[HN Gopher] GitHub, fuck your name change
___________________________________________________________________
GitHub, fuck your name change
Author : leontrolski
Score : 3051 points
Date : 2021-03-17 08:11 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mooseyanon.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mooseyanon.medium.com)
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I work in the games industry, and as a small piece of anecdotal
| evidence, some of the best programmers I've ever worked with
| never completed a degree, and some never even started one.
|
| There is a lot of talented people out there, willing and able to
| work hard. Limiting your search to university graduates is really
| shortsighted.
| zanethomas wrote:
| Last time I checked cars have master and slave cylinders.
| Narann wrote:
| > So while the tech community was rushing around, trying to do
| their best impression of a black square post on Insta I remember
| thinking, "oh for fucks sake, they've completely missed the
| point". Why? They forgot to talk to people who are actually
| members of the black community.
|
| In practice, big techs don't care about POC, they care about
| mobs.
|
| "Inclusive" words is just what make mobs happy and it's cheaper
| to do than being accused of discrimination for real reason: POC
| representation in big tech.
|
| Changing a default branch name is cheaper than try to fix the
| real world.
|
| That's the point, and that, unfortunately, the reason why the
| situation will never change: Because we act only on the exposed
| representation; movies, text on web site, etc.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| POC means people of color, aka non-white, yes? There's a lot of
| Indian and east Asian representation in the tech workforce. You
| should be more specific about what you mean.
| nlitened wrote:
| Is "person of color" an okay thing to say in US? It really rubs
| me the wrong way (as a non-native English speaker).
|
| To me it's kinda like calling people with long noses "people of
| nose size".
| munchbunny wrote:
| Yes. Just think of it as a formalism - it's the currently
| culturally accepted term if that's the group you're trying to
| reference.
|
| Lots of languages have a fuzzy formal/casual split where
| usage is both context-based and a matter of respect, though I
| think the US is more unique in (1) the degree of energy
| focused towards coming up with formal names for demographic
| groups and (2) making them out of words that are also used
| casually.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| It is the currently accepted term on the Euphemism Treadmill.
| In my lifetime alone I have seen it go through colored people
| (perhaps the original source of your discomfort? and the "CP"
| in "NAACP"), Negro, black, Afro-American (which was brief but
| it doesn't mean I didn't have to rename a lot of anchor texts
| when the academic departments changed names to ...), African-
| American, then back to black, people of color, now finally
| capital B Black, with "people of color" apparently now a
| broader term of usage.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| sorry that black people's existence and struggles made you
| change a few links here and there
| allknowingfrog wrote:
| That's a pretty un-generous interpretation. This whole
| thread revolves around the idea that changing a label is
| a hollow gesture. The author of the parent comment seems
| to be making the same point about terms like "Afro-
| American" and "People of Color".
| dang wrote:
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| " _Be kind. Don 't be snarky._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hinkley wrote:
| It's been a self label for some time. Given the fact that
| there is a lot of horizontal aggression built into The
| System, getting everyone to pull in more or less the same
| direction is progress in its own right.
|
| The terminology seems to be shifting to BIPOC, to include
| Indigenous peoples. I haven't heard an a explanation for why
| Black is also split out.
| foofoo4u wrote:
| Great question about the term "people of color". Reminds me
| of when Apple posted on their home page, "Racial Equity and
| Justice Initiative. For equitable education. For a more just
| justice system. And for Black and Brown businesses.". The
| part that particularly rubs me the wrong way is the term
| "Brown" people. And it's uppercase. Who wants to be called a
| "Brown" person? I've never heard anyone called that before in
| my life. It's incredibly degrading and reductionary. If I am
| Mexican or Indian, the last thing I want to be labeled is
| "Brown". Thanks for reducing me down to a single divisive
| term. What is perplexing is that somehow this term is ok and
| so is "black" and "white". But saying "yellow" or "red" is
| offensive. This inconsistency is absurd. Those that are
| pushing this language somehow think they are morally superior
| to those of the past. But in reality, they have stepped right
| into their way of thinking -- seeing people by "color" and
| categorizing society based on it.
| garmaine wrote:
| It is a politically correct term, yes. For now.
| enriquto wrote:
| Curiously in other languages (e.g. French, Spanish) the
| equivalent term seems to be frowned upon and better
| avoided.
| Kydlaw wrote:
| Nowadays, POC is more widely used in French than naming a
| community directly by its skin color. "It is a black
| neighborhood" -> "It is a POC neighborhood"
| enriquto wrote:
| Are you sure? It cannot be very widespread. I've been
| living about 10 years in Paris and never heard "quartier
| de personnes de couleur" (POC neighborhood). Not a single
| time! Yet "quartier chinois" or "quartier arabe" are very
| common. But maybe my social circle is not very
| representative...
| __s wrote:
| It's a strange thing, I've been having to do training
| sessions explaining that instead of saying "blind people" you
| have to say "people who are blind" because the former
| apparently projects more about their identity when it's
| important to underline that this attribute does not define
| them
|
| Basically there's a movement to shift from inheritance to
| entity component, wanting to implement people with has-a
| descriptions instead of is-a descriptions. This enables data
| oriented optimizations so that society executes more
| efficiently & can be more easily extended as new requirements
| are submitted by the mob
|
| https://www.acedisability.org.au/information-for-
| providers/l...
| Spivak wrote:
| Or ya know, not making someone's disability the leading
| term you use to describe someone. That what's most
| important is their personhood and they're not defined by
| some single dominant aspect. And that their disability
| isn't part of their identity but is just a fact about them.
|
| Language doesn't do multiple inheritance well so has-a
| descriptions are easier to work recognizing that people are
| multifaceted.
| harperlee wrote:
| Depends if the actual reason you are talking about them
| is that characteristic, right? So talking about black
| people precisely on race topics seems necessary, whereas
| if you are talking about a particular neighborhood, it
| seems unnecessary and racist.
| __s wrote:
| Don't worry I'm in full agreement, OOP is a terrible
| paradigm ever since it left Alan Kay's original inception
| which was closer to the has-a message passing paradigm
| that survives today. Rust's is a pleasure to use with
| traits instead of classes. Go's interface model is nice
| too, like a static duck typing. I've always preferred
| lots of interfaces in C# to abstract classes
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I'm sure it depends on the person and the disability, but
| I'm diabetic and would much rather be referred to as that
| rather than "a person with diabetes". That's just
| exhausting.
|
| Diabetes itself is awful. Whether or not it's the leading
| descriptor makes no difference with that, and I'd rather
| just use the non awkward terminology ("I'm diabetic"
| rather than "I'm a person with diabetes".) It would feel
| almost patronizing if everyone started referring to me
| that way.
| waterhouse wrote:
| Furthermore, for all that people apparently care about
| the accumulated effects of microaggressions... Suppose
| that, every time someone refers to your group--I'll use
| blindness for an example--they think "blind people--oh
| wait, I'd get in trouble for saying that, um, I mean,
| people who are blind". Might this develop a Pavlovian
| association of "blind people" = "uh-oh, might get in
| trouble"? Which, in turn, might lead to subtle
| resentment, mistreatment, and/or avoidance of blind
| people? It seems that, to rationally recommend one
| moniker over the other, one has to consider all the costs
| and benefits, and I don't think I've seen advocates of
| "person who is X" address this one.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Nobody has addressed it because you are the first person
| to ever think of it
| Narann wrote:
| > Is "person of color" an okay thing to say in US?
|
| I'm not English native so that could be the wrong term, not
| trying to offend anyone. In this context, I mean
| "discriminated persons/peoples".
