
The use of "blacklist" is offensive - Behemouth
https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/13604
======
nightcracker
The colors black and white representing bad/good, darkness/light crosses
cultural boundaries and predate racial tensions by centuries. Fear of the
night and worshiping the light are universal. The idea that someone is being
racist just by using words that refer to this concept is absurd, and so is
choosing to not use these words for this reason.

These misguided attempts to control people's speech do not resolve anyones
struggles in any meaningful way and if anything only introduces political
fatigue for your cause.

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pvinis
Quick, someone make a chess board with squares that are all the same color and
use shapes inside them to differentiate, like a circle and a rhombus. And the
chess pieces should be all the same color and same height too. In order to
differentiate, they all have post-it notes on them, that say their team and
role. The players choose their team name, and agree on roles names. Then the
game can start. Don't forget to flip a coin to decide who starts.

I don't mean to make fun or provoke, but I think we sometimes go too far when
it comes to PC etc.

~~~
cmroanirgo
You forgot to mention that everyone needs to be a winner at the end, because
no one wants to be the loser.

~~~
pvinis
In my thinking, winner/loser is not a separation we need to remove, since it
changed per game, and it's determined by the skill of the player in that game
and match. I tried to think of something that people can potentially complain
about. I hope they don't. I really really hope they don't complain about
winner/loser of a game though!

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bayesian_horse
While I am entirely in favor of non-racist terminology and not offending
anyone, let alone minorities, I don't quite get how master/slave and "killer
app" may offend anyone and haven't heard of anyone feeling offended. If this
is a big deal, please tell me and others.

Same goes for "blacklist/whitelist". i'm not sure this ever referred to skin
color...

~~~
Jonnax
On the lists. The terms mean that black is bad and white is good.

If you have a chat with a racist they'll also tell you that black people are
bad and white people are good.

I'm no expert but language shapes how we interact and perceive the world.

It's like cultures that have different sets of words to describe different
shades of colours. I remember reading how this gives people in general more or
less of an ability to differenciate shades.

[http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb05/hues.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb05/hues.aspx)

~~~
smsm42
Oh yes, the so called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the beloved myth of the speech
police. It makes great science fiction (read Babel-17 by Delany, it's a
classic) but unfortunately as a practical idea that states there's scientific
proof that if we use words like "blacklist" it makes us prejudiced against
dark-skinned people (but banning this word makes it go away) is total bunk.
There are some cultural differences in how people prefer to express themselves
but this is lightyears away from "language defines thought" that some people
seem to believe.

------
playpause
Blacklisting doesn’t come from anything race related, apparently.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting)

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FundThrowaway
Oh dear, what's next? Gender neutral electrical connectors?

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knaik94
I think it's the user that makes a connection with racism. I always thought
blacklist and whitelist was based on color absorption, black absorbs and
therefore doesn't let through anything. White was simply the color opposite to
black.

I assumed master/slave was adopted from the idea of a master record. The main
thing that came to mind is audio mastering, not people. Am I missing something
about the origin?

It's nice to see changes that make things more clear, however I wish political
correctness was not a factor.

Are orphan processes and brainfuck next?

~~~
Fredej
Think of the orphans!

When i think master/slave i think SPI master/slave, where the slaves only do
as told by the master. In which case the primary/replica relationship would
not be suitable, while the master/slave relationship is descriptive of what
actually goes on.

If we have one (in my view unoffensive, but that might be a cultural thing)
term which adequately describes the relationship - why not use it?

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s9w
Is this a joke-issue? I honestly can't tell. I would say yes, but there is an
actual commit.

------
kgraves
Why stop at Redis [1] and React? The Linux kernel [2], Apple's Darwin kernel
[3] and I am sure many more have references to master/slave.

[1]
[https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/3185](https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/3185)

[2]
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?q=master+slave&unsc...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?q=master+slave&unscoped_q=master+slave)

[3] [https://github.com/apple/darwin-
xnu/search?q=master+slave&un...](https://github.com/apple/darwin-
xnu/search?q=master+slave&unscoped_q=master+slave)

------
illuminati1911
This is what happens when you try to negotiate with these left-wing facists.
When you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. The whole "I'm offended"
culture is causing this and will never stop until they reach their dream
Orwellian society where everything is forbidden, everything is offensive and
nothing is ok anymore.

Enjoy!

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Jonnax
Sounds fair.

I imagine "Black Magic" probably originated from a term describing African
traditions and cultures.

~~~
dagw
Etymology is sketchy, but most likely that isn't that case. Using light and
dark to mean good and evil goes back millennia and is almost certainly
unrelated to race. There are records of the term nigromancy (literally black
magic) being used to refer to communicating with the dead, summing demons etc.
since the middle ages.

~~~
Jonnax
The middle ages started after the fall of the western Roman empire.

So there was more exposure to different races that what's conventionally
thought by people in the time periods.

Like a across the Mediterranean from Greece and Italy is Africa.

Conquering Northern Africa have been a goal for centuries before that.

Also the middle East has also been a goal to capture.

So for millennia in Europe the idea of conquering the lands of darker skinned
people has been a thing.

~~~
dagw
I'm not disputing any of that. I'm just not necessarily convinced that the
mapping of light and dark to good and evil was connected to skin color.

And the 'black magic' traditions of the middle ages almost certainly drew
their inspiration from the rituals of the Hellenistic mystery cults and
related groups rather than any African tradition or cultures.

All the being said, I'm straying quite far out of my area of expertise here,
so I'm certainly open to be proven wrong.

~~~
FundThrowaway
That's because it has nothing to do with skin colour and everything to do with
the age old religious concept of light and darkness. However people will find
a reason to get upset about anything so at this point it might as well be.

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odiroot
Well, humour is the best defence against tyranny.

