It was not my intention to start a flame war, but to spark debate about this topic, which I feel is not political but culture/language-related.

Off-topic it surely was though, so I'll be more careful about that going forward.

Another thing it does, is that it promotes the identification of blacks as slaves when all races have been enslaved (and continue to this day).

you see, this is the gift of American progressive cultural imperialism.

Suddenly, the only historiography that can exist in the world is that of American trustafarians who try to minimize their shame of being born wealthy heirs of the slave-owner class by spreading the shame on white immigrants that arrived way after slavery got disbanded.

And once you set the precedence that you can at will shame innocent people - the majority of white Americans - into obedience even though it’s technically impossible that their ancestors had anything to do with slavery… well then why stop at Americans at all?

Now its every European country and culture that has to subvert itself to the viewpoint of Ivy league grads.

Brownfacing, Blackfacing, minstrelshows, Kuklux you name it - it doesn’t matter what Poles could possibly have to do with it, or Germans or Swedes - you are all guilty by being born white.

God bless America.

Whats new is that people now base their identity around it and expect some kind of validation to happen. Do a mental scenario where people did that not with gender identity, but with their heritage or national identity.

Changing blacklist and whitelist to allowlist and denylist is however stupid.

If I recall correctly, the point of reflecting upon the usage of specific terms was not that every single person thought it was B.S. but that a minority might feel negatively impacted by them, and it took no trouble at all to accommodate them by switching to less charged terms.

Basically it's the same argument behind not swearing at the workspace.

Were you negatively impacted by replacing references to "master/slave" or "blacklist" with terms like "primary/secondary" or "allowlist"? I hear a lot of people whining about these but I'm yet to hear any coherent argument against it.

It's also telling that this dead horse is being flogged in a discussion on the US Federal Government looking into recurring accusations of racial bigotry.

It takes a lot of effort to overcome the inertia of a default, so even if the reasoning is a bit suspect the outcome is going to be a win eventually.

Every HR person needs to touch something to feel useful and “changing something”.

There's a phase of progress and real social changes, laws get passed to correct past issues, the media warms up a lot towards minorities etc. Then comes the reaction, as too much visible change happens, opposing groups organize and try to re-anchor their position, will push as hard a possible to undo some of the progress and carve out areas where they'll be able to protect their values.

I don't think that back and forth can be stopped. Fundamentally change, even regarding racism, will provoke reactions. The best we can do is ratchet as much progress as we can if we want things to move in the right direction.

I know the US is the world leader in backwards decisions that ignore history (while virtue signalling harder than ever before), and then being as racist as possible ("but in a good way!!!!"), but this is just sad now.

If I speak to someone, I don't ask "Are you black? Are you a woman? Were your ancestors oppressed (particularly in the west, anything else doesnt matter, see past enslavement of slavic people)?". If it matters so much to you what race someone is, or what ancestry they have, that is not a healthy way to treat people. It's the same thing as racism, its literally, by definition, the same thing.

There is a reason people in a lot of countries like Germany fight for everyone to stop using "Black" to describe someone, and instead refer to them as an individual like they are. History will repeat itself if you keep separating people based on their ethnicity

Thing is, white immigrants' national identities were largely, um, white-washed in the late-19th thru mid-20th c., as part of Progressive ideals that back then were quite racially slanted, and included such things as eugenics. German immigrants were especially affected by this for obvious reasons, but not only. So the argument for capital-W 'White' is hardly any weaker than for capital-B 'Black'.

But then articles should use, based on context, both 'Black' and 'White', or both 'black' and 'white', while rarely it makes sense to use 'Black' and 'white' in one article, but that is the pattern used by newspapers.

why not Ask HN, there are black people here. what's interesting to me is that your interpretation prioritizes things that aren't really factors, and some child comments are already trying to mold that into their unworkable world view.

the only person triggered is the top level comment and thats the non sequitur on its own.

Black and black are equally benign adjectives and interchangeable, it doesn't need to be rationalized. the absence of capitalized white is an editorial choice, be the change you want to see?

The Guardian is far from a politically-unbiased source.

Plus, this is an Appeal to Authority logical fallacy.

I think these kinds of double standards are what make the culture wars so inflammatory.