Lots of good points made in this. We have eradicated the usage of the exclusive terms in our team not recently but well before 2014. It's a cultural change to be precise. We are very conscious of the biases that could arise. In fact, during hiring we specifically ask the recruiters to look for diverse pool of engineers. Still I concur with the OP's statement that the percentage of African American in the tech industr…
Doesn't telling the recruiters that suggests they should take a skin color or gender when making their decisions? That sounds pretty bad to me and would be illegal in my country.
I look at it the other way. The recruiters may not be inclusive by default. By explicitly informing the recruiters to be inclusive we remove the bias they have as well.
Why are we pretending that the term master is specific to one race? Some group of every race out there has been enslaved at one point or another. In fact, at certain points in history, black masters have had (gasp) white slaves!
One day, IKEA chooses to change their kitchen countertop depth from 28 inch to 29 inch. Supposedly 28 is a nazi number, since 2 and 8 can become B and H, which could mean Blood and Honor, i.e. a nazi reference. Thus, IKEA, issues a press release where they emphasize their inclusive policies and awareness. Since they don't want to cause further trama for their Jewish customers, they're making this change. You happen to know a good number of Jewish friends and ask them what they think. They all think this is crazy, and have never thought about a number being offensive in that way. However, there is one Jew on the internet who has had now published a blog post about being relieved. A lot of non-Jewish carpenters, shop-assistants and handymen debate online on Handymen News and conclude that maybe this doesn't prevent nazi violence today but "it's the least we can do". Why would somebody hold 28 inch so deerly? Unless they're a little bit nazi of course. Also, they agree that any non-Jew really doesn't have a right to speak on the matter, since they can't fully understand what it's like to be a Jew. With IKEA's change, more and more furniture companies follow suit and with the attention, pretty much every company starts to decide to remodel their kitchens, since they obviously don't want to be perceived as promoting nazi ideas. People keep saying that nobody would judge you if you keep your 28 inch kitchen countertop, but you suspect that's gonna be less and less true, as both homes and offices get renovated around you. Also, a lot of people claim that the 29 inch depth is just better, so what's there to complain about? And, if you're building a new kitchen, how hard is it to just mount a 29 inch rather than the 28 one. Turns out there's an adapter for the old shelves too. So what's there to complain about? You feel a little annoyed, but replace your countertop with a 29 inch version and move on.
This reminds me of a discussion in my company after the BLM movement.
It was a talk under article about moving away from blacklist/whitelist. The discussion was done by purely white people and they were suggesting what other names they could change. It looked like people started looking at dictionary for words containing "white" or "black" and started suggesting strange changes.
Going as far as suggesting that "whitespace" is offensive, because it has "white" in name and suggests "opportunity".
I was hard to explain to this person that whitespace comes from book printing.
Basically a savior complex which trivializes the problem, but makes some white folks happy because they did something "important".
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…
Also, moral licensing is a thing. “We already did our part” thinking. But they invented a new problem nobody has instead of solving an existing one...
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 main goal for this kind of symbolic actions is to raise awareness. Only the fact that we are now here discussing about the problem, is a big success, imho.
Should they also do, not only symbolic but also considerable actions? The hell they should.
But that doesn’t make the first point moot.
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…
The whole "this is pointless", "that is stupid" movement has definitely thrown up a "fuck it then" anti-signal in my mind.
If most things we can do is pointless, fuck it, everything we do is probably pointless.
I'm actively fighting against my own mindset to keep looking for things I can do that will make an effect. Most probably won't. I get it's just virtue signalling or whatever phrase of the week we're calling it but it's also inertia. Yes this one is pointless, but maybe the next step isn't.
Anyone that's ever been told what they're doing is useless will never know.
Shamefully I didn't give any consideration to anyone but myself, keeping my existing mindset everyone on the internet was a white guy like me with all the privileges I have. GitHub changing master to main might have been a joke to you, fair enough, but it opened my eyes.
As mentioned elsewhere, the prose doesn't read British, this is the only post from an anonymous account and there is a link to Daily Stormer. Flagging this.
Language matters. The way we use language and tell stories, associates white with good and black with bad. A snippet from Languston Hughe's 'That Word Black':
"Now as I were saying, the word black, white folks have done used that word to mean something bad so often until now
when the N.A.A.C.P. asks for civil rights for the black man, they think they must be bad. Looking back into
history, I reckon it all started with a black cat meaning bad luck. Don't let one cross your path!
"Next, somebody got up a blacklist on which you get if you don't vote right. Then when lodges come into being,
the folks they didn't want in them got blackballed. If you kept a skeleton in your closet, you might get
blackmailed. And everything bad was black. When it came down to the unlucky ball on the pool table, the
eight-rock, they made it the black ball. So no wonder there ain't no equal rights for the black man."
Sure, it's a small change. And yes, it takes time away from doing something else productive with your day. But it is valuable to reflect on our usage of these terms in everyday life, and how it might affect others, even in subtle ways.
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…
> For context, I'm an African American
> My immediate reaction was, "this change is by white people for white people," where "white" means anyone who isn't black.
> My next reaction was, "they may be changing the name for the wrong reasons, but the change is brilliant."
This is exactly what I would expect from a person with a deeply ingrained racial identity.
> 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.
Well, I have reflected upon that, and I came to conclusion that it is people who base their identity on 19th century pseudo-science on kool-aid who are wrong, not me.