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'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
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wraper:

--- Quote from: lukego on June 12, 2020, 10:42:55 am ---
--- Quote from: wraper on June 12, 2020, 10:15:14 am ---My ancestors were serfs and I'm white. Should I be offended too?

--- End quote ---

If there's a part of the industry where white men are struggling to get a foothold then I hope other groups will extend them the same courtesy and help to take down any unnecessary hurdles that they identify. I don't think we talk about this as much because white men are relatively well represented and successful in the tech industry at the present time.

--- End quote ---
All that "representation" thing is BS. Should we now punish Asian people because even white people are heavily underrepresented in Software/IT sphere in US compared to them? When people get different treatment because of their skin color, not their merits, I call it a racist BS. People actually become effing racists by fighting with perceived "racism". Also color of a skin is a quite arbitrary way how to group people. Even if you think that modern people are somehow responsible for their ancestor wrongdoings, skin color is a quite arbitrary way how to group them. People of the same perceived color come from very different ethnic or social groups with a vastly different history. There are effing millionaire offspring born with a silver spoon in mouth crying foul about their tough fate because of the slavery and racism. Hypocrisy at it's best.
Simon:
our local council once decided to encourage more Indians to work for them to better represent the population of the town. I thought WTF? they can apply for office jobs at the council the same as anyone else. Positive discrimination is still discrimination. All you need to do in treat people equally. If positive discrimination carry's on for too long it becomes racism the other way around, so rather than trying to fix the so called problem in an instant you implement the solution, equal treatment.
coppice:

--- Quote from: lukego on June 12, 2020, 10:42:55 am ---I don't think we talk about this as much because white men are relatively well represented and successful in the tech industry at the present time.

--- End quote ---
This is the appalling state social discourse is in right now - seeing people as amorphous blobs of humanity, tagged by a colour code. How did we slip away from seeing people as individuals with their unique strengths and weaknesses? In the 70s many developed countries made great strides in helping the capable children of poor families of all origins get a good start in life. Now they been abandoned in favour of helping the children of the affluent.
bd139:
Actually I think it devolved into helping the people with the largest social audience.

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: lukego on June 12, 2020, 09:12:39 am ---I've worked on products that used master/slave terminology. I'm bothered that those products have been sold in places where those terms have strong connotations like southern USA. I don't like the idea of (say) a black person in Georgia having to talk about "masters" and "slaves" in project management meetings with their white bosses. That just seems gratuitously unpleasant. That image in my mind is why I won't choose the terms master/slave when building things in the future.
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Do you realize that when doing so, you're actually not eradicating racism, but perpetuating it?  You are not being thoughtful, you are just enforcing the association between slaves and black people.  Every time you carefully avoid using those terms, you are expressing the association between "black", "slave", and "master".

Why would it be unpleasant for a black person in any Western society to talk about masters and slaves?  There should be no association!  You are not responsible for the evils of your ancestors, nor are you the product of evils done to your ancestors.  You are your own person, interacting in a society where slavery is considered horribly wrong, a crime against humanity.  We all agree that slavery is monstruous; that the entire institution is wrong, and that we must learn from it to not repeat that kind of monstrous actions.  The idea of associating someone with slavery just because of their skin color is itself racist!

I like how Morgan Freeman put it: Stop calling me a black man, and I stop calling you a white man.  I know you as lukego, and you know me as nominal animal.  That is enough.

If being blunt this way is racist because a snowflake may hear a word that hurts their feelings, then fuck, I'll be a racist.  I refuse to treat anyone differently just because of their skin or "race".
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