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GitHub, fuck your name change

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#901

Post by rattray »

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…

This is definitely a helpful perspective, and I'll try to adopt your suggested practice myself.

I don't know that I'd call the change "brilliant", though – for anyone not already seeking to actively reflect on their own subconscious biases, this change will probably feel less like a welcome gentle reminder and more like someone trying to control how they think (which nobody likes).

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#902

Post by drak0n1c »

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.…

"Words matter" is also the reason the other side of the debate fights so vociferously. Perhaps this is the fault of our educational system, but many cases for renaming would lose much of their steam if the involved and onlookers knew more about homonyms, etymology, and what the actual common usage of these words were in classic literature. Language prescriptivists can't get past their perception of renaming as indulging a slippery game of schizophrenic word-association.

My extremely liberal grandmother who was a NYC English teacher and penpal of many authors despised email, Twitter, pop culture, and Trump for what she thought was the degradation of English. Earlier as an optimistic techie, I thought she was being ridiculous but I recently started seeing her point now that society lines up on both sides of daily culture war arguments over miscommunicated non-existent strawmen and red herrings.

On the other hand, language is not prescriptive. If people start to see words differently, for whatever reason, and thus change their usage - that is nothing new in the history of language and is how languages have evolved since the dawn of time. I can see the utilitarian trade-off of simply realizing this is just that and if it helps more people's psyche than it hurts then maybe we should just go with it (as long as that benefit is proved statistically in the population at large, and isn't just an ivory tower assumption).

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#903

Post by Natfan »

terse_malvolio wrote: post #106
3saryHg6LP2e wrote: post #54

Christ, I agree with this article so much it hurts. I am convinced future people will find this whole saga quite an interesting anecdote of how, for a period of time, _appearing_ to be "anti-racist" was far more important than doing anything positive. As an aside I find it highly amusing watching the proponents of such changes eat themselves (see Twitch: womxn debacle).

It also mislabels racism as something that can be fixed by modulating language, as if it was a character flaw an not a human flaw . An optical illusion isn't fixed just because you cover it from view with a piece of tape.

I hate to be "that guy" that does this, but 1984 is a good view on this, albeit an extreme one. For those who aren't aware: in the book the government control the language used by its people, by reducing the number of words in their dictionary.

Instead of "alright, great, amazing", there's "good, plus good, double plus good". Because these people have less language to express themselves with, they are less likely to protest the atrocities that their government is doing.

This new control-as-a-language is called Newspeak[0].

I think language has a key role in how a society develops. I generally agree with the sentiment that moving to using "people with has-a descriptions instead of is-a descriptions", to quote another user in this thread[1], is a great idea. It allows us to view people who are blind as just that, a person who happens to be blind. Using the same language for all human people, and then adding "has-a descriptions" (or properties, if you wanted to use a programming term) puts us all on the same playing field, while acknowledging that some people do have differences.

If everyone just treated everyone else with common decency, the world would be a much better place.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26490318

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#904

Post by bingbong70 »

onetimeusename wrote: post #726
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 disagree for three reasons. 1) The burden falls disproportionately on Git maintainers and on people with large amounts of dependencies to the old word which is not a good way to distribute work (across tech workers) when making changes especially since some people will not even notice the change. 2) Not everyone uses Git each day and I am certain that people who continue to use the word "master" without knowing a t…

>(Master of Ceremonies, Master of Arts, etc.)

Its the master/slave dynamic that is considered the issue...if there were Slaves of Ceremonies and Slaves of Arts as official titles, we might eventually take a second look at the naming too.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#905

Post by vmception »

A12-B wrote: post #75
vmception wrote: post #47

I’m a black American and agree with everything that this person in London wrote. It is also a common criticism of the American “left”, and is entirely accurate. For everyone perplexed about black Americans and other people of color walking away from the left, its because you/they don't see us as equals that can be bothered by the exact same things that other Americans can be bothered by: being told what to think, wat…

It's not that big of a deal really. Just a small name change

the point is that it was identified as an area of change at all, when given the reasons for doing so it is completely vacuous and existing in the absence of other change, but being used to satisfy a checkmark of change and self-congratulate.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#906

Post by calibas »

luckylion wrote: post #785
calibas wrote: post #611

With computers there is often a master/slave relationship, there is one system that's in near absolute control of another. It's practical and there's no ethical issues, the slave computer doesn't feel anything. Of course, with human beings it's a completely different story, but we're talking about computers. As far as human beings, the problem was (and is) slavery, it's not the word "master". Especially in the US, th…

> If something is "black and white", there's a clear right and wrong. In our language, "black" is synonymous with "wrong", and yet this word with negative connotations is used for an entire race of people. I don't think most people think like that. Black and white in that meaning is used in very specific contexts, not in general. Nobody thinks that a "black and white film" is about moral issues. In German, "black on…

I present the Dictionary.com definition from 5 years ago, back before it was whitewashed: https://web.archive.org/web/20160314100133/http://www.dictio...

