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GitHub, fuck your name change

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#751

Post by xtracto »

andy_ppp wrote: post #546
wiremine wrote: post #530

Disclaimer: I'm a white engineer who is now a VP. I also have a black daughter. I can't speak for the black experience(s) because I'm not black, but I'm also acutely invested in seeing things get better in terms of race relations and opportunities for all people. A few thoughts: 1. Words matter. They aren't the most important thing per se, but they shouldn't be ignored. Over time, all these little changes do add up.…

Interesting thoughts, but it doesn't address the content of the article. The article is saying renaming master to main in Github won't help race relations one bit and he's annoyed that it's probably white people who come up with these things rather than (his example) putting money into retraining for ethnic minorities who change careers. All your points are true and using positive language around race does matter. Ju…

This kind of reaction by Americans are amazing to me as a Mexican. It's like... Americans jump to all these hoops and loops to show how NON RACIST and NON DISCRIMINATORY they are but then keep discriminating and being racist in small everyday things.

I had the opportunity of living in the UK and Germany for several years. Sure, there's racist people there (particularly in Eastern Germany where I lived!). But in general I liked the feeling of not being racist just by... not being racist. When race just doesn't matter, is when you really have killed racism.

So yeah, keep removing statues, renaming stuff and do anything else that makes you sleep at night. But at the end of the day if you want to stop discriminating, just... stop discriminating.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#752

Post by andrepd »

root_axis wrote: post #677
jssmith wrote: post #538

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. - The first time it occurred to me that "master" in this context could offend anyone was when GitHub changed the name (and broke my workflow). - My immediate reaction was, "this change is by white people for white people," where "white" means anyone w…

As another black SWE, I'll add that I disagree with your perspective. I think the name change does more harm than good because it trivializes the movement. If the goal is to change minds and open hearts then where appropriate, we should endeavor to communicate in ways that will be well received by those who need to hear the message . Stuff like this is just preaching to the choir and alienating the rest, but also not…

>I think the name change does more harm than good because it trivializes the movement.

>If the goal is to change minds and open hearts then where appropriate, we should endeavor to communicate in ways that will be well received by those who need to hear the message. Stuff like this is just preaching to the choir and alienating the rest.

> Also not actually changing anything that matters in the lives of black people.

I couldn't have put this better myself. There are two issues

- What people want is justice, including economic justice, and progress. They want to stop being discriminated by gerrymandering politicians and trigger-happy cops. They want an economy that serves everyone and not just those on the very top, and that does not disproportionally discriminate those on the bottom and especially minority communities with a history of disadvantage. In this sense, changing master to main is nothing but a feel-good measure for privileged white people to feel good about themselves without actually having to put in any effort into tackling hard problems like improving democracy or improving the economic system.

- Besides this, it's actually a stupid move in a political, pragmatic sense. Like you're saying, it alienates precisely those you need to bring to your side ("it's pc gone mad!") and it's only going to be well received by those already pre-disposed to agree with you. It's actually my main criticism of the Left nowadays: we are shit at politics! You have to be pragmatic and somewhat calculating to actually get shit done. Many activists on the left today rather childishly think that simply being right is enough, as if you didn't have to be smart, convincing, use rhetoric, etc.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#753

Post by HelloNurse »

jssmith wrote: post #538

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. - The first time it occurred to me that "master" in this context could offend anyone was when GitHub changed the name (and broke my workflow). - My immediate reaction was, "this change is by white people for white people," where "white" means anyone w…

It's good that you find this GitHub initiative a useful reminder that racism can run very deep (including apparently harmless language), but for many people it is a reminder that:

  - GitHub prefers cheap virtue signaling not only to actually caring about racism, but to technical merit and customer service: the public pays for this PR stunt with *millions* of adjustments to their repositories and working copies
  - Branch names, and many other similar things, are now a battleground for freedom of expression, exposed to dangerous  storms of political correctness
  - GitHub has the arrogance of trying to control how people call their branches, and ultimately people's political ideology through the manipulation of language
For me and many others, the habit that is going to change (maybe slowly) is using GitHub.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#755

Post by sneak »

veeti wrote: post #685
jssmith wrote: post #538

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. - The first time it occurred to me that "master" in this context could offend anyone was when GitHub changed the name (and broke my workflow). - My immediate reaction was, "this change is by white people for white people," where "white" means anyone w…

Where does this line of reasoning end? Should we rename "master's degrees" even though there is no "slave" in this context (just like there is no slave branch in git)? I think it's important for students to take a deep breath and remember to reflect upon racism. For context, I'm Finnish and many of my ancestors were sold as slaves as well.

The "master" bedrooms in houses are now being called "primary" bedrooms by some realtors.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#758

Post by jrm4 »

Black tech person here.

The fact that the argument over the name change (which, hey, who knows) is the most commented thing I've ever seen here, as opposed to, e.g. another article where the focus is a substantive issue, speaks volumes and furthers the author's point.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#759

Post by stronglikedan »

jssmith wrote: post #538

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. - The first time it occurred to me that "master" in this context could offend anyone was when GitHub changed the name (and broke my workflow). - My immediate reaction was, "this change is by white people for white people," where "white" means anyone w…

I did change a name because of this change, but the name I changed was Github. Fuck them and their stupid virtue signalling, because no matter how you cut it, that's really all it is.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#760

Post by rory »

douglaswlance wrote: post #541
xroche wrote: post #237

> “Meritocracy!”, I hear you cry. “They pick from the most talented students. The ones that worked the hardest to get into the most elite schools. The black students should have just worked harder” Crazy idea: if companies that do virtue signaling on inclusivity were paying their taxes, decent schools could be funded and we would not have so many of those issues. But instead, those companies are actively lobbying to…

The USA spends more per capita than anyone else and we get worse results. More money isn't going to fix it. We need to break up the teacher's unions and put competition into the education marketplace by supporting students not schools. If we gave every student a stipend that their parent's could use to pick the school they wanted, then our education system would have competition and actually get better.

To give a personal example-- the public school I graduated from has a racial busing program from a school district that spends $24k per student to a school district that spends $15k per student.

Many US cities have tried to throw money at this problem with little to no success. I don't claim to know the answer, but we should at least stop pretending we have it already.

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