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'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
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Ed.Kloonk:



For those of us old enough to remember this the last time it came up. I thought we settled this long ago. And anyway, don't they, statistically, have bigger swangs?


I'm  8)  if they're  8)

Like two little Fonzies.

paulca:
I'm still wearing my Race Condition T-shirt.  I'm just waiting on the next (yes next) person to ask me if it's racist.  It says:

Knock Knock
Race Condition
Who's there?
Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: Kjelt on July 07, 2020, 06:15:56 am ---
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 07, 2020, 12:28:26 am ---Kjelt, I know that sounds a good idea, but there are serious repercussions that are not immediately obvious.  You see, Finnish police and Finnish media decided a few years ago to do just that.  (The police even stopped gathering and publishing statistics on ethnicities of criminals for exactly this reason.)

--- End quote ---
That sounds like it way overshot its original intention.

--- End quote ---
Yes, exactly.  I do believe the original intent was good, positive.

But, instead of its intended effects, it became a tool for people to avoid acknowledging issues that makes one question their policies/values/etc., and gave the subset of immigrants who are not interested in following Finnish law a simple but powerful tool to silence all criticism and avoid criminal justice: just shout "racist!".

When software projects started using Codes of Conduct that went further than "don't be a dick" (requiring neopronoun use and banning harsh criticism of poor-quality submissions), they didn't actually make the projects more inclusive at all.  Because of the CoC makes it risky to criticize submissions – you can get censured by your peers if your "tone" is found wanting –, many developers ignore them completely.  This divides the project developers into separate clades, "inner circles", that discuss things in informal chats, but rarely interact outside their own circle.  The only way around seems to be for each project to have "dedicated" developers that do answer in a polite manner to all new developer queries, and act like middlemen between the clades and new contributors and other projects, but that's quite a lot of knowledge and developer hours tied into, well, handholding.

(Of course, the small number of activist developers are now happy, because their own clade is now using language they enjoy, without fear of having to deal with negative emotions.  I suspect that they consider the emerged clades natural, as after all they do somewhat fit the intersectionalist worldview.)

Banning words has never yielded anything positive.  Very soon, a new term will appear in its stead, with the context evolving to fulfill the communications needs -- even if those needs are offensive.  However, humans are inquisitive, and they will always theorize why the original term was banned, whether the stated reason was the real reason, or not.  This can easily lead to even worse assumptions, like "group ζ is so inept/volatile/lacking in self-control, that we need to control even the language we use around them so they won't go crazy".  It is these – unfortunately natural, because humans have evolved to be guessers and extrapolators – assumptions that cause significantly more prejudice/harm than the potential generalizations originally!
Ed.Kloonk:

--- Quote from: paulca on July 07, 2020, 10:19:09 am ---I'm still wearing my Race Condition T-shirt.  I'm just waiting on the next (yes next) person to ask me if it's racist.  It says:

Knock Knock
Race Condition
Who's there?

--- End quote ---

You know, it's sad that most of the people you encounter would have an automatic trigger reaction to that. I've been called names over the years and more so even recently. Yet, when I read your post I got the joke immediately. Then I read your preamble. Then I went "Hmmm."

I've visited your part of the world. I remember a TV show called Love Thy Neighbor. Last time I was in LDN I noticed that people were going about their chores just fine. Nobody caught my attention anymore than, say, a red-head would.

And in regards to Gingers. I wish them no pain. I think they should be killed humanly.
Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: daqq on July 07, 2020, 06:41:14 am ---You could easily lose a job or worse (much worse) if you had something ideologically unsound to say, or, say, voiced opinions on sensitive topics, like, say, the 1968 Soviet occupation brotherly intervention.
--- End quote ---

Michigan State University's Vice President, physicist Stephen Hsu was forced to resign last month, because he dared point out research that showed that statistically, there is no racial bias in police shootings in the USA.  The student union demanded his resignation, because that was against the Black Lives Matter pledge the University had made, accusing Hsu of "scientific racism".
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