"I want to share my own reactions to the name change since this is a really interesting topic. For context, I'm an African American, so many of my ancestors were slaves."
Yes and so were the ancestors of every race on this planet at some point.
"So, next time you are annoyed that you have to fix a script or you accidentally type master when you needed to type main, please just take a deep breath, change the name, and remember to reflect upon whether you have are subconscious habits or biases that work against diversity in tech"
What exactly am I supposed to be reflecting on? I don't need useless word changes that cause issues at my job to do that. This sort of strange thinking that somehow language causes racism and not the other way around needs to stop. It lacks so much logic it's infuriating, especially for people in tech fields. Additionally, you're simplifying words to one specific meaning when in reality the word master gets used in a multitude of different contexts that don't have any relation to black slavery AT ALL.
How about we do something useful with our time instead of constantly looking for victim hood and racism where it doesn't exist? I guess I should be somewhat encouraged because the fact that people have the time to worry about which words might be offensive (or make things offensive that aren't) means they're doing pretty damn well. So well, in fact, that they don't actually have enough going on in their lives and are making problems where they don't exist. The massive con here though is that eventually if you tell enough people they're victims of a system and can't help themselves it'll eventually cause real societal harm.....
“Yes and so were the ancestors of every race on this planet at some point.”
Great point! Everyone acts like history started in the 19th century. When you take a step back and learn about history on larger spans, it’s obvious that enslavement was common all over the globe. More people should learn that the world slave originates from the ethnic name “slav”, because Slavic people from central and eastern people were frequently enslaved by Moors, who come from the north of Africa.
“The massive con here though is that eventually if you tell enough people they're victims of a system and can't help themselves it'll eventually cause real societal harm.....”
Agreed, and I’m afraid we’ve already reached that point.
The big difference was that many cases of slavery weren't done based purely on physical attributes, such as skin colour but tended to be based on nationality, opportunistic, or situational. As far as I know, racial-based slavery is actually comparatively recent, and there are a lot of effects that you don't have with slavery as practiced by e.g. the ancient Greeks or Romans.
Yes and so were the ancestors of every race on this planet at some point.
"So, next time you are annoyed that you have to fix a script or you accidentally type master when you needed to type main, please just take a deep breath, change the name, and remember to reflect upon whether you have are subconscious habits or biases that work against diversity in tech"
What exactly am I supposed to be reflecting on? I don't need useless word changes that cause issues at my job to do that. This sort of strange thinking that somehow language causes racism and not the other way around needs to stop. It lacks so much logic it's infuriating, especially for people in tech fields. Additionally, you're simplifying words to one specific meaning when in reality the word master gets used in a multitude of different contexts that don't have any relation to black slavery AT ALL.
How about we do something useful with our time instead of constantly looking for victim hood and racism where it doesn't exist? I guess I should be somewhat encouraged because the fact that people have the time to worry about which words might be offensive (or make things offensive that aren't) means they're doing pretty damn well. So well, in fact, that they don't actually have enough going on in their lives and are making problems where they don't exist. The massive con here though is that eventually if you tell enough people they're victims of a system and can't help themselves it'll eventually cause real societal harm.....