Comment by path411 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by path411 | Hacker News Reader

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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

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