|
| IIRC, I saw this on the rules of r/publicfreakout (stating
| that videos representing "POC" would be moderated). For me
| "POC" means "Proof Of Concept", so I asked and discover it
| was about "Person Of Color" and so I use this on English
| spoken Internet.
|
| But I agree, it's a weird term and I never use this in my
| native language. Each country have different way to talk
| about racism and discrimination because each country have
| it's own racism and discrimination problems.
| justAnIdea wrote:
| Big tech better make sure that they don't fly too close to the
| sun. The sun being socialist takeover of the U.S. (i.e. true
| progressives, whose links to socialism are undeniable, taking
| over the democratic party). Because most of them would not came
| out of that transformation unscathed.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| This IETF memo^1 makes a rational, compelling case for adopting
| alternate terms. Fewer characters, less baggage, clearer
| semantics. What's the harm?
|
| 1. https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-knodel-terminology-04.html
| Ekaros wrote:
| This whole change seem like rather Anglo-centric. Why don't we
| start utlizing other languages and scripts to be truly inclusive.
| Some Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew or
| Sanskrit would do wonders. Or maybe even smaller language like
| Finnish, paa would be entirely fine and neutral alternative to
| main or even master...
| weeboid wrote:
| What a weird and useless take, all the yt commenters in there,
| "yeah!!
| danso wrote:
| > _I just don't appreciate the idea that we as software engineers
| can now sit back and believe we've made some kind of positive
| change, coz we haven't_
|
| Why does the author think that GitHub -- and the people who
| support the naming change -- think of this as "real" change and
| are complacent to leave it at that?
|
| As opposed to, say, the name change initiative being both a small
| thing and one that is a natural outgrowth of the mindset
| _already_ committed to making positive change?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Github does business with ICE and CBP.
|
| What does ICE and CBP do? Perhaps you've seen CBP at a port of
| entry when you enter the US. But that's only part of what they
| have been doing.
|
| Visit this link, and skip to 01:23:03 to hear Elora Mukherjee's
| testimony of what CBP has really been doing in their detention
| facilities.
|
| https://www.c-span.org/video/?462505-1/house-hearing-migrant...
| (video)
|
| https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20190712/109772/HHRG...
| (transcript)
|
| Maybe you heard some of this on TV in 2019. But what was
| communicated then was a very watered down version of what
| actually happened.
|
| You could say those children are detainees, but even detainees
| have dignity. Some of those detainees were newborns. What does a
| newborn know about immigration? laws? countries? You have to be a
| real idiot or a racist to take it against them.
|
| And meanwhile, Github gladly offered their services to help CBP
| and ICE to operate.
| [deleted]
| Razengan wrote:
| Where's the obligatory dang comment reminding us about cUrIoUs
| CoNvErSaTiOn?
| throwaway8834 wrote:
| Background: I'm white, my grandfather who is sadly no longer with
| us, was captured as a slave in the early 1940s forced to work on
| the Burma Railway, also known as "Death Railway". Content
| warning: if you Google Image Burma Railway, you're going to see
| things other than just the railway.
|
| In all my years of pushing to and pulling from master branches, I
| have not once made an internal association between that action
| and slavery. Until now.
|
| Offence is subjective of course and having never made this
| stretch of a link between a master branch and slavery, it is in
| no way and has never been personally offensive to me. People are
| different and I accept that others _do_ take offence to this kind
| of language. But it is a stretch. It is a word that when taken
| out of context has _other_ meanings.
|
| If a company such as GitHub are saying that this is wrong and
| must be changed, my question is why now? Why not 2 years ago or 5
| years ago? Is it something that wasn't considered offensive and
| now is? There is so much outrage about this particular subject
| which doesn't actually solve any real problems. There are of
| course _real_ issues that we need to get on top of. Contemporary
| slavery for example. Slavery is still massively at large in many
| places of the world including and especially the U.S.A. Just
| because it 's gone underground it does not mean that it doesn't
| exist. We need to do something about it.
|
| This name change only seems to be creating more separation
| between us all when the world needs us to come together as one to
| solve the real problems, of which there are many.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| Anecdotally I admin but I've seen tech's filter for black people
| first hand.
|
| A few years ago, I invited a friend of mine to stay at my place
| in SF while he works on learning to code and break into the SF
| Tech scene. IN no time at all, he qualified to get into hack
| reactor and quickly fell into a mentoring role.
|
| Despite this, it took several months to almost a year before he
| got his first fulltime gig. Before, I always thought maybe there
| was something else I wasn't seeing. In this case, I knew he was
| good. I worked with in personally and knew what he was capable
| of. I know plenty of engineers that weren't as good at
| engineering that were getting jobs within a month. I coached him
| on his interviewing skils but nothign was moving the needle for
| him.
|
| It wasn't until he got a "internship" position by a diversity
| initiative at a prominent startup that he finally started getting
| work as an engineer. He excelled at that role and now he works
| there as a fulltime engineer.
|
| That someone with his ability had such a hard time getting a
| foothold was all the proof that I needed that something is up
| with tech and a bias against black men.
| sago wrote:
| > I just don't appreciate the idea that we as software engineers
| can now sit back and believe we've made some kind of positive
| change, coz we haven't.
|
| Boom.
|
| So I'm indirectly asking a black software engineer by virtue of
| reading the blog: What are the things that should be done
| instead? Not a lot we can do it about stop and search. How do we
| actively bust bias? He slams the 'meritocracy' meme: I know that
| is widely backed here. So what can be done instead?
|
| > Personally, I have no attachment to any of these words.
|
| Sadly, I think a large proportion of people absolutely have a
| very strong attachment to not changing anything. Who will agree
| with you on this front but be against anything more substantial?
| I've been told on this board that the only racism is antiwhite.
| panny wrote:
| He answered before you asked,
|
| >Inevitably there will be some of you in the audience asking,
| "Well what do you want them to do? They're trying their
| hardest, help them with some solutions!!".
|
| >I don't want this post to be about The Solutions(tm) but
| here's one for your noggin; there is this a significant
| intersection between career changers/developers coming from non
| traditional backgrounds (i.e. people with no CS degree) and
| minorities. Put your money where your fucking mouths are and
| hire these people. Every summer countless tech companies of all
| sizes run internship programs, would it be a stretch to run an
| apprenticeship program of the same length for non traditional
| applicants?
| sago wrote:
| Somehow I think I skim read and didn't retain that paragraph!
| Thanks. I'm sure that says something about me...
| boltzmann_brain wrote:
| The word master, like every word, exists in a fucking context.
| It's such idiocy to think that somehow the name of the branch has
| anything to do with slavery. People have collectively lost their
| minds in the pursuit of empty virtue signalling.
| SPBS wrote:
| While I wholeheartedly agree with the author, I feel like it's a
| bit pointless because it feels like the politically correct wave
| has already won. Just keep thinking what you want, don't cancel
| me. This is not a hill I want to die on.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| When Darth Vader tells Luke that one day Luke will call him
| master, is he also committing a microagression?
|
| Maybe the writers were, but I doubt it. To most English speakers
| master just means person in control or source of truth.
|
| Or we should retcon Star Wars. Time to ban some more books and
| film I guess. Yay?
| ryneandal wrote:
| Ah, yes. Whataboutism rather than debating the premise.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| Debated in the second sentence.
| ryneandal wrote:
| Snark isn't good faith debate.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| First two paragraphs are sincere.
| Jill_the_Pill wrote:
| It's DARTH VADER! Of course he is committing a micro-macro-
| mega-aggression! Maybe Darth Vader isn't your best choice for
| standards of real-world social discourse?
