Removing categories like "whitelist/blacklist" is trying to create a more inclusive environment where people don't internalize "white = good, black = bad".

Removing categories like "Children/Families affected by systematic discrimination/bias/exclusion" is pretending uncomfortable and unfair realities don't exist.

So sure, superficially both are cases of "some words are naughty", but one of those spreads love, the other denies some people's harsh lived experiences.

Which world do you want to be part of?

> Removing categories like "whitelist/blacklist" is trying to create a more inclusive environment where people don't internalize "white = good, black = bad".

Maybe that was the intention. The result was that it normalised language policing to such an extent that a backlash was inevitable.

Your intentions don't matter when you are banning words. Your actions do.

The road to hell ...

Language is fluid and continuously evolving.

imho any decent person will say "Yeah, I see the trouble with blacklist/whitelist", and if they're a techie, they'd also say "Yeah, allowlist/denylist is more descriptive and fits in well."

I think any decent person will also stop short of officially recognizing The 29 Gender Pronouns from this week's trending tiktok and recognize there's a middle ground between wide cultural acceptance and letting people express themselves.

Discrediting any language evolution as calling it the road to hell is just as silly as the (caricature of) the person getting upset at the cashier they've never met before because cashier didn't magically know their preferred 24th Form gender pronoun.

A decent person understands some change is inevitable (especially if there's an uncomfortable historical context with the way things are now) while also moderating the amount of change. Basically, just be a decent, reasonable human who has some empathy for others.

I hope we're not too far off the deep end from being reasonable.

Is there even a correlation between removing white-related vocabulary and better performance of black people (removing other biases such as density)? Are you removing white terms by racism against whites, or is it a honest attempt at performing better?

Because honestly it doesn’t feel like the world has improved, seen from Europe, in the 15 last years. Like, not at all.

Can we just leave it at "allowlist/denylist is declarative terminology without any attached baggage, and declarative is always better"?

It's like the bathroom fearmongering... don't show your junk to people who don't want to see it, and wash your hands. Just be kind and be a decent human being.

But there is no baggage, and this attempt to police innocuous language based on someone's pet paranoias is bullying.

The cronut was invented in 2013, so we have that going for us. Which is nice.

> Removing categories like "whitelist/blacklist" is trying to create a more inclusive environment where people don't internalize "white = good, black = bad".

This is preposterously pseudoscientific. Even the dumbest person has a basic a grasp of equivocity. The inability to do so suggests mental illness.

The same person who uses the word "blacklist" is very much capable of preferring the elegance of a black suit or the sleek beauty of a black sports cars or a dark pair of slacks, and dislike white suits and white sports cars or white jeans. He may prefer brunettes over blondes.

According to this reasoning, "Enlightenment" should also be renamed, as the association of "light" with good and "darkness" with evil "exclusives people" (I, too, would rename the Enlightenment, but for much more substantive reasons).

It is insane to think that the use of words like "whitelist" and "blacklist" somehow "excludes" anyone.

Whether you like it or not, or whether you think it's insane or not, the words we use are important and impactful in themselves.

Suits, sports cars, women, and whatever other precious alpha status symbol you seem to judge your sense of self-worth by and make metaphors with come in all the colors of rainbow, so yeah, of course that's all taste. Whitelist and blacklist is pretty dual. Black-and-white you might say. Maybe there's a third default/unspecified/null/not-quite-binary state.

But seriously, we're a bunch of engineers here... why is this so threatening to your sense of masculinity when "allowlist/denylist" are unambiguously better for no simpler reason than they're declarative?

wtf

Yes.

This change has user facing implications in that it is removing application data and/or functionality.

Your example is that people changed the name of some internal constants and private methods. Nobody notices except the developers.

They're the same in the sense that they both are topics around sensitivity of other humans experience. And I feel there are significant differences because while slavery and racism are kind of (1) a settled topic ethically and societally, LGBTQ+ acceptance ( exclusion and insensitivity acts are happening today ) are not "settled" (sadly), given the popular support of openly anti-LGBTQ+ rights by the recently winning USA political regime.

I feel there is significance in the details, especially since this is an area of human sensitivities.

Master and slave and blacklist, and all that are related to historical United States' participation and exploitation of its (now citizen), black population as slaves. There are people today, who are alive who are descendants of people who were enslaved by literally (barf) my American ancestors.

Getting closer to your question, that's a little different I think context wise than a trans person being denied their major life-changing, hopefully freeing identity, assertion by government edict, today.

And it's important to note I'm not a trans person currently. I'm very sloppy with these subjects. I have a concern inhumanity is on the rise amongst humans.

(1) "Kind Of Settled [that Racism is bad]" - https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6112317/2025/02/04/nfl-end-... - :-(

Yes.

You could argue that removing some of these phrasings went too far, sure, but it came from a good place. We casually use master/slave metaphors for databases; it's not the #1 thing that needs to change but it's a move in the right direction. Again, aside from a slight eye roll, who is hurt or offended by us saying the phrase "master/slave" less?

This attack on anything DEI is meant to terrorize and strike fear into anyone who isn't a straight white male. It's weaponizing decades of progress for marginalized folks into racist dogwhistles.

Additionally, the original changes were optional and grassroots. This is a government directive. They're very different.

