submission is what many Euro countries want. As a Canadian (Vancouver), I can tell you true integration happens over generations of people working together and respecting each other. In those conditions, it is unavoidable. If either group lacks respect, the outcome is always conflict. You put their kids into school together young and they won't know not to be friends until you tell them. That was my experience, anyway.
    - bad_good_guy 6y ago
      And yet you've ignored the person you're responding to in their claim that turkish immigrants don't send their children to the same schools. I'm all for give and take but I wouldn't want the "give" to result in backwards steps for woman's rights being imported from the countries of origin
    - nix23 6y ago
      >It seems actually assimilation or submission is what many Euro countries want. No we think that forced marriage has no place in Europe, or the oppression of woman's. And yes, that's our culture..so is the freedom to choose your religion and to have free speech. If someone from another culture comes we are happy to integrate it into ours, but NOT when it clashes with our Laws. >You put their kids into school together young and they won't know not to be friends until you tell them. And what when they go into different schools (Jewish or Muslim etc), live in different parts of the City (look at Paris or Berlin), and never met someone outside of their bubble until 20 or later? BTW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_Canada
      - fho 6y ago
        > but NOT when it clashes with our Laws I said it in another post ... it's not about being forced into something, it's about freedom of choice. And that is something universal, it's just codified in our laws. It's completely fine if a women decides to become married and have children early ... it's probably not a good choice ... but morally there is no way to reject that. The problem arises when people never learn that they have a choice ... I have (female) friends from rural Germany that think it's perfectly reasonable to go study and once finished move in with their husband and be the perfect stay-at-home mom. edit: heck ... I even have friends from larger cities who would just prefer to be stay-at-home moms because that gives an excuse to sloth on the couch for half of the day :-)
- clusterfish 6y ago
  The point is, "BIPoC" means specifically "Black, Indigenous, People of Color". It does not mean "immigrants" or "refugees" or "all marginalized groups" or whoever else needs social justice in Germany. Borrowing that specific term for other purposes is stupid.
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  As an immigrant, I didn't want to leave my country, let alone integrate where I did. I was forced to because the government in my country steals and wastes so much money that the economy breaks and you can't make money there. Still the quality of life is much better at home and I'd rather stay there. All my friends are immigrants, I couldn care less to integrate here. Ideally I'd just rather live in a town with just immigrants from my country. As long as you keep them out of politics they'll probably won't rob you.
  - nlitened 6y ago
    > Ideally I'd just rather live in a town with just immigrants from my country. That town was in your country which you fled though.
  - stuaxo 6y ago
    Having met some white people in Asia, it's not like immigrant (ex-pat) community all make that much effort to integrate.
    - lokedhs 6y ago
      Just like any other immigrants, westeners in Asia integrate do different degrees. Some only hang out with people from their own country and refuse to go to anything but restaurants that serve their own food. While others practically become locals. Some nationalities integrate more than others. This goes for different European countries even, so it has very little to do with "race".
  - jdmoreira 6y ago
    Interesting. I also left my country but mostly because there wasn’t really anything left for me there and I met my girlfriend and she was from somewhere else... So I moved to her country. Her country is clearly superior in almost everything except for weather and food. I like living here and I've made good friends and enjoy my life here. Now the curious part comes... I have zero attachment to both countries, their culture and their national identities. I couldn’t care less about their language or customs. I just see myself has some kind of post-nationalistic person that would much rather speak English with everyone, hang out on the internet and live wherever. As far as I'm concerned national identities and culture are useless and holding us down as a species. I really wish people could outgrow this nonsense.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
goatinaboat 6y ago
Slavery has defined the country I don't think this is true. What percentage of White Americans, during the period of slavery, owned any slaves? Was it even 1%? It is one facet of American history yes, but it is very far from the "definition" of the country.
enriquto 6y ago
> What exactly are the indigenous people of Germany? Ha! I remember a drunken night with a north-american colleague; he asked why didn't we have indigenous people here in Europe. Then he suddenly realized the answer: oh, but it is you, you all are!
gsich 6y ago
I haven't heared anyone using those terms in spoken conversations.