| optimiz3 wrote:
| I'd wager micro-agression verbiage was not front of mind when
| the dialogue was written.
|
| Not "woke" in the least.
| varispeed wrote:
| It can also be used in context of mastering a skill or in the
| audio world the final copy of a song is called a master. Now
| what?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Will all the Jackie Chan films need to be dubbed?
|
| Will dojos have a new name for their master?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Look at how
| much crappier the thread gets below. It's everybody's
| responsibility not to push threads in such directions.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26490895.
| mratsim wrote:
| You'll pry my Master's degree over my dead cold hands
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Sorry I would call this name change nothing but an overreaction
| hurril wrote:
| As so often is the case, people are conflating mentions of the
| crimes with the crimes themselves. Bickering about terminology
| takes away from getting at the actual offences.
| otikik wrote:
| The word "master" (or "slave", really, if I am honest with
| myself) doesn't mean anything to me.
|
| However I can think of other words which _would_ be very
| offensive to me, and I would not like to have to use them every
| day in my job.
|
| Imagine being black and having to type "Negrolist" several times
| per day. Or being a jew and having to write the word "marrano"
| (Spanish word which means "pig", but also a despective word used
| to refer to jews in the past). Or a recovering drug addict having
| to type "heroin" every day.
|
| My point is that this list of words is probably a little
| different for everyone, and changes over time. I have heard some
| people express that "master" and "slave" (and "blacklist") feel
| that way to them. I have decided to trust that this is a real
| sentiment shared by a non-insignificant amount of people, even if
| for this particular black person they do not.
|
| So, if they want to change it to main, sure. It is not a big deal
| to me, and it can help some people.
|
| I also agree that it is not a big deal for companies like Github,
| and that the gesture feels empty if not accompanied with a more
| substantial effort.
| EGreg wrote:
| So are we still for changing blacklist and
| whitelist to blocklist and allowlist
|
| Or are we scrapping that one also due to the underrepresentation
| of PoC in tech and the statistical small sample of 3 guys (and
| they are probably guys) out of 250 people not being enough to
| make a policy?
|
| If you ask me, the problem with underrepresentation is all
| upstream. Whether it's women in tech, or Black people in
| classical music etc. the solution isn't to remove the audition
| screen and do affirmative action downstream. The idea is to fix
| it upstream.
|
| Also with many other things such as non biodegradeable plastic.
| Why are our "solutions" involving a massive change to all the
| individual people not to use straws or plastic bags when this has
| a tiny effect on the result, while disrupting many people's
| lives? Instead, it takes pressure off from the real solution:
| pressuring the Capitalist corporations to switch from non
| biodegradeable plastic to something sustaiable, by taxing the
| negative externalities and internalizing the costs TO THEM
| instead of offloading them to the consumer.
|
| We have to practice upstream thinking and not be afraid to speak
| openly about the SOURCE of all that plastic. If you want more
| Carribbean musicians for example, consider your immigration and
| visa policy. If you want less plastic, ask why companies switched
| from glass bottles. I'd rather have a directed policy upstream
| than trying to use tons of bandaids downstream.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Agreed, fuck this virtue signaling. If somebody chooses to be
| offended, then so be it; they can go be offended somewhere else.
|
| I don't follow social trends anyway, so it's pretty easy to
| ignore these things.
|
| If people just followed the doctrine of "Be awesome to one
| another" more often, the world would be different. Unfortunately,
| people aren't born nice.
| [deleted]
| jssmith wrote:
| 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 who isn't black.
| - My next reaction was, "they may be changing the name for the
| wrong reasons, but the change is brilliant."
|
| Let me explain a little more. Whether motivated purely by virtue
| signaling or by more genuine intentions, changing the name
| doesn't fix any of the problems that black people face. The
| article explains this well.
|
| What's powerful about _this_ name change is that it pushes us to
| alter a _habit_ , in my case one embedded deeply in my fingers,
| something that I do every day without realizing that I'm doing
| it. Thus it is a useful reminder of the implicit bias that
| contributes to the lack of diversity in tech. Never mind that the
| old name was harmless, the change brings repeated awareness to an
| important topic, and it reaches a the developer community in a
| targeted way.
|
| 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.
| armandososa wrote:
| > where "white" means anyone who isn't black
|
| Whoa, whoa, wait a minute there. I have mexican-indigenous
| blood running through my veins and coloring my skin and all I
| can say is this: no matter how much you've suffered, you don't
| get to minimize other people's suffering.
| je42 wrote:
| currently, i have mix of projects some with main some with
| master as default branch.
|
| After, I short while i am getting used to main. No issues, just
| occasionally type main instead of master and vice versa.
|
| Further, i think i like main better. The name fits a bit better
| the purpose (in my flows) and it also shorter ;)
| root_axis wrote:
| 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
| actually changing anything that matters in the lives of black
| people.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| They're actually alienating the choir, with actions like
| that.
|
| I'm a white person who has performed in a professional
| production of The Black Nativity. I was literally part of the
| choir celebrating black traditions in the US.
|
| I now work in software and think less of any racialized group
| using historic struggles as a tool of power, control, and
| oppression in the here and now.
|
| Historic wrongs are not an excuse for present wrongs.
|
| Edit: pronouns are hard.
| skinkestek wrote:
| I guess by "you" you meant "they", i.e. those parent are
| talking about?
|
| I was mightily confused and had to read your post three
| times to get an idea of what you meant.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| Errr.. yes.
|
| Poorly phrased.
| nopeNopeNooope wrote:
| This of it more like this: It's a micro-aggression targeting
| the people who have never, ever considered their words in a
| larger context before.
|
| It's totally useless, 100% agreed.
|
| It's really fucking irritating to those people, as intend, so
| they come forward and self identify, so they can be removed.
| akerro wrote:
| >I think the name change does more harm than good because it
| trivializes the movement.
|
| What do you mean? Name change of a default branch clearly
| fixes issues of racism in the software industry. Racism in IT
| = gone
| josteink wrote:
| Can confirm. I've detected no racism on GitHub since master
| was renamed main.
|
| Clearly the problem must be solved now.
| conductr wrote:
| I tend to agree with triviality. But I'm white and can't
| vocalize that opinion IRL. However I do feel like people of
| my pigment also do these things as risk mitigation. Eg. Most
| of the world was caught off guard by the Dr Seuss thing. It
| seems quite obvious to me the family proactively took the
| books out of print because the fallout from being targeted by
| SJW or whoever would be huge. People are out there looking
| for things to be offended by, brands to attack, etc and if
| you're a big company you don't want to be caught in those
| crosshairs.
|
| That said, I do recall getting "pat us on the back" vibes
| from GitHub but just wanted to throw this alternate
| justification out into the discussion.
| vmception wrote:
| what consequences do you think you would encounter IRL,
| compared to a non-white person vocalizing that opinion IRL?
|
| there is another comment talking about a black engineer not
| prioritizing this in their team and being told by the
| rainbow haired PMs that they were internalizing systemic
| racism.
|
| do you think you would get unceremoniously cancelled
| instead instead of simply silenced like the black person
| thats assumed to be "the poor victim with no independent
| agency"? are you sure that is a valid fear?
| munk-a wrote:
| > the Dr Seuss thing
|
| Can I just briefly highlight that this wasn't "a thing" per
| se? This was a company privately deciding to pull some
| poorly selling publications from active publishing and
| adding a positive PR spin by calling out some questionable
| decisions in the art.
|
| This was made into "an issue" by some pretty rabid media
| outlets rebranding it as government censorship while the
| decision was entirely privately made. That's a pretty
| terrible mis-categorization.
