Hello, In the context of access control, blacklist / whitelist makes sense only if the reader has a preconceived assumption that black = bad, illegal, forbidden / white = good, legal, authorized. You can probably see where I'm going.
Sure, blacklist / whitelist has nothing to do with race to start with, but I find the parallel with Apartheid sufficiently obvious to make it embarrassing, certainly because I'm not a native English speaker and I don't have enough background on what has racial overtones and what doesn't. I mean, I had been living in the US for several months whet someone had to tell me the difference between "to screw" and "to screw up". (I'm grateful.) Do you really expect a guy like me to know that "blackface" has racial overtones but "blacklist" doesn't, and thus interpret the words correctly? Besides, the connection didn't exist in the first place, but when people start making it, can we still pretend it doesn't exist? If I wanted to troll a linguist, I'd say it's akin to pretending that words people actually use don't exist until they're written in a dictionary ;-) Lastly, another argument for the statu quo is that humans are good at interpreting words based on context, so "black" in "blacklist" isn't a problem. However, I counter that humans are even better at making connections and detecting patterns, even subconsciously and sometimes even when the pattern doesn't actually exist. That's quite likely to happen here. I agree that this isn't as clear cut as master / slave. That must be why it took us six years to go from the master / slave discussion to the blacklist / whitelist discussion. No one's gonna get confused on the meaning regardless of whether we make the change or not. This is "just" a political marker. It doesn't have one correct answer. It has several answers whose correctness vary over time. I think we'll make the change at some point. Some progressives will hate us for taking so much time. Some conservatives will hate us for being snowflakes. Since we already started spending time on this discussion, we might just as well do the change while we're there, take some flak for a couple days, and move on. Best regards, -- Aymeric. > On 15 Jun 2020, at 21:56, Daniele Procida <dani...@vurt.org> wrote: > > Tom Carrick wrote: > >> I don't think there is an easy answer here, and I open this can of worms >> somewhat reluctantly. I do think Luke is correct that we should be >> concerned with our credibility if we wrongly change this, but I'm also >> worried about our credibility if we don't. > > There are plenty of black-something terms in English that are both negative > and have nothing whatsoever to do with race. The black and the dark are those > things that are hidden and sinister, as contrasted with those that are in the > light and open to scrutiny (black magic, dark arts, black legs, blackguards, > blackmail, etc). > > I think it would look pretty silly to confuse meanings that refer to what's > shadowy and obscure with things that have racial overtones, and I think we > should steer well clear of that. It's not at all like metaphors such as > master/slave. > > If we made such a change and tried to justify it on the grounds of a > connection between race and the word "black" in those terms, we'd be rightly > laughed at. > > 1000 neckbeards would immediately come out of the woodwork having done some > basic web searches going 'neeer neeer neeer, the Django Software Foundation > overflowing with snowflakes who think that "blacklist" means [etc etc etc]', > and who has the stomach for that? > > Even choosing to do it on the basis of the potential for offence seems to be > a fairly flimsy argument. > > On the other hand, we can do whatever the hell we like. > > We don't have to justify anything to anyone. If we want to change words in > *our* framework, it's absolutely nobody's business but our own. > > If black members of the DSF or the community are disheartened that the word > "black" gets to refer to so many negative things and are bothered when they > see them in Django, then that alone is sufficient justification. > > If we want a reason for changing "blacklist" (or whatever), it's that people > in our community said they would feel better about it and asked to have it > changed. > > Acknowledging how someone feels about something and acting because you care > about their feelings seems to be a respectful thing to do. > > "We did it because we felt like it" is an utterly unanswerable justification. > > The DSF has credibility because the software is first rate, the foundation is > well-governed and the community is an international example of decency and > kindness. Things like this become credible because the DSF chooses to do them > - it's not the other way round. > > Daniele > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/20200615195628.938692561%40mail.gandi.net. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/4FC8DDEB-2A3C-4B31-9265-D07F28D6CFCA%40polytechnique.org.
