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Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

What do you have to lose by switching to a term that is more descriptive and less likely to be offensive to someone?

"We've called it that for a long time" isn't really an argument to keep doing it.

For non-native speakers, they have to be familiar with the idiom or it is a meaningless statement, and whether or not the original intent was for it to be related at all to skin color, it can feed in to people's unconscious biases and perceptions.

There is zero downside in moving to block/denylist and allowlist and plenty of upside.

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I have never argued that we have used the term whiteliste or blacklist for a long time.

What I am arguing against is that the author of the comment suggests in a passive aggressive way that the above commenter using the term whitelist is somewhat backwoodish while the majority of society ('we') has progressed to a preferable wording. This is simply not true and it is offensive.

Completely independant from the discourse whether the proposed change of wording makes sense or is of any benefit I refuse to stand by when self-righteous people try to over generalise and try to force their point of view onto 'us'.

Language does not change by dictating the change or by forcing it onto others by derogating them, as has happened in this example ('we use the better word, you are so backwards').

Language is a convention that gradually changes through a process called speaking. If you prefer the terms banlist and allowlist, then by all means use it. It might also be ok to simply state in a polite and unoffensive manner that oneself would prefer these terms. If I hear these terms often enough there is a good chance I'll pick it up. I have zero stake in keeping the terms whitelist or blacklist over the proposed terms banlist and allowlist. All the same to me.

It is simply not ok to offend someone with the intention of enforcing non offensive language to them.

I'm not a huge fan of the way it was stated - my response shows how I tend to frame the discussion - but at a certain point you do have to be an activist about other people's usage of language.

While I would not say someone using blacklist or whitelist today is the same as someone using a racial slur, it took people actively admonishing others for using racial slurs to push them further and further out of common use.

I think it is totally fair to say that using them is backwards, and that we should progress to using terms that don't place negative connotations around words that are the color of peoples' skin. I wouldn't say that someone doing something that is backwards makes them as an individual backwards, however - I've got plenty of habits that are backwards. I try to rectify them - sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't. I don't feel personally attacked by someone commenting on those things when they happen, however, and instead take it as further reinforcement that there's always room for personal growth.

> at a certain point you do have to be an activist about other people's usage of language

You don't! That's the key insight of multiculturalism - it's totally okay that others don't think or act or speak the same way you do, and there's no need for you to impose your own cultural norms on them. The only alternative to multiculturalism is monoculturalism, where everyone struggles to make their culture dominant and we have to meekly follow whoever wins the struggle.

> at a certain point you do have to be an activist about other people's usage of language.

Well, part of that game is people getting pissed off that you want to police their word choices. Don't be surprised that some of us will become more offensive in response to attempts at sanitizing control. You'd have to be a retard to disregard that factor ;P

I live in a country which has none of the racial tensions present in the US. There may be some social tensions, but they're not along the black-white divide and there is no history of black slavery here.

So why should I have external forces impose on my use of the English language, when those forces are concerned exclusively with what is happening in the US. Especially when what I am saying has 0 racial connotations.

Meaning might be mostly relative, but you can't push all responsibility onto the speaker. As a speaker, I can't be held responsible for what you're hearing from your bubble and you're obviously doing 0 effort to meet me halfway.

So we can no longer use words that are colors inside of an idiom incase people think you are talking about race? You have to find some kind of line of reasonability. Sure, are there lots of remnants of racism/sexism rooted around our culture. But does that mean just nuke anything that has a color in it?

Heck, you aren't even thinking of the consequences of your actions suddenly turning non racist words into having racist meanings. What do you think will happen post "blacklist" "culture"? You go from 100% of the population using the word "blacklist" with literally 0 race connotations, to maybe 80-90% of the culture using ban or block list, while some 5-10% of the country either keeps saying blacklist or starts using n*ggerlist because you have now added some new racism into the language.

Want some really really recent examples? "Banning" the use of retard, now has everyone calling each other autists. Which is waaaay worse lol

We should likely avoid putting negative connotations to words that correspond with the colors of peoples' skin, yes.

Does every person with black skin care about the use of blacklist or whitelist? Of course not. Do some? Of course.

If some percentage of the country moves to be actively racist in their usage of the word, well, it becomes quite clear who they are, and we've got plenty of other remedies for dealing with them. Everywhere I have ever worked active racism was a terminable offense, and using slurs like that would make it readily apparent who was being actively racist. It becomes a readily apparent red flag for anyone dealing with them.

By no means do I think this sort of change solves all of the issues faced by underprivileged groups in America or around the world, but it's an easy thing to do that can make an incremental improvement in the lives of people that can use it.

Nobody has "black" or "white" skin. I'm no word historian but I'm willing to bet that the association of white/black with positive/negative is far older than the slang usage to refer to skin colors; certainly more deeply baked in the language. I wouldn't even be surprised if the metaphorical meanings informed the skin color usage, due to racism. And you'll never eliminate that metaphor from the language, not without doing excessive cultural violence[0]. If you have a problem with the overlap, better to deprecate "black" and "white" as skin color terms at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism

I have nothing to lose other than the fact that I am allowing my language to be policed by individuals who are arbitrarily pattern matching words so that they can pat themselves on the back for being "good".

The unconscious bias you speak of does not exist I believe. I think that the "everything is political" rhetoric has simply amplified the inane pattern matching of individuals who are obsessed with pushing this agenda. They think they see patterns that don't exist and try to justify their intent with vague arguments about unconscious bias.

For the same reason I don't want Google to tell me if I can use the polymory dating app. Not a native speaker and tech community is global, as is HN. Everyone doesn't have to dance in order to satisfy white activists from Silicon Valley and their current social dogmas.

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