This is patently false. Anecdotally, I've never heard of CS students having trouble over figuring out what the terms mean, and furthermore, these are not strictly CS/software engineering terms. These terms appear in the dictionary (at least on Merriam Webster). If your students are having issue figuring them out, I'd encourage them to use a dictionary before arbitrarily and unnecessarily relating them to race.

You mean the parent is arguably false. Truth-keeping aside, you're saying that people working in contexts where blacklist/whitelist are used, after they have learned the terms, now know those terms, whereas they don't yet know the terms allowlist/blocklist, since they've never heard them. Of course this is obvious, and not what the parent is saying. The parent is saying that, given equal opportunity, one is more semantically explicit than the other. We see this argument often: Naming things, as it goes, is the hardest problem, and when somebody thinks of a better name, there is understandable friction against switching because the previous name is entrenched in practice. This is the argument being had (in this specific thread of a few comments), and you should attempt to have it.

Good summary, 100% agree with all of this. And I'd add that the friction of switching to allowlist/denylist, at least for new projects, is very low, because the terms are obvious on their face. Once you've seen them once you know what they mean.

but any linguist can tell you that is not how language works. words are NOT their etymology. and words are as much about their sound as any potential explicit connotations

Anecdotally I have heard of students having trouble figuring out what the terms mean. You're even admitting it yourself -- if you have to rely on looking them up in the dictionary then it's obvious they aren't obvious terms! No one has to look up "allowlist" and "denylist" because they do exactly what they say on the tin.

You have yet to give one valid argument as to how "whitelist" and "blacklist" are better, and indeed, have unintentionally given one argument as to how they are worse.

And yes, they are strictly engineering terms. Merely appearing in a dictionary doesn't mean they aren't. Most technical words are in the dictionary despite not being used outside their fields, e.g. here's one: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stator

I think it's a misrepresentation of my argument to say that because I mentioned that they appear in the dictionary that I am conceding that they are not good terms (although by your exclamation point at the end I am reading that part as well-intended banter).

I'll say this to clarify since I do not believe you are making this argument but having to look up a word should not be the barrier to whether or not a word is used.

They are better because they are well understood and agreed upon terms. I'll also reiterate that the terms are not engineering specific; wikipedia has sources cited so hopefully this will suffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting

Are there college students who don't know the history of the Red Scare and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist ?

Yes. Not all college students are from the US.