It's my opinion that the best policy is no policy. If you make rules people will break them. And when the rules are so strict it means nobody bothers. If the rules aren't strict some will push it as far as they can. Everything has context. But in general I think people are far too easily offended today, and considering offense a valid issue to fight on has turned out to be a real rabbit hole. Unfortunately, there's no way an institution is going to push back; instead we get this cowardly policy that always caters to the most neurotic minority of social policers (and is probably partly written by said policers). This is policy by mob, and lowest common denominator decision making.
This is the reason why individuals should defend others, even if they disagree with them or think what they said was unnecessary or even malicious. Because there isn't enough time in the day to worry about language this much, and because it's Orwellian... without the literal thought police.
> It's my opinion that the best policy is no policy. If you make rules people will break them.
That's precisely the point of such obscure, arbitrary ruleset. Keep everyone obediently in line. Keep everyone on the edge, afraid of "failing" and being subjected to a Maoist style trial that they can't win. That's a tool of power and oppression, under the smart disguise of forbidding relationships of power and oppression.
> I think people are far too easily offended today
One has to wonder who was ever offended by the usage of the term "whitespace". Yes, that is actually on the list under "Institutionalized Racism" because it "assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized."
I am skeptical of the entire "subconsciously racialized" idea in the first place; to the best of my knowledge there is no evidence for it. But even if we accept it for the sake of the argument, does "whitespace" assign any value connotation at all? [Insert tabs vs. spaces joke here]
I don't really have a problem with with a policy on this as such, but the issue tends to be that once you start drafting a policy you will get a committee or the like and they will search for words that that could possible maybe perhaps be considered problematic by someone, somewhere, sometimes. That's kind of the reverse of how it should work: policy should reflect real concrete problems that were encountered. "I'm black and find the usage of 'slave' problematic" is, I think, more than reasonable, and a concrete situation. But grepping the dictionary for (white|black) ... a bit less so.
Once you start looking for something you will find it. This is why studies are double blind etc.
I have a lot of issues with this list. Does "more than one way to skin a cat" really "normalize violence against animals"? Cruelty against animals – especially pets – seems one of the very few topics where everyone from the most hard-core "Stalin did nothing wrong" communist to the most hardcore "Hitler did nothing wrong" neo-Nazi can find common ground. Does a phrase like that change it? I don't see how it does. I can go on and on, but clearly this is a "dictionary grep" list and not a "let's solve concrete problems" list.
So, are people "far too easily offended today"? I'm not so sure if they are.
> "I'm black and find the usage of 'slave' problematic" is, I think, more than reasonable, and a concrete situation.
I don't think so. If it is, then so is being offended about 'kill' command.
Why is using a concept as a metaphor bad? Also, I really don't like the implication that slavery is somehow racialized. The internet is global; it seems that Americans don't even acknowledge it.
If someone was trying to be cute and name some anti-virus quarantine code "Auschwitz" then I'd object.
Of course there are limits to what is or isn't reasonable, as I mentioned in my previous post, but I can see how people might find "master/slave" inappropriate, like I would consider "Auschwitz" inappropriate.
At the end of the day, I don't really mind adjusting a few terms here or there if people really object to it, even if I don't fully understand it, or even agree with it, just as a matter of being nice to people. I'm neither Black nor American, so who am I to judge what they can or can't find offensive? The problem with lists like this is that I don't think anyone genuinely objects to half of the items on it, if not more.
> Also, I really don't like the implication that slavery is somehow racialized. The internet is global; it seems that Americans don't even acknowledge it.
Considering the history of the country it's not really a huge surprise. Also worth remembering it's the 3rd largest country on the planet, and the largest Western country by quite a substantial margin (Germany comes second with ~85M, vs the US ~330M).
And sure, I've been annoyed by American self-centred attitudes as well; not everything is about the US, but we also can't just always dismiss it either.
It's also not an uniquely American issue, in my own country in Europe there have been similar discussions as well.
> Unfortunately, there's no way an institution is going to push back
If everyone pushed back harder, perhaps things would be different.
From what I remember, HN reacted mostly positively to someone's speculation that 'master' branch or 'blacklist' might offend black people (they weren't black themselves). Tons of comments arguing that changing it is not an issue, so we should do it.
This is the reason why individuals should defend others, even if they disagree with them or think what they said was unnecessary or even malicious. Because there isn't enough time in the day to worry about language this much, and because it's Orwellian... without the literal thought police.