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A comment on Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC within a company. Parent comment

Re:Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC... by vmilner on Monday February 06, 2023 @08:43PM (#34687417)
It gives us evidence (for the above discussion) that the term “brown bag lunch” has actually been documented as harmful by someone - and wasn’t just made up as a stick to beat diversity initiatives with.

I would argue it also gives an indication of how “mission creep” works.

(A well-used term like “tarball” now being deemed potentially offensive, presumably because it sounds like “tarbaby”, even though it’s obviously just referring to a bundle of files archived with the “tar” command.)

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Re:Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC... by mikrotikker on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @10:26AM (#34694007)
Anyone who thinks tarbaby when they see tarball is a racist and I refuse to let that become my problem.
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Re:Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC... by vmilner on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @10:57AM (#34694394)
"tarball (tar archive)

While the term refers to an archive that has been created with the tar command, it can be negatively associated with the pejorative term tarbaby."

https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguag...

I'm genuinely fascinated by how this came to be written. Were there brainstorming sessions where people threw out random word associations to show willing, combined with a fear from the rest of the group of accusations of racism for calling it out as arrant nonsense?

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Re:Tell HN: DEI initiatives undermine the self esteem of PoC... by mikrotikker on Tuesday February 07, 2023 @11:03AM (#34694465)
Sadly, It's not the silliest example I've heard, let me tell you that.
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