As for signalling, Sure we don't need to advertise it to ourselves and give accolades for something so simple. But we can do the bit and move on. I guess a lot of people are in love with the idea that if doing something is good then it must be being done in order to be _seen_ as doing good. That is bullshit unless you happen to know intent.
I'd rather GitHub keep "master" and have a onhover tooltip in the web UI showing a quote of the day about modern slavery or racism and linking to a way to take action.
But let‘s be clear: there’s a race problem in technology, just as there’s a gender problem in technology. If someone whose ancestors were enslaved were working in technology and encountered the terms master/slave … how would they feel? Would this be another of the thousands of microagressions that they face working in technology today? Would they ultimately leave technology because they can’t get any of their white coworkers to take these microaggressions seriously?
The answer, of course, is an ongoing yes to all of those. This is a trivial way to remove offensive microaggressions, and the pushback that is being received to this makes it very clear to racialized peoples that the real privilege is in the people who object to these inaccurate and offensive terms being changed for something more accurate and inoffensive.
I disagree that the use of the master/slave terminology in technology is racialized and I also disagree that it falls into the category of microaggression. A microaggression is e.g. "but you listen to rap right?" or "what exactly are you?" or "wassup homie" directed only at black people. If the comment or action is not directed at a person it's not a microaggression.
Finally, I am not opposed to changing the terminology, I think alternative words are fine, I just think now is perhaps the worst possible time in hisory to litigate this issue.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on the merits of measuring ideas based on importance. When it comes to social justice there is limited bandwidth for change, devoting attention to unimportant trivialities that have zero material impact on oppressed people hurts the effort for productive change, it's a waste of political captial and welcome fodder for racist agitators. For what? A label in some software programs that almost nobody ever thinks about. Litigating this now is worse than doing nothing.
> you're gate-keeping morality
I'm speaking out against something I believe is actively harmful to the movement for social justice. Characterizing that as gate-keeping is a rhetorical trick that frames my position as inherently inappropriate without actually addressing the substance of what I'm saying.
> Additionally, your use of the word "hilarious" is petty mockery
It is what it is. The sentiment of changing meaningless computer jargon as a response to racist police violence deserves to be mocked. The only positive thing this does is make privileged people feel good about themselves. People are quite literally being gassed and killed in the streets, the only people in the headspace to bikeshed over computer jargon in the context of racial injustice are those with considerable levels of privilege.