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Do you consider the term "blacklist" a "racist" term? If yes, what is the alternative?
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light = life = white = good
darkness = death = black = bad
This is an age-old concept used in many aspects in life. Only racists apply this to skin color.
Master/Slave is a technical term, that exactly describes, what is going on, so I don't think, it makes much sense to replace those terms with something kind of similar.
Yes, the origin of these terms is slavery, which is a bad thing. But being enslaved is not a "privilege" of black people. All kinds of people have been enslaved all over the world in history.
When I see these discussions, 1984's Newspeak comes to my mind every time. Abolishing specific terms only because some people are using them in a bad way won't make the world better.
Racist will discriminate people, no matter what words they have available.
Even if these words aren't necessarily racist, what's wrong with getting rid of what sounds like exclusionary language? It's a relatively minor change compared to what we're used to in the developing world.
Those words by themselves are not racist, it is always the context that makes the meaning. If you think they are exclusionary, it's only in your mind. I usually don't think of racism if I hear those words, but I do recognize some people do. Those words are not exclusionary or racist because they exist, but rather how they are used.
How far do you want to go? Should we really check any context where the words black or white are used for the potential of a racist interpretation? Maybe abolishing the words black and white on the whole would help? I don't see those changes solving any real problems.
Precisely. I really do understand where people are coming from with this, but the efforts - noble as they may be - seem misplaced. The real problems are much bigger, and to be honest - very hard to solve, or even begin to solve. Creating racist problems where they don't exist in such a way as to allow a simple solution may make people feel good that they are solving 'something' or doing their part, but ultimately does nothing to stop racist people being racist, or tackle any of the very real injustices people face. Inserting accusations of racism everywhere at the drop of a hat dilutes the real issues and potentially creates more division where there need not be any.
Many things:
I wrote more about these and other issues in 8 problems with replacing "master" in Git.
Why do you feel like it describes "exactly" what is going on?
I would think because you have the knowledge of what slaves and masters were and are. If you remove the meaning of what a slave is, it does not describe it in any way.
I totally agree here. The issue must be eradicated from the root, not just add a cover on top.
If you remove the meaning of any word, it does not describe what it had before ;-)
The primary definition of a master/slave relationship - at least for me - is, that the slave has to do exactly what the master commands, and nothing else. IMO this describes exactly the behaviour for almost all topics, that I can think of, where these terms are used.
Words always have meanings, that's why we use them.
We shouldn't let racists force us to restrict our language, just because a non-racist word that is used in many different contexts, could be racist in one specific usage.
I agree with this, although the word slave has really bad connotations, not just racist but un-ethical IMO.
That being said, I have never come across the word Slave being used anywhere in this context, apart from some technical papers from 10y ago or some old docs.
I see more the parent->child naming, or primary/secondary, or process/subprocess...
I totally agree.
Those terms are used in all kinds of context, like e. g. software, relays, lighting fixtures, busses, BDSM, ...
In some of these contexts it's easy to replace them with other and maybe better fitting terms.
But things are totally different for whitelist/blacklist: Here the origin is not unethical, so i don't see any reason to replace them.
Why do we even call people of African/Nigerian descent black? they are brown. It's so strange. I would be all for calling them brown instead of black and leaving these other words whose origins had nothing to do with Africans alone. Do most people even know the Etymology of the word? I think some people hear a word and assume the worst. What does that tell you about those people and what they think anyway? If we are trying to treat everyone equally, (as humans, as people) why do so many people perseverate about these useless things?
Here is the Etymology:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/866ynp/what_are_the_origins_of_the_words_blacklist_and/dw3svkw?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
It may not have been intended as explicitly racist, and hard to prove either way, but it perpetuates unhealthy (not to mention arbitrary) prejudice about colours—that one colour denotes good and another denotes bad.
More meaningful terms:
What's arbitrary about them? Darkness has always been associated with fear and danger - and for good reason. It's true in nature that darkness can be dangerous, and the light is seen as a place of comfort and safety. This is reflected in art, literature, and customs the world over.
Again, this is nothing to do with race, and is inserting racism where none exists - possibly, as has been mentioned, at the expense of ignoring or cheapening the real issues of racism and prejudice that actually affect and blight people's lives.
Fair point about the traditional association. That said, words evolve and can have multiple associations and interpretations. The association of black = danger and white = safety was beneficial when humans lived in pre-modern, ethnically homogenous hunters & gatherers society. But it might yield more harm than benefits in today’s society.
No-one can prove with certainty whether or not the particular terms “blacklist” and “whitelist” are racist. If you want to insist it’s not racist and hence should not be changed I won’t argue with you, I’ll just agree to disagree. For me it’s simple: if there are clearer alternatives less prone to perpetuating existing prejudice, I’d favour them.
Are you suggesting all horror films should be full of light? The association is hard-wired in our nature. The traditions take their cues from simple realities of the natural world. Where are you more likely to be injured - in the dark where you can't see anything? Or in the light where everything is visible and danger can be avoided?