powerapple 6y ago

Of course everyone would have a different feeling towards those words. Every country has their own history. I think it is a positive step in the US going through all these hurdles to address their past. US has the power and the economic leverage to really step to next level, it can afford it. Every country is different. Developing world wouldn't care about rights, because they have to make cakes as fast as possible, and developed world can spend much time on being fair. It is something we should do. Is a name change really that difficult for everyone? I remember when I first saw 'main' branch on Azure, yes, I have to slow down a bit, is it the end of world? It means something important for the US, and would be good for the future generation, I think I can afford the personal inconvenience. We, developers, are having the best job in this world, do we really need to get pissed off for this?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bildung 6y ago
> Is a name change really that difficult for everyone? It's just a complete misunderstanding of the topic. Changing "master" branches simply confuses signified and signifier, and the fact that multiple signified can have the same signifier (like the signifier stool and the signified faeces and a thing to sit on. Removing the word doesn't remove the concept. If these companies actually wanted to work for diversity, they could just do exactly that: employ more people from other backgrounds, or have extra internships for early orientiation in high school, or fund computer labs schools in poor neighbourhoods and so on. Edit: As an illustration of how this doesn't affect the underlying meaning: In Germany there's a similar discourse going on, and the result is that the German radical right also started to talk about migrants instead of aliens or foreigners. But they didn't change their attitudes at all! They just adapted to the new word and kept their old concept.
tester34 6y ago
>Is a name change really that difficult for everyone? So whole world has to change because US has its core problems? >We, developers, are having the best job in this world, do we really need to get pissed off for this? do we? spend thousands of hours of your free time in front of computer just to learn stuff, then spend 3.5/5 or even more years for degree then stay competitive / in touch with tech as a part of life style just to have office/remote job with good pay? is this "best job"? seems decent, but I wouldn't call it "the best", especially in countries where programmers do not have really outstanding pay like in SF.

yosamino 6y ago

Germany is a really bad example though. The German way is to pretend racism just doesn't exist - today is the aniversary of a racist, arson attack that happened in 1994 killing 7 people (one of them pregnant) where the official line is still "the guy was just crazy what can you do ?!". If you want to transplant the "master"-example, look at all the discussions of how they name certain sauces,schnitzels and deserts as well as a weird insistance that offensively named streets, underground-stations and (for some reason) pharmacies "must not need to be renamed, why would you even be offended". Germany is not the example to go with concerning offensive language.

linza 6y ago
I don't buy the assertion that the German way is to pretend racism just doesn't exist. There are racists, and fascists, neo-nazis and old-nazis. They do exist, it's just that they don't pose that widespread of a problem in every day life, like it does in other western countries. I'd say gender (in)equality is something you will encounter much more often in every day life over there.
- Brotkrumen 6y ago
  We've got a far right party that gets around 13% in national elections, in some states around 25%. We've got a minister of interior that does not want to start a study on racism in the police forces. That's two of the big issues, that's not even every-day racism where it's hard to get an apartment or a job with a "foreign name", underrepresentation in leading positions or that in some parts you'll get at least hassled for walking with brown skin. Germany is and always has been extremely conservative and integration/racism is an issue precisely because the largest party always saw imported skilled labor as people that should be forced back "home" again, even with a second and third generation growing up in Germany.
- fho 6y ago
  Something about gender equality to keep in mind: It's about choice ... there are women (also in Germany) that gladly _chose_ to stay at home, _chose_ to prepare meals for their husband and _chose_ to care for the kids. On the other hand there are women that _chose_ to give their children into daycare weeks after birth to go back to work. It's not about condemning any lifestyle as wrong, it's about given everybody (males included) the ability to life their live as they want. Sadly this is far from the reality with median wages being barely high enough to sustain one person, forcing women (and men) to work and robbing them of their agency.

