> the same can be said about the words "white" or "black" when referring to people. Neither of them say what they mean.

Neither should be used to refer to people. “White” and “Black”, capitalized as proper nouns and proper adjectives are in English, to refer to particular identity groups and association with those identity groups are, OTOH, a different story.

allowlist and blocklist are clearer regardless

Are they? Are the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" used only in the context of "allowing" and "blocking"? Who or what is the subject that is implied to be "allowing" and "blocking" the elements of each list? Is the process involved in "allowing" and/or "blocking" passive or active?

"Whitelist" and "blacklist" are abstract terms which are useful because they have general and non-specific meanings which can be adapted to many contexts. Artificially prescribed alternatives, introduced only to satisfy the current American cultural Zeitgeist, are not.

If you aren't using the list for allowing or blocking, then give it a name that describes what you are using it for.

It dismays me to see programmers arguing loudly and stubbornly for bad terminology, when a key skill for designing a good API is to choose good names.

If only so much other "bad terminology" in IT that does not accurately reflect what it means, such as POST, PUT, cookie, bug, shell, etc. were also names of discriminated social groups in America... maybe then we could get people arguing loudly and stubbornly to replace them. One can only dream.

I propose we rename GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH to: SAFE, NOTSAFE, NOTSAFE, NOTSAFE, NOTSAFE.

you didn’t even give a single counter example