Now I guarantee you that people don't consciously think that "black" people are "bad" simply because of the word, if that's what you think I'm saying.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#907

Post by rendang »

Ceezy wrote: post #475
alimbada wrote: post #473

Black people make up 3% of the UK population according to a quick Google search. If there are 7 black people in his company of ~250, that's almost 3%. This is just one data point but it's the one he's using in his post and getting upset over the lack of black representation, when it's proportionate with the overall ratio of ethnicities in the wider population.

44% of London is black.

I don't know if London demographics are the point of comparison, e.g. if you looked at FAANG's demographics you would not compare them to the Bay Area as their hiring pool is much wider than people who grew up locally.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#908

Post by aphelion »

The great irony with these terminology changes is that those most tripped up will be learners with access to fewer up to date resources and autodidacts who lack access to the usual educational opportunities afforded to those pursuing a career in tech.

Isn't the sort of person most likely to be tripped up by this the sort of person it is nominally supposed to help? Isn't it much more likely that it proves a stumbling block to the black teenager teaching herself to code from resources a few years old than to the white undergraduate whose new edition textbook will include the change and who has a professor and peers to explain it just in case?

If you want marginalized outsiders to have an easier path into programming isn't a change that makes that just a little bit trickier in order to make those with established tech careers feel better about themselves the wrong sort of change?

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#909

Post by cronix »

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…

> What's powerful about this name change is that it pushes us to alter a habit

Yes, a habit, but nothing that has to do with race or racism. So, is it a habit worth, or needing of being broken? What was bad about this habit? How does using it in a non-racial context aide in perpetuating racism?

Masters degree. Master recording. Master Chief. Master at Arms. Like Git, none of these things has anything to do with a master/slave paradigm, or even have a "slave" counterpart. There is no slave in git...there is clone and branch. There is no slave in audio recordings, you make a duplicate or copy of the master. Language is complex and nuanced. Not every word used in a race context has to do with the same word being used in another context, unless we make it so. There's nothing consciously or subconsciously racist about saying you have a masters degree, assuming you do. There are many definitions for master[1]. Only one of them deals with the disgusting practice of a person being owned as property, ie slavery, and it's not even the top definition. Should we just get rid of all of the other definitions of the word entirely because one of the definitions has some very disgusting history in the US, and historically the world at large going back thousands of years?

For the record, I'm white. My ancestors were serfs, ie slaves, in Europe. Unless you're of a royal bloodline that wasn't conquered by another royal bloodline, chances are everyone has a connection to relatives that were enslaved by someone, somewhere, at some point in time[2].

Now, I can agree we should get rid of master-slavery terminology. That is blatant, imho. But "master" on its own when there is no "slave" component unless we make one up in our heads? If we follow that logic, there are a LOT of words that we should get rid of, including the word "black" to describe a color. There are a lot of racists who also use that word in a negative context to spread their racism. Where will it end? Where is the line? How much thinner should we make the dictionary so that no one is offended or subconsciously reminded of something that didn't actually have to do with the subject at hand? And after we do that, will there be newly found things that people will get offended at? Count on it.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master

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

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#910

Post by remarkEon »

dleslie wrote: post #637
vmception wrote: post #47

I’m a black American and agree with everything that this person in London wrote. It is also a common criticism of the American “left”, and is entirely accurate. For everyone perplexed about black Americans and other people of color walking away from the left, its because you/they don't see us as equals that can be bothered by the exact same things that other Americans can be bothered by: being told what to think, wat…

As an outsider, watching Americans complain about political fatigue is fascinating, and informative. Very clearly there is a pervasive feeling that the political apparatus of America is ineffectual. But instead of seeking to become engaged, many are sucked in by media rhetoric that assigns blame to a menacing adversarial out-group. > It's not pervasive corruption that's to blame, it's the evil culture of people not l…

Yeah the whole thing is really becoming a meta-commentary on the entire US political system. If it weren't so bizarre and dangerous, it would be really fascinating to watch (speaking as an American). On some level, many are subconsciously realizing the majority of both parties represent essentially the same geopolitical worldview that neither left nor right really agree with anymore (for different reasons). If this were a different country I'd predict a major political realignment on the horizon, but given how ingrained the respective neo-con/liberal ideologies are in the political infrastructure here ... I just don't see it as likely without something catastrophic happening to force the issue.
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