creato 6y ago

The funny thing is, I don't think very many people thought of "bad stuff" before this idiotic culture war planted it in everyone's mind, even if in a negative light. I would bet that most people didn't have any idea that words like "grandfather" or "blacklist" had (or didn't have) any racist history. Wouldn't it have been better to just let the words outgrow their history? These words were already dead or dying as racist terms. Not any more.

pydry 6y ago
I think the point was to generate a lot of noise that distracts away from the whole awkward "selling software to concentration camp" thing. And, policing language generates a spectacular amount of distracting, harmless (to Microsoft) controversy.
ekianjo 6y ago
> I would bet that most people didn't have any idea that words like "grandfather" or "blacklist" had (or didn't have) any racist history. Faulty pattern recognition machine at blame.
offby37years 6y ago
The idiotic culture war is media led: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great-racial-awakening https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great... > In 2011, just 35% of white liberals thought racism in the United States was “a big problem,” according to national polling. By 2015, this figure had ballooned to 61% and further still to 77% in 2017.
caf 6y ago
I don't know, but it seems plausible that awareness of the term's origin might well be considerably higher among those whose own father or grandfather was disenfranchised by one of the original grandfather clauses. I at least was intellectually gratified to learn about it.

sgtnoodle 6y ago

"I'm in the USA. I think only in Germany are people so full of themselves that they over-generalize entire nations with their own ignorant assumptions." That would be a rather rude, dare I say hateful thing for me to say, wouldn't it? In reality, I really enjoyed all the places in Germany I've visited, and most of my interactions with German folk that I've interacted with socially and professionally over the years. I especially enjoyed taking a technical and engineering German language course, so I can appreciate words like "Kaftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung" and "benzinbetriebenes Motorsystem". I wouldn't think to make such a comment about the German people, like you did about people in the USA.

vermilingua 6y ago
Interpreting that as a personal attack, and leaping straight to a retaliation would sorta be evidence for their statement, no?
- sgtnoodle 6y ago
  The point I'm attempting to make is that stating blanket negative over-generalizations about any group of people isn't productive, and in this case it's seemingly ironic to me. If you think I'm a hateful person because of pointing that out, then by your definition I am hateful and I'm okay with you thinking that. I obviously disagree, though, and I'm happy to attempt to civilly discuss that with you if you'd like.

funcDropShadow 6y ago

Actually, my first association - as a German - with master is the craftsman title "Meister".

ekianjo 6y ago
It is the only right association because it's the same word coming from "magister" in Latin and which traveled to become maestro in Italian, meister in German, maestre and then maitre in French and finally master in English.
- dsun180 6y ago
  And then somewhere in 2019 it suddenly became a racist word against people of color in northern amerika.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Pretty sure next we are going to end up banning letters, because there's probably some letters that are intrinsically racist or something.
mbeex 6y ago
I'm in no way a native speaker - but even I recognize that in English 'master' has - and always had - many different meanings. One of them completely equal to the German 'Meister'. It is all about context. Question is, why certain groups emphasize - or better: impose deceivingly by altering him - the wrong context to a crystal-clear situation.
mikaeluman 6y ago
Same in Swedish: Mästare. Magister is also a word used in Sweden for teachers at schools.

Ichthypresbyter 6y ago

In the Netherlands, which unlike Germany was significantly involved in the transatlantic slave trade, AFAIK the word meester never had any connotations of slavery, only of expertise and teaching ability (as in a guild master). It's still used to refer to a male teacher, particularly in elementary schools, as well as being the title used by lawyers. A slave owner was simply a slavenhouder.

brnt 6y ago
Or slavendrijver, which is still a very derogatory way to point out exploitative behavior. I think an important difference between ex-colonial European powers and the US is that the (ethnic) slavery did not take place on European soil. Most colonies were operated with very few Europeans to oversee, and as such people were not as exposed to it as people in the US, where masters and slaves would perhaps not live in the same part of town, but also not a continent away. So this may explain why those terms seem inoffensive/only have their meaning outside of the slavery context in Europe.