As for the actual term 'blacklist' - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting...
To me, it looks more like SJWs are pushing for the evolution. Why are they so desperate to create new racist terms out of nowhere?
Why stop at colors such as black or white?
Let’s abolish the conotation/denotation of green for money, red for prosperity, blue for sadness, yellow for warnings, red for forbidden altogether!
We use words to describe things. Why can’t it be colors?
No-one’s abolishing mentions of “black” and “white” in the entire human language, just in this particular instance of programming terminologies. When there are more straightforward, less loaded alternatives, yes I’m in favour of them.
If people create DB table/columns or variable names called
yellowListfor warnings orgreenListfor financial account debits—even without additional sociopolitical context of racial prejudice—I’d suggest replacing them with more sensible names, too.Hey, I would too! So we have something in common!
But you see, I would forbid using these terms because there’s no such thing as yellowlist or greenlist. Whereas blacklist and whitelist are common, widely, internationally accepted and understood words that are way beyond tech, race, social and politics.
These examples are not "internationally accepted". In fact, if they were, prosperity would be forbidden, wouldn't it?
Colours have different connotations in different cultures already. They don't need to be part of the name for anything else; we don't benefit from the metaphor.
Allowlist / denylist.
I'm pretty happy that we have open-source projects like Alex for checking against these words. Here's what the CLI tool had to say about
words.txtfile containing words whitelist and blacklist.I've set up Alex to lint my blog posts on publishing via GitHub Actions. It isn't flawless, though, but there's plenty of room for configuration.
Yep, regardless of the little arguments about the legacy terms, it's not super hard to think of intelligent alternatives 🧠 🌟 🙏🏻 allowlist/denylist is very clear to read and understand.
Good ideas:)
I don't think of terms such as "blacklist", "blackmail", "blackout" or even "black site" as being related to race at all and I worry a bit that by shifting the focus of a real problem (racism) onto where it is least useful for the majority of those affected by it is a diversion tactic right out of a CIA sabotage manual (there is one btw).
Considering the number of black people who are near the breadline, and struggling to get their kids educated it seems pretty depressing that these comparatively rich highly educated folks have chosen this as their way to help. They could literally do anything else and have more impact. All they care about is the appearance of virtue, its entirely self centred.
This is like walking past a starving homeless person and then telling someone that calling them a hobo is discrimination. You should have stopped and given them at minimum a sandwich.
No, I don't think that it's a racist term. But maybe that's because it's what I grew up with and so it's just another word to me plus I don't read meaning into a lot of things.
Sometimes words are just words.
I just saw this on another site, but relating to the same issues...
I think it's a really difficult topic.... everyone has their own point of view.
I found this explanation about the etymology of the work black-list. Quite interesting.
I never liked the term Blacklist/Whitelist, as it does not reflect exactly what it is or what it does, you must know the context and meaning beforehand. I would think something like Allowlist/Denylist, as said in other comments would explain way better what they are and do.
I think it is important to revise these kinds of terms and words, but they should not blur the real issues that are happening out there to real people. I think we could focus our efforts on trying to educate our fellows, friends and family about inclusion, equality and most importantly respect to others humans... instead of trying to change words... for me this is the biggest issue nowadays, education focuses too little on these topics... social media fuels these behaviours, as well as some Leaders out there.
I'm sad this "revolution" probably will fade away in a certain amount of time, as it has happened in the past :( I'm even sadder that we still need to talk about this shit, it makes me feel sick...
PD: I just wanted to say, that posting this has been quite weird, I can't even post this without thinking about how people might react if it's going to offend someone, if they will take it out of context, etc... And I imagine I'm not the only one that has felt this. It's sad :(
We should stop revisionism right now. Reviewing history and language and culture is not going to make racist people less racist
It's not gonna kill anyone if I choose to make them think for 0.3 seconds about what an "allowlist" is, tho. It's pretty obvious, and you only have to encounter it once or twice to get used to it. We're all free to use the language we choose
Yup. It's a slippery slope. Where does it end? How long before the book burning starts?
Let's abolish these terms to start with -
blacklist / whitelist 👉 denylist / allowlist
master / slave 👉 primary / replica
primary/replica mostly only applies for databases though, whereas master/slave is waaaay more broad than that.
Secondary generally works in most of the cases where replica doesn't apply
Absolutely. primary / secondary it is then
master/slave -> Puppeteer/Puppet
master/slave -> Gepeto/Pinochio
As well as being more inclusive — which I personally think should be enough reason to make the switch — denylist/allowlist is just plain easier to understand!
I think when folks are entrenched in tech, they forget that the words blacklist/whitelist aren't actually regularly used by many people.
For instance, I was just explaining this debate to my wife and she wondered Wait a minute, what's a whitelist? ... when I said, "Oh that's an allowlist." it instantly became clear to her.
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