Same here in germany.
When we hear the word master, most people think of the master in karate kid or the master degree of a university.
I think only in the usa people are so full of hate that they directly think of bad stuff.
I would bet that most people didn't have any idea that words like "grandfather" or "blacklist" had (or didn't have) any racist history.
Wouldn't it have been better to just let the words outgrow their history? These words were already dead or dying as racist terms. Not any more.
And, policing language generates a spectacular amount of distracting, harmless (to Microsoft) controversy.
Faulty pattern recognition machine at blame.
I at least was intellectually gratified to learn about it.
> In 2011, just 35% of white liberals thought racism in the United States was “a big problem,” according to national polling. By 2015, this figure had ballooned to 61% and further still to 77% in 2017.
It's still used to refer to a male teacher, particularly in elementary schools, as well as being the title used by lawyers.
A slave owner was simply a slavenhouder.
I think an important difference between ex-colonial European powers and the US is that the (ethnic) slavery did not take place on European soil. Most colonies were operated with very few Europeans to oversee, and as such people were not as exposed to it as people in the US, where masters and slaves would perhaps not live in the same part of town, but also not a continent away. So this may explain why those terms seem inoffensive/only have their meaning outside of the slavery context in Europe.
But I'm really worried about how we import everything American to Germany without thinking twice.
Left newspapers have started to write BIPoC everywhere when it comes to domestic issues. What exactly are the indigenous people of Germany? Even blacks are relatively rare. It would make much more sense to coin an acronym that includes Jews, Sinti and Roma, given our sordid history. But we simply take what American culture has thought up.
Landlord was pretty chill and I kind of miss being able to just ask anything and he would try to make it happen (including things like repairing car motors).
Housemates were of the mildly radicalized religious kind, with daughters that did not attend the normal school system and are now being married of early.
I don't know if the German "integration system" has failed for the later ... they have the freedom to chose and they chose a path that is different from what is considered "normal" in the "West".
As a Canadian (Vancouver), I can tell you true integration happens over generations of people working together and respecting each other. In those conditions, it is unavoidable.
If either group lacks respect, the outcome is always conflict.
You put their kids into school together young and they won't know not to be friends until you tell them. That was my experience, anyway.
I'm all for give and take but I wouldn't want the "give" to result in backwards steps for woman's rights being imported from the countries of origin
No we think that forced marriage has no place in Europe, or the oppression of woman's. And yes, that's our culture..so is the freedom to choose your religion and to have free speech. If someone from another culture comes we are happy to integrate it into ours, but NOT when it clashes with our Laws.
>You put their kids into school together young and they won't know not to be friends until you tell them.
And what when they go into different schools (Jewish or Muslim etc), live in different parts of the City (look at Paris or Berlin), and never met someone outside of their bubble until 20 or later?
BTW:
I said it in another post ... it's not about being forced into something, it's about freedom of choice. And that is something universal, it's just codified in our laws.
It's completely fine if a women decides to become married and have children early ... it's probably not a good choice ... but morally there is no way to reject that.
The problem arises when people never learn that they have a choice ... I have (female) friends from rural Germany that think it's perfectly reasonable to go study and once finished move in with their husband and be the perfect stay-at-home mom.
edit: heck ... I even have friends from larger cities who would just prefer to be stay-at-home moms because that gives an excuse to sloth on the couch for half of the day :-)
>The problem arises when people never learn that they have a choice
Exactly, that's the problem with the bubbles like (Ghettos/Banlieues), and "special" schools.
Borrowing that specific term for other purposes is stupid.
I was forced to because the government in my country steals and wastes so much money that the economy breaks and you can't make money there. Still the quality of life is much better at home and I'd rather stay there.
All my friends are immigrants, I couldn care less to integrate here. Ideally I'd just rather live in a town with just immigrants from my country. As long as you keep them out of politics they'll probably won't rob you.
Her country is clearly superior in almost everything except for weather and food. I like living here and I've made good friends and enjoy my life here.
Now the curious part comes... I have zero attachment to both countries, their culture and their national identities. I couldn’t care less about their language or customs. I just see myself has some kind of post-nationalistic person that would much rather speak English with everyone, hang out on the internet and live wherever.
As far as I'm concerned national identities and culture are useless and holding us down as a species. I really wish people could outgrow this nonsense.
In hindsight I don’t think I was raised in a particularly enlightened culture. Do those even exist? I would much rather have us move past dumb social biases and constructs and work together to build a better future and a more universal and cooperative world.
On person's unbiased Baysian predictions based on a lifetime of experience and evidence, looks a lot like biases and prejudice to the delicate of mind.
And they get nasty about it.
So no, there will be no building of a better world.
You brain might think it’s very smart and clever and has the world all figured out but most likely it doesn’t. The world is a chaotic system beyond any one's comprehension. All generalizations that are not purely mathematical and 100% abstract in nature are wrong.
Perhaps a quick reread of the site guidelines is in order.
That town was in your country which you fled though.
Some nationalities integrate more than others. This goes for different European countries even, so it has very little to do with "race".
Obviously we did not respect the Indigenous people and I hope that can me mended through generations of mutual respect.
I think Vancouver is better because of the rich mix of cultures. It's not perfect here but I think it is pretty good. I have seen a Muslim man give his shoes to a homeless man on the bus and walk home barefoot in the rain. I believe anything is possible.
Ha! I remember a drunken night with a north-american colleague; he asked why didn't we have indigenous people here in Europe. Then he suddenly realized the answer: oh, but it is you, you all are!
I don't think this is true. What percentage of White Americans, during the period of slavery, owned any slaves? Was it even 1%?
