Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blacklist is not a racist word

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 59 posts

Re: Blacklist is not a racist word

#11

Post by car_analogy »

nerpderp82 wrote: post #5

Not but it has racist connotations, you really want to go out of your way to educate everyone on the etymology of a word because of an antiwoke crusade? It is the same reason that polite people don't continue to use the word, "niggardly".

Please don't use "crusade" as a negative. The crusades were difficult fights for liberation of various European countries against Muslim colonialism, which had already stolen much of their land and enslaved their people [1,2]. Using them as a negative synonym is very offensive and problematic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Musl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary

Re: Blacklist is not a racist word

#12

Post by rcoveson »

nerpderp82 wrote: post #5

Not but it has racist connotations, you really want to go out of your way to educate everyone on the etymology of a word because of an antiwoke crusade? It is the same reason that polite people don't continue to use the word, "niggardly".

The word "black" is a thousand times more important to speech than the two syllables that make the word "niggardly" problematic.

White and black, light and darkness, yang and yin, on and off, one and zero. I'll bet that most people that have ever lived understand those parallels. Human melanin concentrations in skin don't enter into it. Attempting to control usage of a word as fundamental and common as "black" is an absurd overreach. It's nothing like "niggardly", which was barely in use anyway and brings to mind the same slur in the minds of just about any American alive today.

Re: Blacklist is not a racist word

#16

Post by bragr »

I'm not against the idea of inclusive language in general, but given that companies and projects have limited resources, I'm not convinced the level of impact on diversity and inclusion is worth the level of effort that seems to go into it. I'd rather see people creating apprenticeship roles and/or sourcing interns from non-traditional sources if we really want to see change. There's probably an untapped resource pool in every city of smart, talented highschool kids in disadvantage school that don't have any current pathway into tech, and giving them that onramp will do more for D&I than inclusive language.

Re: Blacklist is not a racist word

#20

Post by rajman187 »

nerpderp82 wrote: post #5

Not but it has racist connotations, you really want to go out of your way to educate everyone on the etymology of a word because of an antiwoke crusade? It is the same reason that polite people don't continue to use the word, "niggardly".

The etymology of niggard, “nigon,” is entirely unrelated to the racial slur which derived from “negro/nègre” in Latin languages meaning black. It’s just an extreme case due to the racial slur being contained in the spelling of the word.
Post reply on HN