I'm not sure if it's about making them taboo. We're not "banning" the words white and black. We're not saying you can't use those words to describe color for instance (e.g. "the wall is white", "this car is black"). The way I tend to see it is that we reached a level of sensitivity that leads us to be more explicit about our choice of words. I would call myself somewhat socially progressive but now I have to admin that I've never questioned the terms whitelist and blacklist. Now that I do, it seems obvious to me that "black" and "white" prefixes aren't good terms to use in the first place. How is someone even supposed to know which one is "allow" and which one is "deny". "Allowlist" and "Denylist" or something like that would be way more descriptive AND would simply be more sensitive to what's going on in the world. Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, we can't ignore social issues.
Making certain uses of some words a taboo is exactly what's happening. Which, in some cases, just seems arbitrary and not related to a societal problem, let alone its solution. It's a good thing we are becoming more sensitive to these topics, and that they are beginning to get the attention to hopefully bring meaningful change. However, as is the case with any sufficiently big movement, subgroups will form that have their own interpretation of the goal, and some of those will end up being detrimental to the overall cause. For example, the few individuals rioting during the recent protests hurt the entire movement one way or another. This comparison is to be taken with a grain of salt, but my impression has been that the whole debate on certain words is somewhat similar to that, in much lesser form of course. There is language that needs changing. There is also language that I would argue doesn't, and arbitrarily creating artificial sensitivity just dilutes the original, important message.
When I hear the word camp, I don't immediately think of labour camps, the same way I don't think of race when I hear the word blacklist. That's not the case for everyone, so it does need addressing. What it boils down to is the question when and why it was concluded that deprecating those neutral uses was the better solution over deprecating their negative connotations. It mostly just seems counter-intuitive to me for the reason stated in my previous comment.
Except how is a blacklist "bad" and a whitelist "good" ? I've never thought of it this way; I dont think many people have but I could he wrong.
If there was some race related history to the words I could understand, but I thought they were called this way purely because the colours black and white are opposites, like how a blacklist is the opposite to a whitelist and vice versa.
I have always thought the analogizing of white to “good” and black to “bad” comes directly from absence of light (dark; black) or the presence of light (bright; white).
Because we are not nocturnal creatures, darkness == scary and daytime == security so therefore black == bad and white == good.
I can see how one who is hyper-focused on race might see that as problematic, but to me, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
It's a thing because there's a pandemic and another Black guy was murdered by police -- George Floyd. Because of the pandemic, people reacted uncharacteristically and raised hell instead of our usual reaction of sort of shrugging and making excuses.
So a lot of different things are being impacted by our uncharacteristic willingness to take action about systemic racism, including use of language.
>Fortunately we have both dry erase boards and a chalkboards to keep track of such things.
What an incredibly bad-faith argument.
Whiteboard and blackboard refer to the physical color of the board. The reason people don't like white/black list terminology is that it means white = good and black = bad.
Please do not straw-man legitimate criticism if you can avoid it.
And to be clear, allowlist and denylist are better terms because they are more descriptive. It's not obvious why a whitelist would be the list of what's accepted and a blacklist the list of what's denied; you just have to memorize them (and this causes confusion in CS 101 classes every year). So the new terms are flat-out better, and should be accepted on that merit alone regardless of any of the other connotations involved.
This is patently false. Anecdotally, I've never heard of CS students having trouble over figuring out what the terms mean, and furthermore, these are not strictly CS/software engineering terms. These terms appear in the dictionary (at least on Merriam Webster). If your students are having issue figuring them out, I'd encourage them to use a dictionary before arbitrarily and unnecessarily relating them to race.
You mean the parent is arguably false. Truth-keeping aside, you're saying that people working in contexts where blacklist/whitelist are used, after they have learned the terms, now know those terms, whereas they don't yet know the terms allowlist/blocklist, since they've never heard them. Of course this is obvious, and not what the parent is saying. The parent is saying that, given equal opportunity, one is more semantically explicit than the other. We see this argument often: Naming things, as it goes, is the hardest problem, and when somebody thinks of a better name, there is understandable friction against switching because the previous name is entrenched in practice. This is the argument being had (in this specific thread of a few comments), and you should attempt to have it.
Good summary, 100% agree with all of this. And I'd add that the friction of switching to allowlist/denylist, at least for new projects, is very low, because the terms are obvious on their face. Once you've seen them once you know what they mean.
but any linguist can tell you that is not how language works. words are NOT their etymology. and words are as much about their sound as any potential explicit connotations
Anecdotally I have heard of students having trouble figuring out what the terms mean. You're even admitting it yourself -- if you have to rely on looking them up in the dictionary then it's obvious they aren't obvious terms! No one has to look up "allowlist" and "denylist" because they do exactly what they say on the tin.
You have yet to give one valid argument as to how "whitelist" and "blacklist" are better, and indeed, have unintentionally given one argument as to how they are worse.
And yes, they are strictly engineering terms. Merely appearing in a dictionary doesn't mean they aren't. Most technical words are in the dictionary despite not being used outside their fields, e.g. here's one: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stator
I think it's a misrepresentation of my argument to say that because I mentioned that they appear in the dictionary that I am conceding that they are not good terms (although by your exclamation point at the end I am reading that part as well-intended banter).
I'll say this to clarify since I do not believe you are making this argument but having to look up a word should not be the barrier to whether or not a word is used.
They are better because they are well understood and agreed upon terms. I'll also reiterate that the terms are not engineering specific; wikipedia has sources cited so hopefully this will suffice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting
>assume people can't not form racist views because they can't figure out the context when someone uses the name of a color.
The parent did not do this. It sounds like you've constructed an exaggerated version of a potential assumption somebody other than the parent could make: That a particular person may be feigning "not knowing" what the terms means, which frankly is not surprising, considering how incredibly bitter some people feel about these terms, but of course neither is it surprising to sincerely not know what they mean, since they are new terms, regardless of how explicit they are (you need at least a modicum of context if you've never heard them before). So the person you're attacking surely exists (a person who would make this accusation in every case, with no benefit of the doubt ever given), but that person is not here, nor could we know if they are here given the limited sample size of chances they have in this thread to express such an uncharity.
As for your frostbite example, obviously nobody seeks to control the reality of what color frostbite is. I feel like you may have jumped the gun on that analogy.
If not for the racial context, what other motivation would there be to change the terms? In what other context would someone object to arbitrarily assigning one color as good and one color as bad? Had they historically been called bluelist and purplelist, I do not think anyone would honestly argue that there would be such demand for changing the names.
It's also unproductive on your part to say that we can't make safe assumptions. The post that I replied to mentioned that people don't like the terminology because it relates white to good and black to bad. That is obviously a response to the racially charged times. To claim otherwise is to lie. I find it doubtful any major tech companies (or anyone for that matter) were discussing changes these terms because they are more "semantically explicit" before 2020 and were not doing so in response to some ill-assigned racial undertones that do not actually exist.
As far as jumping the gun, it is not as absurd an argument as you are characterizing it to be. People do seek control the context in which white and black can be used. The terms whitelist and blacklist are generally accepted and people have little trouble deducing their meaning. Colors do have cultural meaning outside of race - brides generally wear white dresses, people wear black to a funeral, black ties are considered formal, etc.
A producer makes, a consumer eats. That simply isn't the same as a master/slave relationship. Slaves do not "eat" what masters make. And so on.
But taking a step back, we have decades of lore giving us a sense of what "master/slave", in the technology sense, means. Ditching that for a few seconds of PC glory is madness.
Consider it a chance to use a term with more semantic meaning.
Guarding access? You have an allow list or a deny list.
Rolling out an experiment? You have an enable list or disable list.
Restricting an input? You have a filter.
