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Comment by hnaccy | Hacker News Reader

Blacklist and similar are not race based.

Ironically "grandfathering" unambiguously derived from Jim Crow, and unambiguously white supremacist in origin but you'll hear nothing of it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause#Origin

I've heard people question whether we should use "grandfather" as a verb in that context, specifically due to its racist origin. I think the fact that you have to explain how terrible people were every time someone learns the term would increase awareness of racial bias, and on the whole be a positive thing.

It's in the list: https://developers.google.com/style/word-list#grandfathered

The point is to remove the positive connotation for "white" and negative for "black." Nobody's implying your blacklist-turned-blocklist has anything to do with race.

It feels like it would be easier to stop calling people black and white rather than purge all light-based metaphors from the language.

How would Google make the rest of the English-speaking world change their use of these words?

Maybe it shouldn’t even try? I mean, since when is an internet ad company qualified to tell me what language to use?

That is my point. They can decide how they use language in their own documentation and communication, they can't decide how everyone else uses it. So they they can't change that people use black or white to refer to skin color, as the comment suggested.

Actually given their extreme reach and near monopoly over information they could probably try to change how people use black and white to refer to skin color which would certainly be a far more noble cause than bikeshedding these weird internal language standards to make themselves look good.

I don't find it particularly noble. When it comes to human communication I believe in Postels law: Be strict in what you send, be lenient in what you accept.

You suggest there is no point in changing your own communication if you cant force the whole to change in the same way. I disagree.

They could block references to dark skin color in Gmail and Google search? Just to name two products of theirs that have enough reach. Of course that would make (racist) people unhappy with Google, which isn't within its business interest. So they keep on posturing in ineffective ways that don't harm their business model.

I hope you are trolling.

In such case why don’t they stop trying to retire the word “blacklist” too?

Presumably because they don't want people reading their developer documentation to get distracted from what the documentation is trying to communicate?

It is quite common to have company policy for communication. That does not mean you want to change how everybody else in the world communicates.

>Presumably because they don't want people reading their developer documentation to get distracted from what the documentation is trying to communicate?

If that's the goal, they should use estabilished terms of art.

>It is quite common to have company policy for communication. That does not mean you want to change how everybody else in the world communicates.

Yeah, so I don't get why what I proposed is any different from that.

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I thought you meant they should get other people to stop using black and white for humans in other contexts. I presumed Google themselves does not talk about black or white people in their developer documentation.

Right, so my solution wouldn’t even require them to change any documentation. Double win.

> The point is to remove the positive connotation for "white" and negative for "black."

Man, USA is such a weird place to live. I’m happy color is just a color where I’m from.

You're just unaware of the issues, the USA is at the forefront of making people waste time sed-ing all their code^W^W^W^W^W^W aware of the issues.

This gets confusing fast. Having an account in the black is good.

That's black vs red, not really the same thing.

Red black trees got caught in the mess in some projects.

But what if your account in the black got blacklisted???

Careful, you'll be blackballed.

(The logic is that uses where "black" has a negative connotation and "white" has a positive connotation are to be avoided, regardless of etymology. But I guess I'm telling you something you already know, there).

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