Is this really a good way to move forward? Rename everything and pretend like it did not happen? It feels like this kind of approach is just hiding things under the carpet. Renaming things that may have negative connotations due to a troubled history is too extreme form of censorship (similar to book burning) and a bit lazy IMHO.
All these technical terms are very descriptive of the concepts they abstract, (eg. it could be argued that black/white-listing is in relation to physical light and how it reflects off white and gets absorbed by black).
Disclaimer: I am culturally very far away from the colonial history so I may be a bit biased when I say renaming things like that is just dumb.
I dont get this “pretend it didn’t happen” thing people like to push these kinds of changes as, because they are actively admitting that bad things did happen and they would like to avoid associating themselves and normalizing the idea of something as horrible as slavery and instead use objectively clearer and language and terms less rooted in historical trauma.
As for the anecdote in your third bullet point: instead of renaming black/white-list terms to something else, what if we actually educate that shop owner about racism and why it is idiotic and evil to discriminate against a person because of their skin color?
I concede to your second point, and I am starting to see why black/white-list can be a sensitive term and just trying to change the connotation like I suggested somewhere above is not tractable.
I still think that education is key. Not going outright and calling people racist, that is counterproductive I wholeheartedly agree. But instilling in them from a younger age the evil of racism instead.
Is this really a good way to move forward? Rename everything and pretend like it did not happen? It feels like this kind of approach is just hiding things under the carpet. Renaming things that may have negative connotations due to a troubled history is too extreme form of censorship (similar to book burning) and a bit lazy IMHO.
All these technical terms are very descriptive of the concepts they abstract, (eg. it could be argued that black/white-listing is in relation to physical light and how it reflects off white and gets absorbed by black).
Disclaimer: I am culturally very far away from the colonial history so I may be a bit biased when I say renaming things like that is just dumb.
I dont get this “pretend it didn’t happen” thing people like to push these kinds of changes as, because they are actively admitting that bad things did happen and they would like to avoid associating themselves and normalizing the idea of something as horrible as slavery and instead use objectively clearer and language and terms less rooted in historical trauma.
Blacklist/whitelist is objectively a less accurate term than blocklist/allowlist.
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As for the anecdote in your third bullet point: instead of renaming black/white-list terms to something else, what if we actually educate that shop owner about racism and why it is idiotic and evil to discriminate against a person because of their skin color?
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I concede to your second point, and I am starting to see why black/white-list can be a sensitive term and just trying to change the connotation like I suggested somewhere above is not tractable.
I still think that education is key. Not going outright and calling people racist, that is counterproductive I wholeheartedly agree. But instilling in them from a younger age the evil of racism instead.