|
| These sorts of controversies, from both the right and the
| left, sell news papers and that's the reason why media
| latches onto them so aggressively.
| wahern wrote:
| It sort of was a thing, but it was never new. Geisel
| spent decades in discourse with people regarding racism
| and sexism in his works. He earnestly made many changes
| over the years, for example changing the look of the
| Chinese character in Mulberry St. Outside the Dr. Suess
| books, he even sometimes flipped some of his earlier
| racist tropes to make progressive, anti-racist
| statements. But he adamantly refused to make some other
| changes, such using more gender neutral pronouns beyond
| the substitutions he already made. This latest round of
| changes and exclusions were the ones he adamantly refused
| to make. Much worse, he's now portrayed in the media as
| being blithely or even stubbornly ignorant of his own
| prejudices, when nothing could be further from the truth.
| Whether you agree or disagree with him, he engaged with
| these issues and admitted to many faults.
| conductr wrote:
| > This was a company privately deciding
|
| That was my point. Risk mitigation IMO
| Jiro wrote:
| If you recall, ebay now refuses to let people sell the
| books. This can't be justified by poor sales.
| munk-a wrote:
| For whatever hysterical reason those books are now
| selling for ridiculous prices.
|
| Media made a big deal out of "canceling" Dr. Seuss and
| those books weirdly became an icon of free speech for
| some folks and now we've arrived at a place where
| secondary markets are being forced to take a stance on
| the issue.
|
| Books get pulled from publication all the time - books
| even get pulled from publication for really extremist
| content (or are refused by publishers in the first
| place). This is only a circus now because some media
| outlets stirred it up. It is occasionally the case that
| some folks on the internet find something offensive and
| try and get it canceled with a petition - I loathe this
| process for a number of reasons - but this isn't what
| happened here, some media outlets took a nothingburger
| and turned it into a four course meal.
|
| If you hike in the woods you'll pass by bee-hives all the
| time, that doesn't mean you always go out in heavy
| clothing - but if someone ahead of you on the trail
| kicked a hive repeatedly then you'll put on the clothing
| if you've got it. All the "thing" here is just
| reactionary to there being so much arbitrary attention
| directed at it in the first place.
| vmception wrote:
| They jumped on it. Ebay and Amazon jumped on the
| misinterpretation and that is squarely their mistake.
|
| The Dr Seuss estate wasn't _afraid_ of SJW 's randomly
| cancelling them. And neither was Ebay or Amazon, which
| were instead signalling support for a society retcon that
| nobody - not even Dr Seuss' estate - asked for. Those
| latter companies are staffed by people experiencing the
| same cognitive dissonance in this comment thread.
| gwright wrote:
| > media outlets rebranding it as government censorship
|
| I must have missed that. All the criticism I've seen
| about the action was just that -- criticism of the
| private action, basically criticizing the editorial
| decision.
|
| I haven't seen anyone confuse it with government
| regulation.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| A (black) engineer colleague of mine told me about his team's
| effort to change master to main. The whole initiative was
| started by a rainbow colored hair (white) PM and since it was
| what they believed to be a highly visible and easy fix, grew
| to a team of 5. All non-technical PMs of course.
|
| They ended up producing a "manifesto of inclusive software"
| where they listed every word they considered offensive and
| what it should be replaced with and made a very public
| announcement regarding the change.
|
| The only response to their email was my (black) colleague
| asking if the branch renaming could be postponed to after a
| release because he didn't know what it could break in the
| build and release automation in case "master" is hard-coded
| somewhere.
|
| This apparently started a lengthy thread between him and the
| 5 PMs where they explained to him that the reason he wasn't
| supportive of the change was because of the "systemic and
| cultural racism" he apparently internalized.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Wow how ironic... in their attempt to stop something that
| isn't even racist to begin with they actually became
| racists. It'd be funny if this cult like thinking wasn't
| infecting our entire country.
|
| Thank God the white people were there to tell the black man
| how to think and feel about himself. After all they're
| incapable of self care and rational thought... /s
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _in their attempt to stop something that isn 't even
| racist to begin with they actually became racists._
|
| No, they were racists all along. They merely over-played
| their hands and revealed it. But actually they reveal it
| in other ways if you care to look: the hair and the
| pronouns in bio are giveaway clues. They "colonised" our
| industry and now it's time they got decolonised
| themselves.
| serverholic wrote:
| And they alienated someone who they were supposedly
| fighting for!
| nullserver wrote:
| Are they fighting for him? His people? Or to Make
| themselves look good to piers?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd think piers would be to busy contending with water to
| care much about how anyone looks.
| zeroimpl wrote:
| The irony here is two much
| vmception wrote:
| think you can get that friend to comment here?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is sad.
| Jiro wrote:
| What happened then? Maybe in response, he said "no, I
| didn't internalize any racism, and here's a list of reasons
| why that logically isn't racist at all", and they said "Oh,
| never mind then".
|
| Or maybe not. If accusing people of internalizing systemic
| racism didn't _work_ , nobody would do it. We have a system
| where accusing a person of racism is an instant win and
| cannot be argued with, and as long as it _is_ an instant
| win, it 's going to be used, even against actual black
| people.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > What happened then? Maybe in response, he said "no, I
| didn't internalize any racism, and here's a list of
| reasons why that logically isn't racist at all", and they
| said "Oh, never mind then".
|
| Shouldn't the black engineer's white colleagues "do their
| own work" instead of forcing him to do it for them?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| This is when he should tell them to stop whitesplaining
| thrownaway564 wrote:
| We have an "inclusion council" that hands out these
| diktats. The ban list (not blacklist!) is approaching 100
| words
| tunesmith wrote:
| Honest question, my initial response is that it only
| trivializes the movement if "see, we changed something" is
| used as an excuse to stop there. But if it isn't... what's
| the harm?
|
| Most of this family of points seems to equate 1) being in
| favor of changing master to main; and 2) being in favor of
| stopping there.
| root_axis wrote:
| I believe it trivializes the movement because it injects
| unimportant issues like git branch names into the realm of
| conversations about racism, police violence, harmful
| stereotypes, discrimination etc. It also gives ammunition
| to those who seek to discredit the movement for social
| justice. This isn't a situation like e.g. affirmative
| action, which demonstrably creates opportunities for
| minorities at the cost of some resentment from people who
| feel like affirmative action is unfair. In the case of
| "master" to "main", nobody gains anything, all it does is
| act is a flashpoint for bad faith actors.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Well, what else has been accomplished? What policies are
| being passed that are helping materially black people?
| Sure, some cities have passed legislation to defund their
| police, and consequently murder rates are sky-rocketing
| (and probably not so much in wealthy white neighborhoods of
| those same cities nor in other more conservative
| jurisdictions). There are some colorblind reforms that
| something like 90% of Americans supported in one form or
| another; hardly anything controversial, but this is the
| most substantial thing that I can think of that can be
| credited as a consequence of the movement, but it's far too
| soon to figure out whether that will have an impact on any
| disparities. What am I missing? I'm guessing there are some
| negative effects that no one is bothering to measure, like
| the extent to which these vapid measures nudge people to
| the right or make them unsympathetic to the movement.
| ben509 wrote:
| > What policies are being passed that are helping
| materially black people?
|
| Mostly nothing. Corporations can largely only avoid
| harming various groups, and engaging in fair business
| practices. They're not set up, by their incentive
| structure, to do work that reforms society at large.
|
| Even non-profits need to focus on a specific mission, and
| they're usually most successful by putting people in
| touch with each other.
