4 ms·

I actually sort of agree with retiring master and slave because they were just not good descriptive names. Primary and secondary are more accurate descriptions.

by atonse 6y ago

I actually sort of agree with retiring master and slave because they were just not good descriptive names. Primary and secondary are more accurate descriptions. But I am still struggling to see an issue with blacklist and whitelist as they actually don’t seem to have anything to do with race, nor have they ever. They have more to do with darkness and light, or death, etc. Like something being a black box just has no relation whatsoever to race. And if we start to change words that demonstrably have nothing to do with race, then anything is fair game. And that’s just a very unnerving place to be.

Tostino 6y ago
This is where I'm at too. Totally on board for retiring the use of master/slave for primary/replica. But like you said, whitelist/blacklist didn't have anything to do with race. I just don't see why it's relevant at all to the conversation when we are talking about terms or names that may be racially insensitive. It's on you to bring up evidence for why a phrase is insensitive. I've yet to see any.
- anonfunction 6y ago
  The argument is that the underlying meaning of whitelist being “ok” and blacklist being “not ok” implies some bias based on color. It wasn’t long ago that there were “whites only” and “no blacks allowed” signs throughout the US. For foreign speakers using a more descriptive name like allowlist and denylist is a benefit as well.
  - Tostino 6y ago
    I mean I am not going to fight kicking and screaming as language evolves. I am also for descriptive names like allowlist/denylist. I just don't see the argument for changing that phrase it in the same light as I see the argument against master/slave.
  - atonse 6y ago
    These references have everything to do with presence and absence of light, not race. We are diurnal so we mostly see light as a positive (daylight, when we are awake), and darkness as a negative (night when we are asleep, and have evolved to be more wary of a situation where we can’t see well). My argument for all this is, instead of actually vilifying the colors themselves which are meaningless, why don’t we stop referring to humans as white and black? Where’s that debate? Because those words are meaningless. Neither are white nor black. They’re brown. We are all different shades of brown.
ithkuil 6y ago
Quantum supremacy, command execution, whitespace, race condition, Red-black trees, blackboard, n-gram, Domain Specific Language, Domain, Chained iterators, locks. Jokes aside, what matters is what you mean by words and how do you feel when you realize that what you're saying genuinely offends somebody. Imagine you don't really think about slavery when you say "sell down the river". Somebody points it out to you what it actually means. You can say "oh, shit" and try to avoid the phrase. Or you can say "it's my inalienable right to keep using this sentence". Or you can say "well, yes in this case it makes sense, this sentence is racist, but if we start to police words, where does it stop?" Let's see; let's replace that sentence with any of the above. Is "whitespace" really a space for white people or is it because space between words is ink-free? Is a "race condition" a condition of a race of people or a competition of speed? The words are spelled and pronounced the same but they are not the same word. One comes from romance languages and the other from Norse. But it's not only etymology. Contrast "master" in "master-slave" where it clearly means the owner/controller of the slave and it stems from shameful practices actually happened in our past by and to our ancestors. Contrast this with "master copy", "to master an art", etc. where the word retains its original meaning of "teacher" (magister). Be smart, be curious, don't stop at the surface.
- atonse 6y ago
  Yes I totally agree with you. When this whitelist/blacklist stuff came to my awareness it didn’t sound right so I looked it up. And it seems totally unrelated so it’s a made up problem to solve. I also agree about there being nothing wrong with the word master, in the context of mastery of a craft etc. But with databases, a slave often replaces the master if the master stops working. That simply never happened in real life so it’s not even close to an accurate set of terms.

by atonse 6y ago

Tostino 6y ago

This is where I'm at too. Totally on board for retiring the use of master/slave for primary/replica. But like you said, whitelist/blacklist didn't have anything to do with race. I just don't see why it's relevant at all to the conversation when we are talking about terms or names that may be racially insensitive. It's on you to bring up evidence for why a phrase is insensitive. I've yet to see any.

anonfunction 6y ago
The argument is that the underlying meaning of whitelist being “ok” and blacklist being “not ok” implies some bias based on color. It wasn’t long ago that there were “whites only” and “no blacks allowed” signs throughout the US. For foreign speakers using a more descriptive name like allowlist and denylist is a benefit as well.
- Tostino 6y ago
  I mean I am not going to fight kicking and screaming as language evolves. I am also for descriptive names like allowlist/denylist. I just don't see the argument for changing that phrase it in the same light as I see the argument against master/slave.
- atonse 6y ago
  These references have everything to do with presence and absence of light, not race. We are diurnal so we mostly see light as a positive (daylight, when we are awake), and darkness as a negative (night when we are asleep, and have evolved to be more wary of a situation where we can’t see well). My argument for all this is, instead of actually vilifying the colors themselves which are meaningless, why don’t we stop referring to humans as white and black? Where’s that debate? Because those words are meaningless. Neither are white nor black. They’re brown. We are all different shades of brown.

ithkuil 6y ago

Quantum supremacy, command execution, whitespace, race condition, Red-black trees, blackboard, n-gram, Domain Specific Language, Domain, Chained iterators, locks. Jokes aside, what matters is what you mean by words and how do you feel when you realize that what you're saying genuinely offends somebody. Imagine you don't really think about slavery when you say "sell down the river". Somebody points it out to you what it actually means. You can say "oh, shit" and try to avoid the phrase. Or you can say "it's my inalienable right to keep using this sentence". Or you can say "well, yes in this case it makes sense, this sentence is racist, but if we start to police words, where does it stop?" Let's see; let's replace that sentence with any of the above. Is "whitespace" really a space for white people or is it because space between words is ink-free? Is a "race condition" a condition of a race of people or a competition of speed? The words are spelled and pronounced the same but they are not the same word. One comes from romance languages and the other from Norse. But it's not only etymology. Contrast "master" in "master-slave" where it clearly means the owner/controller of the slave and it stems from shameful practices actually happened in our past by and to our ancestors. Contrast this with "master copy", "to master an art", etc. where the word retains its original meaning of "teacher" (magister). Be smart, be curious, don't stop at the surface.

atonse 6y ago
Yes I totally agree with you. When this whitelist/blacklist stuff came to my awareness it didn’t sound right so I looked it up. And it seems totally unrelated so it’s a made up problem to solve. I also agree about there being nothing wrong with the word master, in the context of mastery of a craft etc. But with databases, a slave often replaces the master if the master stops working. That simply never happened in real life so it’s not even close to an accurate set of terms.