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Comment by hpcimg | Hacker News Reader

I’m a black engineer and I don’t think this will help racism one bit.

I'm a black engineer who disagrees with you. I appreciate seeing colleagues and peers make an effort, however small, however symbolic, and that helps motivate me to ignore bullshit and continue working in a team and company where i'm a visibly underrepresented historically oppressed minority. That in turn leads to others seeing me and - people have literally told me this, this isn't me guessing the impact of coming to work - feel like this is a place where they too may be able to survive if not thrive.

This change barely moves the needle on Black representation in tech, but I think it does, however little. Improving Black representation in tech /barely/ moves the needle on racism, but I too think it does, however little (these are good jobs and I know it's helped me and my family close some of the racial wealth gap).

Do you think it'll hurt?

Absolutely, it will. The reason for that is that we will loose the support of a (large?) part of society who would otherwise help the cause.

Yeah, I don't buy that one bit. If someone is all up in arms over some simple term changes like this, you somehow think they'll be an ally and supporter when it comes to more difficult reforms of structural racism?

It might mean they support things that might actually help the cause and not just virtue signalling that just annoys everybody and helps noone

I don't believe it's virtue signaling and I do believe it substantially helps. Does it solve everything in one step? No. Does it show that the window of acceptability is shifting? Yes.

How exactly does it help "substantially"? Please elaborate on any concrete problems solved by changing long-established terminology in technical context that describe the relationship between things in an objectively correct way.

Yes. There is a lot of (in my opinion justified) resistance against the policing of language. There is no reason to assume those who oppose these changes would also oppose certain meaningful structural changes. (For example, I strongly oppose all of those trends and I think of myself as progressive and I will resist the destruction of reasonable progressive politics in Europe by what I believe to be irrational, aggressive ideas as long as possible.)

And just to be clear: It‘s fine to use primary and replica. There‘s no problem with the decision itself. The problem is the idea that caused this change and the people in this thread who just stop short of calling someone a racist, because he would reject the idea that the terminology was racist in the first place.

edit: I‘ve not seen such fluctuating votes in a long time if ever than in this thread.That shows how divisive this topic is. So I‘ll call it a day. As I said elsewhere, I can wait 30 years or maybe 50 and see how things played out. But one thing is for sure, these ideas (that is: the current approach) will eventually disappear by themselves without leaving even a trace.

It portrays black people as highly sensitive and easily triggered. I wouldn't want to hire someone highly sensitive (thankfully I know that most black software devs don't care).

So yes, it's harmful.

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