| General > General Technical Chat |
| 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts |
| << < (40/352) > >> |
| Cerebus:
--- Quote from: madires on June 13, 2020, 11:07:01 am --- --- Quote from: Cerebus on June 13, 2020, 12:19:44 am ---No, all forms of ideology that categorize people by labels are cancerous. Once you've labelled a person "liberal", "fascist", "jew", whatever, you're one step closer to treating them as a thing, an object that must be removed as an obstacle to the success of your ideology. Just add a natty uniform and a bit of marching and you're there. --- End quote --- Unfortunately we won't be able to change that because it's human nature to simplify things, e.g. by sorting people and things into drawers. --- End quote --- Agreed the human need to label is unstoppable, but there's a significant difference between ideological labels and mere collection making. The acid test is probably "Is there a group who uses this label as an insult?" and double points if the 'label word' is neutral or positive in meaning in ordinary usage. Where the line is crossed is when the label is used derisively. Intent is everything, and it becomes a problem only when you see only the label and not the person. Edited to add: And let's be clear, we're all guilty of it to some extent. Who, working in engineering, hasn't used "sales", "marketing" or "HR" derisively. |
| madires:
Yep, your definition of the borderline makes sense. And don't worry too much about the other departments, they are also talking very nicely about awkward engineers. >:D |
| SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: Doctorandus_P on June 13, 2020, 01:07:49 pm ---Next thing on the list are gender neutral connectors. :-DD --- End quote --- Do you really think it's not already part of the deal? https://forums.mrplc.com/index.php?/topic/36753-gender-neutral-electrical-connector/ |
| Zero999:
The one thing I don't understand is how the terms "master" and "slave" can ever be deemed to be racist. Anyone who believes they are, is ignorant about history, especially African history. The black lives matter campaigners are upset about how African history and the atrocities committed by the British Empire are not taught in UK schools, which I agree with: African history and the gross human rights violations of the colonial era do need to be taught in school. If you actually take just a few minutes to research the real history of Africa, you'll find is that slavery was endemic to the continent, long before the white European invasion. Black people enslaved other black people, the same as white Europeans enslaved other white people, way before the colonial era. Africa was not some peaceful, eutopian, harmonious, continent, before white people took over and ruined it. There were wars, atrocities and empires for thousands of years before European conquest. I'm not defending my ancestors, who profited from slavery and should have known better, but no one can take the moral high-ground regarding slavery. The only reason why Europeans managed to dominate and pillage Africa was because they were technically advanced at the time. We saw a similar thing in Africa: look at how successful the technically advanced Egyptians were. We need to eliminate racism, xenophobia and bigotry from society, but changing technical terminology will not make any difference and will only promote current misunderstandings of history and slavery. |
| Cerebus:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on June 13, 2020, 03:55:11 pm ---The black lives matter campaigners are upset about how African history and the atrocities committed by the British Empire are not taught in UK schools, which I agree with: African history and the gross human rights violations of the colonial era do need to be taught in school. --- End quote --- Bloody hell, British education has gone downhill if that's true. We were certainly taught about the history of slavery in my school, and that's in a highly conservative boy's grammar school in the 70s (which had precisely *one* non-white pupil out of 600 odd). |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |