41–50 of 108 posts
My understanding is that the terms “black hat” and “white hat” stem from Western movies where the villains and heroes would typically wear black and white hats, respectively. I’m not aware of a racial association, but perhaps I just don’t know about it?
I think it is worthwhile to examine why westerns chose to use the symbolism of black and white hats.
Someone please explain to me how labeling the word 'black' as offensive represents some kind of social progress. It reminds me of that joke from The Office where Michael acts like the term "Mexican" is problematic. If there is a real problem here I am genuinely happy to hear about it and try to understand. I would love to see more diversity in computer science and I think the entire industry would benefit. But it sur…
Without commenting on whether or not "black hat" is offensive, you're straw-manning the argument. The argument isn't that "black" is offensive, but rather that it's connotation with negative things is. To use your The Office example, it would be as if "bad" hackers were called "Mexican hat" hackers, forbidden lists "Mexican lists", etc. (Except not, because "Mexican" only means a kind of person, whereas "black" means…
We use constructs like that all the time. Or are we going to start saying "red lights" are offensive? Or "yellow lights"? Around yellow proceed with caution! Red means Stop! Danger!
How about "Dark rooms"? Should we avoid that? Change red-black trees to green purple?
Or hell, lets rope the electrical engineers into it. How dare black be the color of the negative cable. What's white? Oh, ground? You mean where everything ends up going? Heavens, pull the wiring out!
This moral panic reminds me of a quote from C.S. Lewis.
>"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
Truly, in these Times have the moral busybodies had their Jimmy's rustled.
It's clear that some of the language we use needed to be changed, the previously used terms for primary and secondary hard drives are an obvious example. It seems to me that the notions related to black and white have broader cultural associations though. Light and dark or day and night have long been associated with good and bad. White similarly has associations with good and innocence hence the use for wedding dres…
You're still giving the idea too much credit, I think. Black is just a color. The attitude that all black-colored things are intrinsically associated with black people is itself bizarre and problematic.
Things are ultimately not 'just colors' because culture and society inform our reactions to color. That's one of the reasons why they want to avoid the connotations of black = evil because on some level that does tune our bias in a certain way.
It's offensive in the same way as Call of Duty: Black Ops is offensive, which is "generally not actually offensive". However, it is possible to derive professional advancement from claiming that it is, so expect to see more of this in tech. Also not offensive: Black Friday, black holes, black beans, black tea, black-eyed peas, black gold (aka oil), Black Mirror, black swans.
My understanding is that the terms “black hat” and “white hat” stem from Western movies where the villains and heroes would typically wear black and white hats, respectively. I’m not aware of a racial association, but perhaps I just don’t know about it?
I think it is worthwhile to examine why westerns chose to use the symbolism of black and white hats.
White is the color most representative of presence of light, while black is the color most representative of absence.
In many religions, light represents truth, while darkness represents absence of truth.
The good guys shine the light, bad guys cover it up.
No reference to race is required for this well known symbolism.
The old westerns were shot in black and white, so it was easy to have the white hats be the good guys and the black hats be the bad guys. Easy identification by the audience as to what was going on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're still giving the idea too much credit, I think. Black is just a color. The attitude that all black-colored things are intrinsically associated with black people is itself bizarre and problematic.
When people see a man wearing pink, they think of them as being gay or effeminate. Men wearing pink might be assaulted because of this association. Things are ultimately not 'just colors' because culture and society inform our reactions to color. That's one of the reasons why they want to avoid the connotations of black = evil because on some level that does tune our bias in a certain way.
I'm sorry, this is bonkers. I have presented at more than one Blackhat conference and since then I have seen the hacker scene reduced to nothing but a farm team for surveillance companies, domestic spy agencies, and totalitarian movements in academia because they think merely being against-bad is sufficient to be good. Hacking was always about individual competence as a check on technological dominion and absolute po…
It’s vanity to think we’re encountering some yet unknown human experience here.
It’s new to us individually, but the historical record is littered with exactly your account of “what’s happening.” Administrative state wraps itself around the rubes brainstems to moderate agency.
Obviously it’s fine when it comes to real harm to others. The problem is when a successful person believes that success for them is guaranteed. As much of mainstream America, it’s ridiculous billionaire class has come to believe.
We’ve given them a monopoly on capital, fools. Capital = options. We have none. We’re stupid and must simply enter into debt agreements to exist as a member of an elitists flock.
Or at least that’s the sound forms they might have used when the church owned everything.
Just because the central authority doesn’t “legally” own things doesn’t mean we haven’t ended up right back in the same spot of being controlled by a spiteful hierarchy of self-aggrandizing but otherwise normal men. Less literally violent spot, of course, but still destructive of innate biological rhythms.
People used to go about their day building shit. Now they need to coddle grandpas agreements. Pretty ironic for a country with a founding principle of “fuck gramps and his bullshit agreements.”
Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, the dead should not rule the living. But here we are being guilted into servicing their debts, their opinion on hierarchy, their old demands for wars over what really could have been mental illness back in the day. Somehow if it’s on paper it’s a force of reality, like gravity itself!
It's offensive in the same way as Call of Duty: Black Ops is offensive, which is "generally not actually offensive". However, it is possible to derive professional advancement from claiming that it is, so expect to see more of this in tech. Also not offensive: Black Friday, black holes, black beans, black tea, black-eyed peas, black gold (aka oil), Black Mirror, black swans.
> “Others pointed to the dualism between black and white as representing evil and good, concepts that have been around since the dawn of civilizations, long before racial divides even existed between humans.”
The supporters of the current terminology use this to bolster their argument, but I believe it’s also at the core of the argument against the use of terms like blacklist/whitelist. The idea is that the black vs. white = evil vs. good (like, MTG card colors) can “spill over” into dark skin vs. light skin = evil vs. good. This is an interesting article related to this effect: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-bad-is-black-...
Ok fine, I’ll take a weakly-held stance: this seems like a bit of a stretch, and distracts from the more serious ways in which systemic racism manifests itself. On the other hand, I see no need to become outraged—words fall out of favor all the time (go play with the Google n-grams viewer to see for yourself).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without commenting on whether or not "black hat" is offensive, you're straw-manning the argument. The argument isn't that "black" is offensive, but rather that it's connotation with negative things is. To use your The Office example, it would be as if "bad" hackers were called "Mexican hat" hackers, forbidden lists "Mexican lists", etc. (Except not, because "Mexican" only means a kind of person, whereas "black" means…
Boulderdash. There is not a damn thing offensive about a combination of . We use constructs like that all the time. Or are we going to start saying "red lights" are offensive? Or "yellow lights"? Around yellow proceed with caution! Red means Stop! Danger! How about "Dark rooms"? Should we avoid that? Change red-black trees to green purple? Or hell, lets rope the electrical engineers into it. How dare black be the col…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I don't understand the downvote. The Google justice fighter didn't ask to rename "black hat" because of negative connotation? If it is about negative connotation, why is it wrong to examine all phrases, especially the ones like "black market" and "black hand"?
It’s wrong because of bikeshedding and spends resources on unimportant things. Racism is important. Hacking is important. Spending cycles working in these areas is better than helping those who struggle with googling “is blackhat a racist term?” In this case the speaker shut off discussion anyway by not participating. So he’s not “examining all phrases,” he’s issuing judgement on a phrase. And his judgement seems sil…