It is one facet of American history yes, but it is very far from the "definition" of the country.
It is all about context. Question is, why certain groups emphasize - or better: impose deceivingly by altering him - the wrong context to a crystal-clear situation.
That would be a rather rude, dare I say hateful thing for me to say, wouldn't it? In reality, I really enjoyed all the places in Germany I've visited, and most of my interactions with German folk that I've interacted with socially and professionally over the years. I especially enjoyed taking a technical and engineering German language course, so I can appreciate words like "Kaftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung" and "benzinbetriebenes Motorsystem". I wouldn't think to make such a comment about the German people, like you did about people in the USA.
If you want to transplant the "master"-example, look at all the discussions of how they name certain sauces,schnitzels and deserts as well as a weird insistance that offensively named streets, underground-stations and (for some reason) pharmacies "must not need to be renamed, why would you even be offended".
Germany is not the example to go with concerning offensive language.
> look at all the discussions of how they name certain sauces,schnitzels and deserts
Okay I do - and that is exactly the useless actions that the submitted text and this discussion is about. For some reason you just ignore all that was said and just repeat those exact criticized points as if nothing happened.
Where these discussions about how Germans call their pharmacies connect to the article is that in both cases the arbiters who decide how things are called are the white - once you start to involve the people that these offensive words are about, you suddenly get a different sense of how important or offensive these words are. There's a recent example of a talkshow where a couple of white more-or-less-celebrities decided that these words are just german heritage, and really what is all the fuzz about ? To appease the ensuing mini-scandal the station organized a roundpanel of people who might be affected by these slurs - and surprise, they really weren't so fond of them.
Or see this article about a campaign to rename a trainstation: https://isdonline.de/umbenennung-der-mohrenstrasse-mehr-resp...
You are obviously right, changing words by itself doesn't change a thing - but if I can't even count on someone not using slurs about me, I can't expect to respected at all.
There are racists, and fascists, neo-nazis and old-nazis. They do exist, it's just that they don't pose that widespread of a problem in every day life, like it does in other western countries.
I'd say gender (in)equality is something you will encounter much more often in every day life over there.
It's about choice ... there are women (also in Germany) that gladly _chose_ to stay at home, _chose_ to prepare meals for their husband and _chose_ to care for the kids.
On the other hand there are women that _chose_ to give their children into daycare weeks after birth to go back to work.
It's not about condemning any lifestyle as wrong, it's about given everybody (males included) the ability to life their live as they want.
Sadly this is far from the reality with median wages being barely high enough to sustain one person, forcing women (and men) to work and robbing them of their agency.
We've got a minister of interior that does not want to start a study on racism in the police forces.
That's two of the big issues, that's not even every-day racism where it's hard to get an apartment or a job with a "foreign name", underrepresentation in leading positions or that in some parts you'll get at least hassled for walking with brown skin.
Germany is and always has been extremely conservative and integration/racism is an issue precisely because the largest party always saw imported skilled labor as people that should be forced back "home" again, even with a second and third generation growing up in Germany.
What exactly do you know about "the" German way?
I don't know if and where you've been to Germany, but having went to school there entire years of our history class were dedicated to the Nazis.
That is of course simplifying it a lot, but Germany as a whole has a problem with right-wing extremism who almost regularely murder people, and a police force who regularly have scandals involving members being present day Nazis, and these Problems not being adressed properly.
So I am not sure learning about The Nazis of the olden days is very helpful withouth showing the reach that these ideologies have into present day Germany.
And I say that as someone who has gone through these years that you reference as well.
To be precise it is about the atrocities committed by the Nazis and how they managed to subvert the society to be able do their crimes. By the way they started early on to change the everyday language.
> Indeed, Goebbels initially opposed the term propaganda, recognizing that in popular usage, both in Germany and abroad, it was associated with lies. Even after the ministry had been in existence for a year, he proposed changing its name to Ministry of Culture and Public Enlightenment, but Hitler vetoed this proposal.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ministry-o...
Every country is different. Developing world wouldn't care about rights, because they have to make cakes as fast as possible, and developed world can spend much time on being fair. It is something we should do.
Is a name change really that difficult for everyone? I remember when I first saw 'main' branch on Azure, yes, I have to slow down a bit, is it the end of world? It means something important for the US, and would be good for the future generation, I think I can afford the personal inconvenience. We, developers, are having the best job in this world, do we really need to get pissed off for this?
It's just a complete misunderstanding of the topic. Changing "master" branches simply confuses signified and signifier, and the fact that multiple signified can have the same signifier (like the signifier stool and the signified faeces and a thing to sit on. Removing the word doesn't remove the concept.
If these companies actually wanted to work for diversity, they could just do exactly that: employ more people from other backgrounds, or have extra internships for early orientiation in high school, or fund computer labs schools in poor neighbourhoods and so on.
Edit: As an illustration of how this doesn't affect the underlying meaning: In Germany there's a similar discourse going on, and the result is that the German radical right also started to talk about migrants instead of aliens or foreigners. But they didn't change their attitudes at all! They just adapted to the new word and kept their old concept.
So whole world has to change because US has its core problems?
>We, developers, are having the best job in this world, do we really need to get pissed off for this?
do we?
spend thousands of hours of your free time in front of computer just to learn stuff, then spend 3.5/5 or even more years for degree
then stay competitive / in touch with tech as a part of life style
just to have office/remote job with good pay?
is this "best job"? seems decent, but I wouldn't call it "the best", especially in countries where programmers do not have really outstanding pay like in SF.