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Comment by yakshaving_jgt | Hacker News Reader

> People-first language ("enslaved people" not "slaves") makes complete sense to me

Why is that? I’m genuinely curious. Who should be offended by the word slave? Is it I, the Slav? The etymology of the word concerns my heritage, and yet I’m not offended. It’s not as though people toying with language today is going to bring back my relatives who died as slaves, nor will it undo the suffering they endured.

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I agree, and personally found it upsetting once when someone who was from a relatively well off family tried shaming me for using the term slave in my code. I'm of Ukrainian descent, and my grandfather was separated from his family at the age of 12 and sent to a forced labor camp, never to see them again. No human should ever have to experience that, and we must remember that even now there are still humans being treated like literal tools, as our computers are also nothing but tools. If seeing the word slave makes you uncomfortable, then good, it should make you uncomfortable that there are humans who have been treated no better than your computer, potentially even in the supply chain of making it.

Reminds me of Norm McDonald commenting on Patton Oswalt saying the worst thing about Bill Cosby was the hypocrisy. But he thought it was the raping.

https://twitter.com/rexchapman/status/1437871709911195655?s=...

I doubt slaves care so much about being called slaves or enslaved people, but having their freedom and autonomy stripped from them and treated horribly with no avenue for recompense.

Wait, it means slavery implies whites.

Slavery doesn’t imply any particular race. Some people hold the belief that it does, or that one needs to be of a particular race to take a position on or claim victimhood of slavery, but this, quite frankly, is racist.

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