Do you consider the term "blacklist" a "racist" term? If yes, what is the alternative?

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.

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.

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.

I totally agree here. The issue must be eradicated from the root, not just add a cover on top.

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

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.

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?

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.txt file containing words whitelist and blacklist.

❯ alex -t words.txt
words.txt
  1:1-1:10  warning  `whitelist` may be insensitive, use `passlist`, `alrightlist`, `safelist`, `allow list` instead  whitelist  retext-equality
  2:1-2:10  warning  `blacklist` may be insensitive, use `blocklist`, `wronglist`, `banlist`, `deny list` instead     blacklist  retext-equality

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.

Good ideas:)

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.

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?

primary/replica mostly only applies for databases though, whereas master/slave is waaaay more broad than that.

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.

Black kids are growing up in a world where scary things come from "The Black Lagoon" or "The Black Forest." It's a lazy trope to put "Black" in front of a place or thing to make it sound scarier. You don't want to be the "Black Sheep" or buy things on the "Black Market." Having taught kids for 5 years, I can tell you they pick up on these things.

Passing all of these off as 'lazy tropes' is lazy in itself, and does a disservice to the kids. Better to equip them with the tools to recognise context and research the origins of different uses of the word 'black' and allow them to determine whether racism was intended. Without these critical thinking tools, they will merely attack or reject perfectly innocent uses of words because they have been taken wildly out of context - leading them to a path of conflict rather than understanding.

There is a base human fear of the dark. This is natural. I can't speak to the exact motivations of the original coiners of "The Black Lagoon" or "The Black Forest" but tapping into a basic human fear of the dark seems a perfectly valid and effective literary device to instil fear in your audience - especially in a filmed entertainment where the viewers may not desire any level of verbal sophistication.

As for 'Black Sheep' and 'Black Market' - again, to my knowledge, there is nothing racist in the etymology of these terms. 'Black Sheep' is used to denote something unusual within a group of similar things - black sheep are unusual in a herd that is made up of predominantly uniform white sheep. There's no racism or prejudice there - unless you choose to insert it. Some information on the etymology of 'Black Market' can be found here - again, there is no racism behind it unless you choose to insert it.

Context is everything

"Terms matter. Words matter. Meanings and connotations become internalized."

Well said, Alex!

And I very much agree. I don't see why folks feel the need to push back against using more inclusive language.

If you're relying on use of the words "white" and "black" to convince me that something is racist, then you don't have a good argument either.

If you try your hardest to find racism in every little nook and cranny, you're always going to find it because that's what you want to see. The real inequalities and mistreatment of people caused by actual racism are not well served by the policing of language that has, at best, a vague interpretation as being racist.

Energies would be better spent elsewhere - police reform, cultural understanding, better education about history, stronger laws against discrimination etc.

The etymology might not have anything to do with race, but think of it like a programmer.

Were tables-for-layout invented to be bad for the web? No. As time passed, though, people started seeing that they weren't really that great of an idea, and moved to something better.

We don't have to go back and re-label all our old IDE devices or flash our BIOSes. It's just a sensible thing to do to make things better going forward.

Exactly!

Oh but we SHALL! 😱 We really will.