|
| Because, especially if you look at it through the lens of
| "material" help, the further an action is from the
| control of the individual being helped, the amount of
| good that can be done per unit effort drops off
| dramatically.
|
| We normally view individualism as a normative claim, that
| "the rugged individual" ought to help himself. But you
| can cast it as an observation: most help in your life is
| only effective (again, in terms of return for the effort
| involved) if it comes from you personally or someone
| quite close to you.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Political capital has proven to be finite, it is similar to
| time being zero sum. Using political capital in a non-smart
| way is equivalent to wasting time.
| wernercd wrote:
| I'd extend these virtue signaling "moments" to stuff like
| changing the names of sports teams and bases and all of the
| attempts to scrub "offensive" things from our lexicon.
|
| It's not just limited to "black" but also American Indians,
| gay people, trans, etc.
|
| These all strike me as Priviledged people being offended for
| others and trying to scream "LOOK AT ME I'M FIXING THINGS!!!"
| with stuff that matters to no one... and in the end, they
| widen the divide and make everything 100x worse with all the
| policies to "fix" racism/sexism/all'the'other'isms but making
| everything about race/sex/etc.
|
| So divisive and counter productive uses of time that solve
| nothing.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| The sports team thing is really offensive though. They're
| literally using Native Americans as team mascots.
| Especially given the genocide that occurred. There's no
| reason to use any race of human, especially those who were
| struck with some of the worst systemic violence in history,
| as a mascot for a sports team.
| cl0ne wrote:
| As a native, I agree with you. There aren't sports teams
| named after other people's skin colors. It's just weird.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm honestly still amazed sometimes that the Fighting
| Irish mascot of Notre Dame is still a thing. It seems
| inevitable that it gets relegated to the scrap heap of
| history at some point, but I guess people don't care as
| much since the Irish, at least in the U.S., mostly ended
| up catching a break and didn't become a permanent
| underclass all but obliterated from existence by military
| might like Native Americans were.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Notre Dame has had plenty of Irish presidents
| throwaway19937 wrote:
| (https://pando.com/2014/02/12/war-nerd-the-long-sleazy-
| histor...) argues that the slogan is derived from a
| British army recruiting pitch for cannon fodder.
| malandrew wrote:
| As someone who is 1/4 Irish, I'd say it's because we just
| don't care. The Notre Dame mascot is completely
| inconsequential. It's a mascot. Nothing more. Nothing
| less.
|
| It's a privilege to not care. I feel sorry for everyone
| from other groups that are forced to care about
| inconsequential things because in aggregate all these
| inconsequential things that people demand that you care
| about end up being a denial of service attack, leaving
| you with less bandwidth to think about things that
| actually matter like working hard and working smart and
| building wealth.
|
| If some group that was not Irish kept trying to get me
| and other people of Irish descent to waste brain cycles
| on such trivial non-consequential things, I'd ignore them
| and instruct others to ignore them.
|
| It honestly boggles my mind that our culture has
| optimized for amplifying the voices of such people as
| it's so counter-productive.
|
| I'm also 1/32 Native American and feel the same way about
| those mascots too.
|
| It's honestly all so tiresome and wasteful of brain
| cycles. Heck, look how many smart people have commented
| on this story and all because these non-issues have been
| elevated to the point we're we are forced to waste brain
| cycles on this because it became intrusive and broke our
| work flows. Many activists in history have been great but
| much of what passes for "activism" today is not just
| useless, but actively counter-productive.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| > I'm also 1/32 Native American and feel the same way
| about those mascots too.
|
| Just because you don't take issue with it, doesn't mean
| it's not offensive and a big deal to other people (who
| are often more than 1/32 Native American). The Redskins
| is a racist name, anyway you slice it. Try to replace red
| with brown or yellow and it's immediately obvious. I
| don't think every single case is as cut and dry as that
| one, but it's not fair to call these issues
| inconsequential.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| > The sports team thing is really offensive though.
|
| Offensive to whom?
|
| Someone is deciding which groups deserve to be free of
| offense, and which groups don't.
|
| I'd like to shine a spotlight on them, and _their_
| hypocritical abuse of power over others.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| There is no third party deciding these things. People who
| have experienced racism are offended when it continues to
| happen. They can then advocate for a change and hopefully
| broader awareness.
|
| There's no hypocrisy involved.
| aksss wrote:
| I have a lot of Native American friends, they grouse
| about losing the Redskins team. I think the white SJWs
| don't really understand the dynamic. Not claiming I do
| either but point being a lot of people took pride in that
| team _for its name and representation_ , it wasn't a
| joke. One of the side effects of this purge/righteous
| cleansing is that it's also scrubbing out representation.
| Land-o-lakes being another example.
| kaitai wrote:
| I think the Redskins example is not great, as I also know
| plenty of folks who support the renaming; there is plenty
| of division among Native folks around this name. Land
| O'Lakes, though, is a much more interesting example --
| Patrick DesJarlait, the artist, was Ojibwe, and his son
| wrote a very interesting article about this for the
| Washington Post:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/29/my-
| ojibwe...
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| The renaming has very broad support in Native
| communities:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Washington_Redski
| ns_...
| TylerE wrote:
| The sports team issue is very different.
|
| That's a very public name widely used in commerce.
|
| It's not like there are millions of people walking around
| in "master branch" t-shirts with a caricature of an
| overseer on it.
| rfoo wrote:
| Yeah, but there are millions of people typing "master"
| branch on their keyboards, daily. Is this that different
| than the sports team issue?
|
| I'm sure you can find "important" differences if you try
| playing Leeuwenhoek, but why?
| shakow wrote:
| But master can mean many different things other than "a
| white man owning black slaves in 19^th century US" - and
| was not created with this name in mind; whereas the sport
| team name was unambiguously chosen and featured a
| caricature of the very thing they chose their name after
| on their logo.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It's a 'caricature' in that choosing societies renown for
| being valiant warriors erases much complexity (how much
| nuance and complexity were you expecting from a sports
| mascot?). Anyway, if this were a sincere movement, it
| would similarly object to equivalent depictions of the
| Irish, Vikings, Romans, Spartans, Trojans, etc.
| shakow wrote:
| No, it's a caricature because I mistook the Cleveland
| Indians logo for the Washington Redskins logo, my bad.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I see your point, but even still no one objects to the
| Fighting Irish or Boston Celtics logos despite being
| every bit the caricature. Are we doing this out of
| respect for Native Americans, or is it to make ourselves
| feel noble while we (myself included) make no progress on
| their material concerns?
| [deleted]
| kaitai wrote:
| Changing sports team names does reduce the number of people
| prancing around in fake headdresses and doing the "Tomahawk
| chop"...
|
| I would love to spend more time on economic and tax code
| reform so as to make the United States more equitable.
| Would you like to join me? There is not a lot of benefit in
| arguing, "This is not the thing I think is most important
| for you to do, so you shouldn't do it" -- let people work
| on what they want to work on, and put your energy into
| making substantive change that you believe in.
| clairity wrote:
| i'm with you. it's shocking how much attention this
| bullshit is getting, while there are a million more
| imortant issues to tackle. this is misdirection at its
| worst.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| The parent post is saying that it's pointless to call
| this bullshit and complain about what other people are
| upset about. It's also saying that changing team names
| reduces racism as it stops people from performing racist
| actions that have been built into showing team support.
|
| It's not misdirection. It's just that these are issues
| you personally don't care about.
