Honestly, I've never even given a second thought to the use of the terms "whitelist", "blacklist" or "master". I mean, I'm not against this change in any way, but I'm also not sure if these terms are commonplace because they stem from racially charged meaning or not. Guess my privileged ass has never given it much thought.

https://zdnet.com/article/...

It's never bothered me, but I'm an upper class white male in a developed country. So I'm not the appropriate person to decide. I do know, though, that making the change costs me nothing, so I'm fine with it.

@bahua
This. The thing that's triggering for me is the voices driving this discussion are white as the driven snow. It feels performative. "Look at me, I'm an ally, give me karma pointskthxbai now back to our regularly scheduled privilege." These types of things need to be led by the people they negatively impact.

@SortOfTested I absolutely agree, but I feel like the only place to start by being an ally without being a total tool is to at least spread the word and contribute to the conversation. I feel like the alternative for those not impacted is to just stand idly by, which seems worse, no?

@T0D0
The thing about being an ally is, it's something they can acknowledge you as, not something you choose to be. You make a decision by decision, moment by moment decision to act in the way you feel is good and supportive.

The thing about this is, the IETF paper that kicked this whole thing off was cooked up in a vacuum with a bunch of white inclusiveness experts. That in and of itself is fine, they're trying. The next step however is not to act on it, but to ask the offended parties how they feel the solution should implemented and if they want to be a part of it as a champion. That's where the author's, and bloggers, etc crossed the line to actively asserting privilege. They grabbed the mic, and in doing so, made it about themselves.

The thing white people need to understand in all of this is it's not our war. We can choose to be soldiers in the fight, but when we take up the flag as champions, we're no longer leaders. They are the generals in this fight, our place is one of support, beside, behind, or in front of in protection, but not speaking on behalf of.

I feel hypocrisy when some want to stop systematic racism and others are like "nah, we gonna waste time by discussing words". I mean, the Roman and the Greek empires had white slaves too. Maybe white people should have a say in that as well.

But can we take a break from this ridiculous and absolutely hypocritical mockery of a conversation to address the racism before another one dies?

(by conversation, I didn't mean your rant. I mean the whole word-changing argument)

P. S. I was already pissed at this argument, as you might notice.

The thing that worries me about this is simply that it's a bandaid, it's not fundamentally changing anything. I dare say virtually no technical person thinks of anything even remotely racist when they see "master" and "slave" in a technical context. Is this change going to change the hearts and minds of the very few who MAY think of that sort of thing? Clearly not. So what's the point? What's the goal? I suppose the argument is that it's one small step along a path of greater change, and I suppose that's true to at least some extent... but I just can't help but think this is pointless and is probably more virtue-signaling than anything approaching real change. Really, I guess what I'm saying is if we're just changing words, effectively for appearance's sake, without hearts and minds being changed, then isn't it just a form of sweeping things under the rug? Isn't it just pushing unpleasant thoughts into the shadows? I don't know, I'm not against it per se, just seems pointless.

@molaram
They already are. Fewer and fewer companies manage their own DBs.

It is worthless pandering from companies who does not give a shit about blacks, yellows or normal people.

So are we also gonna change master's degrees to main's degrees with the same logic?