I suspect that the place these removals came from was the desire to dictate other's behavior and/or to feel more enlightened than you, masquerading as protecting from hurt or offense, which is not really a very good place.

Would you consider that... some people actually care about making the people around them more comfortable, especially if it comes at exactly zero cost to themselves?

It’s not just an attack on DEI, it’s a return to cultural attitudes that were prevalent in the 1970’s. The new attitude is that anyone who is not a straight white male in any position of any responsibility must be a DEI hire and should be assumed to be incompetent until proven otherwise. All they need now is to bring back the 3 martini lunch and open sexual harassment and my 78 year old father would feel right at home.

master in the sense of a db or branch is not a master/slave metaphor, it's the meaning of master that is an antonym for "copy" or "replica" as when one creates a master from which to form a mold -- the whole issue is based on a linguistic misapprehension

So then when talking about database replication, why are the non-authoritative servers called slaves?

It really is like slavery, isn't it. The slave database does whatever it's master tells it to, and has no freedom to make up information.

and what about slave?

>Again, aside from a slight eye roll, who is hurt or offended by us saying the phrase "master/slave" less?

If you add up all the discomfort caused by being forced to change vocabulary. The man-hours wasted changing documentation everywhere. The time wasted, re-learning which were words weren't suddenly taboo. Then this is not some small quantity, however you want to quantify it. You basically taxed all of us... and though the tax was perhaps small per person, the total wasn't.

Effort better spent elsewhere. Political capital wasted on nonsense. If you only saw eye rolls, it was because those rolling their eyes knew better than to say anything then. They picked their battles, and now what we see happening right now is a consequence of all that.

>This attack on anything DEI is meant to terrorize and strike fear into anyone who isn't a straight white male.

I'm reminded of the study that said something like 95% of the jobs created in the DEI era went to those who weren't white. Which might make sense if they were only 5% of the population. Thank goodness that the election tally wasn't predicated on that same notion of "fairness".

>It's weaponizing decades of progress

Progress towards what, exactly? And why would I want to progress towards whatever that is? It's only progress if it happens to be the "direction you want to go", but I don't think I want to go in that direction.

"Progress towards what, exactly?"

It wasn't until the 1960s that segregation in public places was made illegal. 1990s that the ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. It wasn't until the 2010s that gay marriage was legalized, and 2020s that it was ruled you can't discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

It took decades for many marginalized communities to be legally even allowed to have certain jobs due to their gender or color of their skin, and now those qualities are yet again being used to prevent them from employment under the implication that anyone who isn't a straight white male is a DEI hire.

>It wasn't until the 1960s that segregation in public places was made illegal. 1990s that the ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. It wasn't until the 2010s that gay marriage was legalized, and 2020s that it was ruled you can't discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

All of that sounds wonderful to you, I'm sure. I don't even know what "gender identity" is supposed to mean though... it's one of those shared cultural delusions that is opaque to those who aren't a part of the culture. You believe it to be a real phenomenon because others believe it with you, and you wouldn't really fit in if you didn't. And "gay marriage" is laughably sad. That's your victory of progress? It will be nice to see it all rolled back. Pendulums swing.

The year is 2025. You have an internet browser. Look up the concepts you don't understand.

How are you so certain about a phenomenon not existing when you have no idea about it? Do you apply the same filters to everything else you don't understand?

Also be careful with wishing for "progress" to be rolled back. First it's other peoples' freedom to live their lives how they want to and then it's yours.

>Look up the concepts you don't understand.

Looking it up wouldn't help, because these aren't objective phenomenon. They're just nonsense. It'd be like trying to understand what it feels like to be a schizophrenic by reading the wikipedia page. My inability to understand is just a way of framing something for you... to show that, in many ways, we don't even live on the same planet. And I don't want to live on yours. I don't want to become the schizophrenic, so to speak.

>How are you so certain about a phenomenon not existing when

When you're outside of it, it's plainly clear. To the person who isn't a schizophrenic they can be 100% certain that there are no voices to hear. It's not the CIA blocking the mind-waves beamed down from the government satellites... it just doesn't exist. Not that my assertions can convince the crazy guy.

>First it's other peoples' freedom to live their lives how they want to and then it's yours.

If you bothered to reason through that, you'd see it for being false. That must not be true for everyone, even in the imaginary scenarios you have nightmares about. For some, at least, sometimes they really do just stop when they're done doing what they wanted to do, and cross no other lines. I'm pretty confident which side of the line I stand on. Find more sophisticated propaganda, I suppose, is the only advice I have for you.

Lol what do you define as the "dei era" ? I think if during any timeframe 95% of new hires were non white people would notice. This is the real nonsense

Yeah, the lack of a source makes it clear this is BS.

It's based in a bit of truth. Yes, there were 300,000 jobs created in 2021, and 94% did go to people of color. However, these were non-professional roles (service workers, laborers) that were coming back as COVID died down.

As far as new executive, managerial and professional roles, the share of people of color increased by just 2%.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-e...

So which is it? Is it clear that it's BS, or is it "based a bit in truth"?

Do you think that all white people are executives and professionals, such that they don't need laborer/service jobs?

It’s the reactionary version of that.