| clairity wrote:
| the misdirection isn't the name change itself, which is
| trivial in every sense of the word, it's the bullshit
| discussion around it. to continue focusing on it after
| the fact is the misdirection, keeping us from discussing
| substantive issues, like actual systemic, structural
| barriers to prosperity and equality of opportunity.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| What makes the discussion bullshit? It's a hurtful name.
| It's good for society to recognize and discuss that.
| clairity wrote:
| names don't hurt. how we respond is what can hurt, how we
| allow words to infect us. but we have brains that can
| rationalize that away, make us defiant and resilient
| against it. we're literally talking about the
| trivialities of 5 year olds when we talk so incessantly
| about names.
|
| what really hurts is, for instance, decades of redlining
| and systemic bias in politics, economics, education,
| nutrition, medicine, and a myriad of other daily, real
| issues that affect the lives of millions of americans,
| and billions of people worldwide.
|
| this discussion is bullshit because we are not talking
| about those things. it's a _misdirection_.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Plenty of people are talking about those things. It's not
| either or.
|
| Names _do_ hurt. Does blackface hurt? That 's essentially
| what having a team called the Redskins is. It's important
| to talk about how mass media and the mainstream will
| accept openly racist symbols. In the case of Native
| Americans it's also important to talk about how they went
| through a barely recognized genocide and have been
| systematically discriminated against in a major way.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| This seems pretty close to just saying, "If we can't change
| the world, let us change nothing at all."
|
| Sure, it's trivial. It doesn't, in any significant way,
| actually do anything. But I find a lot of time when reviewing
| code -- if there are code badly formatted or variables
| misspelled, I have a hard time looking at the actually
| problems in the code until those superficial things are
| fixed.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _This seems pretty close to just saying, "If we can't
| change the world, let us change nothing at all."_
|
| I don't see it that way. In my view, this change is worse
| than "nothing at all" because it doesn't represent any
| substantive change, but it does create fodder for bad faith
| actors to portray the movement for social justice as
| trivial.
| patorjk wrote:
| But changing master to main doesn't fix anything, nor did
| the author find it a problem to begin with. I think the
| point is to focus on real change and not fake change,
| because the former is what's important and the latter is a
| distraction.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| The major injustices and crimes of history were profitable
| because a targeted group was dehumanised for the gain of
| others. The economic victimisation of black people in the US
| continues to be profitable.
|
| > it trivializes the movement
|
| As a developer, I am comfortable with the change in
| terminology. As a human... My phenotypes are different from
| yours and OP's, but I am certain that if we do not bring the
| critique to bear against systemic enslavement of people
| (regardless of "targeted" phenotypes), we have all missed the
| point and really changed nothing. Who is blacker or whiter or
| truer to the tribe... these are serviceable distractions.
|
| Slavery is abhorrent to any enlightened human. But slavery
| existed and continues to exist because those who profit like
| it that way.
| root_axis wrote:
| I agree with everything you wrote except for the unstated
| implication that the use of the word master to refer to a
| git branch reflects a history of slavery. If you believe
| this, then I think understanding why we see this
| differently is the path forward to a productive discussion
| on this issue.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| But what does this have to do with using the concept of
| master / slave as an apt technical analogy? How does
| changing technical terminology help close racial gaps in
| opportunity or change outdated attitudes on race? It seems
| to me (a white guy) that this accomplishes nothing compared
| to other uses of the time, energy, and $ that this wastes.
|
| If I were at the head of the org I would take the time & $
| that would be wasted on this effort and invest it into
| underserved black schools. (of which there are many in the
| US)
| kybernetikos wrote:
| > an apt technical analogy
|
| It's really not an apt technical analogy. The most
| significant aspects of the master/slave relationship
| (ownership) are not present in the technical version.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| I think thats true for git, (altho the master branch
| could also refer to a master record), but there are a lot
| of uses of master/slave terminology in computer tech that
| are more apt.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%2Fslave_%28technolog
| y%2...
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Pretty much none of those have the key ownership feature
| that is the most significant aspect of the master/slave
| relationship.
|
| Most of the relationships in that list would be more
| accurately described as lead/follower (followers copy or
| join in with the actions of a leader), boss/worker
| (workers work on tasks given them by a boss).
| martamorena943 wrote:
| Yes, this is a good summary of what these changes do. They
| allow white people to pat themselves on the back, without
| actually doing anything material to help break down racism.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Oh it's worse than just pats on the back. It's ACTUAL
| racism. They think they have the right to tell minorities
| how to think and feel. They think they know what's best and
| you can't have them thinking for themselves.
|
| I witnessed a white woman exclaim she was revoking
| someone's Mexican card the other day because he voted for
| Trump. Supposedly the Mexican is the racist according to
| this ideology....
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I think it also burns a certain amount of political capital
| and good will. People only have so much "give a fuck" to
| spare, and if you force them to use it in meaningless ways,
| it's a waste.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I think it also burns a certain amount of political
| capital and good will. People only have so much "give a
| fuck" to spare, and if you force them to use it in
| meaningless ways, it's a waste.
|
| Is that what you think is happening here? People are
| fighting against this change out of concern that if they
| support it, they won't be able to care about other, more
| important things down the line?
| andrepd wrote:
| Absolutely, this is another thing I feel strongly about.
| People have limited energy, attention, resources. Every
| news segment that opens with
|
| "pc gone mad! radical leftists want to ban the word
| "blacklist"!"
|
| is a news segment that doesn't open with
|
| "wages have been stagnant for the past 50 years despite
| gains in productivity"
|
| "prices of tvs and smartphones falling, prices of housing
| and healthcare skyrocketing"
|
| "statistical studies show voter preferences have near-
| zero correlation with effected legislation, while
| preferences of the wealthier 0.5% are very strongly
| correlated"
|
| "hey have you noticed that the EU is _hilariously_
| undemocratic "
|
| etc etc.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| If your belief is that in the absence of minor
| controversy, we'd have better media, I think you're
| optimistic.
|
| We'll always have controversy and I really doubt that
| reducing it would improve the level of discourse one
| iota.
|
| Media that prioritises controversy will do whatever they
| can to find or foment it rather than discuss the topics
| you listed.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Generating controversy in support of your cause is
| generally thought of as building political capital, not
| spending it. You want to focus energy on what people on
| your side will agree with, and, crucially, can have a
| personal impact towards.
|
| You can see this dynamic in Republican posturing in the
| Biden era. Biden is a much harder topic for Republicans
| to attack. His Covid relief bill has broad bipartisan
| support and he's an old white guy just like Republicans
| like to see in office. So instead of wasting time and
| effort on trying to attack Biden or Covid relief, they
| spent the last few weeks attacking cancel culture and Dr.
| Seuss.
|
| This move is the opposite, it lets those interested in
| social justice and equality participate in a political
| action. Any time you can energize your base around
| something, that's a great boon to your side.
|
| More generally speaking, political battles are fought by
| people who care, not by people who don't. Actions taken
| that cause the uncaring to care even less are fine so
| long as they can get some people to care more.
|
| For no better an illustration of this look to PETA. The
| only reason we still know who they are is because they've
| taken this as a holy dictate. We still know who they are
| because they're fantastically successful at creating
| absolute zealots.
| crb002 wrote:
| The worst I have seen is the media's failure to cover that
| Google - and probably Microsoft too - blacklisted historic
| black universities for over a decade. This a juke, a pump
| fake - not something substantial.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| > 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.
|
| As another black SWE - I have to ask _which_ hearts are we
| trying to open? Some are far too gone and it would be a waste
| of time to try to convince them to let go of their bigotry.
