Same goes for "blacklist/whitelist". i'm not sure this ever referred to skin color...
There are certain people that enjoy the feeling of righteous indignation at finding "offenses" and "calling out" other people on them. This allows them to feel morally superior and as if they contribute something to the society. So instead of writing code or positively contribute in some other ways, they play the Red Guard and police other's speech. I've read several articles of people coming off this dangerous drug and realizing, post-factum, that this was exactly what and exactly why they were doing it, but too many people are still doing it anyway.
> i'm not sure this ever referred to skin color...
It never did. The Red Guards don't care.
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.
The jury is still out on that one, because language relativity is still a hypothesis, not a theory.
I personally don't believe it.
And you can't even comment on it without giving this explanation first because people will assume that you're racist if you don't do this first.
This makes me sad since we have so much do to and we can achieve a lot yet we're focusing these so-called problems.