Apple to remove, replace non-inclusive language in code base | Hacker News Reader

Apple to remove, replace non-inclusive language in code base

appleinsider.com

15 pointsalwillis25 comments

How about actually doing something about slavery or saying something about the human rights abuses of your manufacturing HQs country?

This changes nothing other than give some developers a warm fuzzy feeling like they did something. Like changing your avatar as a protest...

Obviously Apple's efforts go beyond renaming functions. See my other reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23880163

They are also deprecating the terms “whitelist” and “blacklist”. In my mind I never associated them to skin colour, but I’m not a native English speaker. Does anybody know the origin of these terms? Is there any semantic link to race?

I am also not a native speaker and I had never, EVER, made that association until now that I read about it.

The origin seems to in England in the 1600s and linked to non-racial uses of black as bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting

However, the at least some proponents of phrasology changes have also included any words that portray black or white really regardless of context.

It's a very very old cultural association, dating back to primitive times where people were literally 'afraid of the dark'. So Day = Light = Good and Night = Dark = Bad. Night-time is associated with mystery, fear, ignorance, demons, devils, 'creatures of the dark' etc and Day-time is associated with rebirth, new life, positivity, understanding etc.

Of course none of that resonates with the self-flagellating virtue signallers, whose cultural awareness extends about as far back as last week and who assume every reference to 'Black' must be due to 'whitey' being incorrigibly racist.

There are places in the world where slavery is still a thing, unfortunately, and they clean their conscience by replacing a few words in their codebase.

Slacktivism at its finest!

Here is Apple's 2019 report on "Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking and Slavery in Our Business and Supply Chains."

https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Comb...

I am not necessarily speaking about human trafficking in theie supply chain.

I am talking about redirecting your efforts towards issues that have a real impact. Does Apple want to do something about slavery, some philanthropic gesture? There are thousands of things that are more effective than replacing a few words in the codebase. But maybe they wouldn't grant as much publicity as this PR stunt does.

Yes, Apple does those things, which are detailed in the link.

A short blurb titled "Updates to Coding Terminology" on a site aimed at developers is not a PR stunt.

This topic has been beaten to death, and most people already know where they stand on this topic, but I'd just like to add one thing:

I think it's becoming clear that the people pushing for these kinds of changes are likely racist. Weird, but hear me out...

Trauma can taint anything to be seen as dangerous or bad (an example would be people who are triggered by clowns), but victims of trauma usually also understand that their phobic reactions aren't necessarily representative of the real world. They don't expect others to reconfigure reality to keep them from being triggered, except maybe on an individual level, with the understanding that one party willingly deceives or hides things from the other to help them cope.

This is not that, because the people implementing the changes don't harbor the related trauma (by their own admission), nor do they acknowledge the deceit. They are instead motivated by prejudice.

There may be an innocuous question like "how do we become more inclusive?" and they see a term like "blacklist", knowing its basic negative connotation, then mistakenly correlate that to black people. This is a racist mental connection, and it's similar to how someone might see the word "dyke" and think lesbian, even when it's being used in the context of its true meaning: a sea embankment. This is fine though, most people can simply remind themselves of this fact and move on. Furthermore, most people also understand the general origin of their misconception, and can tell when it's something they personally believe, or something that has been drilled into their heads through repetitive exposure.

These people, however, are unable to separate the reality from their own prejudices, and so believe that their interpretation is real. "The term 'blacklist' must be problematic for black people, because we all know that deep down it's saying we want to ban black people, right?"

A non-racist without exposure to the supposed problem with saying 'blacklist' won't make the racist connection.

A racist without exposure to the supposed problem with saying 'blacklist' will assume it has racial subtext.

A non-racist who has been exposed to the supposed problem with saying 'blacklist' will correctly separate their misconception with the truth, and reject the supposed racial subtext.

You betray your point a bit by using a misspelled word (the earthworks are spelled "dike," it's a homophone of the slur). Part of the reason that there is a backlash against usage of language that comes off as bigoted is because the people that use it don't realize that. Like for example, failure to realize that a slur and some earthworks are not the same word.

It's spelled dyke as well as dike in modern english. In any case, it's an example, not the main point.

There are other words which trigger interesting misconceptions due to how parts of them are commonly used culturally. Like 'homosapien', 'Uranus', 'retard' (move backwards, sometimes seen on buses and trucks), 'period', etc.

No. The term 'blacklist' deprecated because it contains the color 'black', it's deprecated because it uses 'black' to mean 'not allowed'. This really shouldn't be so controversial, just use words that accurately describe what you mean.

That's a very disingenuous claim, since this is obviously political, not about clarity. Or, do you mean it's being changed because of the use of "black" specifically? In which case that's not being questioned here, we're talking about why they see "black" as a specifically racial color.

> In which case that's not being questioned here, we're talking about why they see "black" as a specifically racial color.

You can't think of why that might be?

This is beyond embarrassing, do something real instead.

Doing something real actually takes effort.

I don't like the slippery slope fallacy in general, but with this topic I am really asking myself how things will develop eventually. Will colors be outlawed, to be replaced by wavelength numbers? Will hierarchies of all sorts be forbidden? How will we be able to make movies or write books or computer games about historic events?

As I said in another comment on another thread, which naturally got downvoted into oblivion, we are rapidly heading into an Orwellian word where the language becomes so loaded and politicised that it will soon be impossible to use certain formerly innocuous words, because they'll be seen as too offensive.

As I said then. Maybe we should just replace the word 'Black' throughout the English language with 'Double-Plus-Un-White' and have done with it?

There's nothing wrong with the word black.

Something seems wrong with using the terminology “master/slave” in the 21st century when we mean “primary/secondary” or “default/dev” when using version control software.

> There's nothing wrong with the word black.

It's negatively connoted in many places. In German for example, fare jumpers are "black riders", people who don't pay TV fees are "black viewers", illicit money is "black money", pessimistic views are "seeing black" etc. etc. ...

No. Next question please.

this will do wonders for the black community.

I want to see that regex.

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