| The very same will feign engagement and argue in bad faith
| while being energy vampires. Why should I supplicate racists
| before I have my dignity as a human? Fuck "hearts and minds"
| - I have no way of definitively knowing those - I'll take
| changed behavior instead, that's all I truly care about. If I
| ever have kids, I can't have them live like this.
|
| > we should endeavor to communicate in ways that will be well
| received by those who need to hear the message
|
| I agree, but you need to consciously consider who these
| people are - if it's _everyone_ , then the battle is already
| lost.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _I have to ask which hearts are we trying to open? Some
| are far too gone and it would be a waste of time to try to
| convince them to let go of their bigotry_
|
| Any that can be opened. The ones that are "too far gone"
| are moot by definition, so we should keep in mind those who
| might see things differently if we communicate in a way
| that reaches them rather than puts up roadblocks.
|
| > _The very same will feign engagement and argue in bad
| faith while being energy vampires_
|
| Yes, there are many of these people, but my argument is
| that actions like this empower bad faith actors.
|
| > _Why should I supplicate racists before I have my dignity
| as a human?_
|
| We fundamentally disagree that use of the word "master" in
| a technical context is racist or a denial of human dignity.
| Using the word "main" instead of "master" doesn't improve
| economic, social, or political outcomes for black people,
| it doesn't do anything except create fodder for the bad
| faith actors.
|
| > _Fuck "hearts and minds"_
|
| I think this approach hurts the cause. I don't see how our
| children grow up in a better world if we abandon all hope
| of reasoning with our fellow citizens. However, as my
| comment stated, my advice only make sense if the goal is to
| change hearts and minds, if you don't care about that then
| my reasoning does not apply.
|
| > _but you need to consciously consider who these people
| are_
|
| As you already pointed out, we can't know who they are,
| thus I think it is prudent to craft broad messaging in a
| manner that is suitable for those who can be convinced, not
| those who are already convinced, or those who cannot ever
| be convinced. I also want to highlight that my comment
| includes the caveat "where appropriate", that is to say, we
| should be strident in the face of discrimination and
| bigotry, but I don't agree that the status quo for git
| branch names are an example of such problems.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| > Yes, there are many of these people, but my argument is
| that actions like this empower bad faith actors.
|
| My POV is that bad actors should never be a consideration
| - they are never going to be helpful whether you
| "empower" them or not. They should be removed from the
| equation entirely.
|
| > We fundamentally disagree that use of the word "master"
| in a technical context is racist or a denial of human
| dignity.
|
| I never claimed naming a default branch "master" is
| racist - changing it is petty, and doesn't change
| anything overall. That said, the people who get outraged
| over this claiming "PC gone mad" or "'Wokism' is
| destroying the world" raise a red flag for me and I
| immediately suspect them of being a culture warrior. I
| didn't see the same levels of indignation when the
| kilobyte and megabyte were redefined from 1024 to 1000,
| but technically the changes are similar (minor annoyance
| that might break your code/build, but can be fixed with a
| search-and-replace).
|
| > I don't see how our children grow up in a better world
| if we abandon all hope of reasoning with our fellow
| citizens.
|
| Oh, I think reasoning with our fellow citizens is a
| wonderful thing, it should not be a prerequisite for a
| subset of the citizenry to get what ought to be
| inalienable rights - it _shouldn 't_ be a negotiation.
| Excessively appealing to the squishy center that's not as
| invested _can_ slow the movement: I think MLK 's "Letter
| from Birmingham"[1] addresses this more eloquently than I
| can.
|
| 1. https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmi
| ngham....
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| this is a good point. There's a lot of attempts at fixing
| issues through optics and performative acts to show
| understanding but these gestures can be sort of awkward or
| totally unnecessary while potentially hypocritical if it
| isn't coupled with material changes.
| mehdix wrote:
| Totally agree. Had they made a real change that actually
| mattered, all this time spent on discussing this rename,
| could have been put into better use. They created buzz,
| changed nothing.
| chris_wot wrote:
| I am genuinely curious: the LibreOffice team changed the file
| blacklist to excludelist. Do you believe this was just
| tokenism? I personally thought it was a great thing. But I am
| interested in hearing your perspective.
| root_axis wrote:
| In my view, if the goal is productive discourse, every
| contentious social justice scenario demands a nuanced
| parsing of the facts.
|
| I'm not familiar with the LibreOffice change, but from what
| I can tell, it doesn't seem like this change was delivered
| with any fanfare or something like an official blogpost
| targeting the general public and presented as an effort
| towards inclusion and social justice. Instead, it seems to
| be treated by the developers in a manner that reflects
| exactly what it is, a trivial relabeling, perhaps in a
| positive direction, but one that doesn't merit injection
| into the wider discourse over racial justice. The
| developers made this change based on their personal values
| and in a way that doesn't interrupt the natural workflow of
| the users which inevitably draws scrutiny and creates
| contention. I'm all for developers using whatever labels
| align with their values, where I have a problem is the
| pronouncement of such trivialities as if they represent
| something meaningful.
| pwm wrote:
| Imho meaningful change: (blacklist, whitelist) ->
| (excludelist/denylist, allowlist)
|
| Imho meaningless lip service: master branch -> main branch
|
| Also imho the most insulting towards PoC and everyone else
| for that matter is to patronisingly assume people can't
| comprehend context, as OP's article points it out.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| I believe that usage of 'master' in git was copied from
| bitkeeper which did reference the master/slave
| relationship.
|
| Whereas blacklist in its original forms was used outside
| of a racial context. I think it'll be pretty hard to try
| to break the association between black (the color) and
| night, hiddenness, unknown, sin, fear, etc. All of which
| are pretty negative, but not originally racial.
|
| I find it difficult to distinguish one of these changes
| from the other in terms of usefulness.
|
| I also don't hold much truck with the 'insulting' and
| 'patronising' thing. It's perfectly possible for a white
| person to prefer to remove inappropriate and confusing
| terminology that trivialised historical injustices and/or
| glorified things they disagree with regardless of whether
| or not non-white people are offended by such usage. There
| seems to be an underlying view that a white person could
| only want to change such usage for inauthentic reasons.
| If we want to find things patronising, I find that
| patronising. Just because you're white doesn't mean you
| can't hold an authentic position _of your own_ on these
| topics.
| andrepd wrote:
| >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.
| ezzzzz wrote:
| >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!")
|
| Alienates at best, emboldening the racists at worst.
| Clearly even the author was pissed by this change, not just
| because it's an empty gesture but also a change to
| workflow. I'm imagining some fashy edgelord "Western
| Chauvinist" programmer throwing a fit every time they
| accidentally git checkout master, _racism intensifies_.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I agree completely. I fully expect to see an article by an
| affluent white woman writing from her reclaimed wine cork
| desk telling me to boycott Nintendo until they change the
| name of the Master Sword.
| majormajor wrote:
| I think you overstate the level of lasting alienation and
| understate the cumulative impact that a bunch of small
| "trivial" changes could have over years.
|
| For a hundred years after the Civil War, and then a solid
| 50 more after the Civil Rights movement, we had "white
| people doing nothing" plus "some still-racist white people
| actively trying to roll things back." Doing things, and
| keeping the issue in the forefront, even if the things
| sometime look silly to some people, is going to make us
| more progress than going back to doing nothing because some
| people think only the perfect things are worth doing.
|
| (People getting affronted, offended, and alienated by
| actions that they think are "silly" is another problem
| entirely... You don't think it'll make a big difference?
| That's nice. Why are you making a big deal out of it, then?
| There's a virtue signalling of "look at how more evolved I
| am to not be fooled by your silly change, and still spot
| that the world still sucks after it!!")
| andrepd wrote:
| As much as we pretend otherwise, people's attention and
| resources are limited. Time spent bikeshedding these
| inconsequential things is time not spent tackling more
| important issues. Each newsflash that opens with "pc
| culture gone mad! the word "blacklist" is being banned by
| radical leftists" is a newsflash that doesn't open with
|
| "wages have been stagnant for the past 50 years despite
| gains in productivity"
|
| "prices of tvs and smartphones falling, prices of housing
| and healthcare skyrocketing"
|
| "statistical studies show voter preferences have near-
| zero correlation with effected legislation, while
| preferences of the wealthier 0.5% are very strongly
| correlated"
|
| etc.
|
| In short: you're alienating people that you could bring
| to your side, you're wasting time and effort in
| inconsequential changes, you're giving fuel to those who
| use these trivialities to distract the populace from the
| real issues. I see no upside here.
| majormajor wrote:
| So let it happen quickly without complaining about it so
| that tomorrow we can be arguing about something else,
| instead of arguing about the same thing for ten straight
| years.
|
| "People get pissed off even by small changes" is a MUCH
| bigger impediment towards real progress than "people are
| making small changes that won't fix the whole world" is.
|
| I don't believe most of the people who say they're only
| problem is that the change is "too small." I think that's
| just an excuse of convenience to resist any change or
| challenge to the status quo. If your problem is that the
| change isn't big enough, the solution is to push for
| bigger ones yourself! But that's not usually what we see
| those people doing...
| nullserver wrote:
| Small changes?
|
| My daughters now have to complete against males in
| sports. They will be punished severely if they complain.
|
| The woman's movement is being taken over by men.
| refenestrator wrote:
| The problem with that is we never graduate to the real
| problems.
|
| People who are after a quick, delusional dopamine hit
| from changing harmless terminology will just go after
| sillier and sillier stuff instead.
|
| It's not "too small", it's irrelevant and selfish.
| kayfox wrote:
| As a Native American this comes across to me the same as
| how the savior complex drives people to talk down to
| Native Americans about their persecution.
|
| And that's pretty much what the OP article is complaining
| about, people with savior complexes doing performative
| things that don't really fix the problem on a larger
| scale.
| judge2020 wrote:
| If I may ask, (why) do you prefer Native American over
| Indian (assuming you're talking about being a United
| States native and not a native of other parts of America,
| ie. South America)?
| hanselot wrote:
| How does it feel knowing that he didn't step into your
| logic trap?
| kayfox wrote:
| I have no preference, so sometimes I will say Native
| American, sometimes its American Indian, sometimes its
| indigenous... No real preference other than I tend to use
| one or another based on context at times. Its more clear
| and not mildly politically loaded to say "Native
| American" in this context.
|
| I do not really like using Indian to refer to Native
| Americans as I work with a lot of people from India. This
| is a personal preference, I don't correct people who say
| Indian to refer to Native Americans and I will often use
| it in a conversation where its already being used to
| avoid confusion or bad vibes.
|
| An of course, there is the confusion you noted that can
| happen between the super-continent America and the
| country commonly called America.
| hobs wrote:
| Each newsflash could cover those things anyway, but they
| choose garbage wedge issues and will continue to foment
| them when they cant find any: biden's dog was a recent
| controversy because talking about systemic problems
| doesn't get clicks and doesn't make people upset in the
| same way this type of BS does.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _they choose garbage wedge issues and will continue to
| foment them when they cant find any: biden 's dog was a
| recent controversy_
|
| I can't believe anyone really believes that story
| worik wrote:
| Pull on every thread. This is one thread, there is no
| opportunity cost of this sort of thing.
|
| We all need to get over ourselves
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Why are you making a big deal out of it, then?_
|
| Achieves nothing; breaks build scripts; imposed by
| faceless outsiders who have no interaction with the
| project.
| Izkata wrote:
| I'd argue it doesn't just achieve nothing, it works
| against the cause in two ways:
|
| * First, as others have said, it builds resentment in
| those that see it as not worthwhile compared to other
| things and who are negatively impacted like how you
| describe.
|
| * Second, which I haven't really seen people bring up, by
| succeeding at a visible but inconsequential change, the
| activists who brought this about are less likely to
| bother with something that actually matters.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| I'm not sure that I really agree with either of those.
|
| * firstly, I expect that most actual resentment is from
| people who object to the change on political grounds
| rather than technical, and 'there are big things to do'
| is not a reason to not do little things. Not doing
| changes like this will probably not meaningfully change
| the amount of resentment to 'political correctness' in
| the world.
|
| * secondly, the pattern we normally see is that we
| encourage people to make big changes by helping them
| succeed with small ones first
| TA2020170321 wrote:
| >I think you overstate the level of lasting alienation
| and understate the cumulative impact that a bunch of
| small "trivial" changes could have over years.
|
| I'm a very liberal person, and have actively fought
| prejudice, especially the type of unconscious bias that
| is so difficult to stomp out, my entire professional
| career. I'm especially keen on the dynamics of power in
| conversation, it's crazy how often people from a less
| privilege group get interrupted, and people rarely
| realize the dynamic as its occurring.
|
| But all of the PC policing and the with-us-or-against-us
| rhetoric has really soured me on giving a shit about any
| of this. While I'm privileged by being white, I was born
| to a lower-middle class family in a rural area and don't
| feel particularly privileged. I went to a backwards high
| school where I was bullied for being a nerd, with
| curriculum from 60's( graduated in ~2010 and we didn't
| have a single CS class, and highest achievable GPA was
| 4.2, while people in neighboring districts could go to
| the GATE high school and graduated with a 5.0). I had
| undiagnosed/treated mental health problems which were
| significantly exacerbated by my family's inability to
| afford healthcare (we had insurance, but couldn't afford
| to actually see the doctor). Despite this we were too
| wealthy to qualify for any student aid and I was unable
| to win any substantial scholarships. I was mature enough
| at 20 to know I wasn't doing well enough nor did I have
| adequate direction in school to take tens of thousands in
| what I understood at the time to be an undischargeable
| debt on the gamble that it would pay off. I remember
| looking for help about how to do better at the community
| college I was attending and basically determined that I,
| as a straight white atheist, didn't really have allies as
| when I asked people where they got e.g. counseling, it
| was always through a channel i didn't have access to,
| whether it was a church group, a family friend or some
| support group for people who weren't me. My parents are
| both 40 years my senior and were so far out of the loop
| that they didn't even know that GPAs went higher than 4.
| I also didn't know that if I saw a psychiatrist I could
| turn everything around, and had no access to one, so I
| dropped out.
|
| >Why are you making a big deal out of it, then?
|
| Because I, personally, find all this woke shit about race
| and sex from bougie whites offensive, classist, and
| racist. I completely support it when it is coming from
| the (dis)affected community in question, but when there
| is a dogpile of privileged people virtue signaling in a
| way that completely negates the actual issues (like
| people not having equitable access to justice,
| healthcare, education and housing) I find affront. I
| would argue _most_ of the problems that minority
| communities face are also shared by poor white
| communities, the only difference is that those
| communities have virtually no actual voice in modern
| discourse and have privileged whites talking on their
| behalf instead. Admittedly a common problem generally,
| but I don 't want people with power, and make no mistake
| bougie tech workers have a lot more power than the poor
| do, to feel they've "done something" and pat themselves
| on the back until they actually make poor people's lives
| better, changing master/slave to main/source, or whatever
| the fuck language change you choose is literally doing
| nothing to make things better for anyone but
| github/micorsoft. It's paying lip service, full stop.
|
| I also find some of talk about the historic enslavement
| of Blacks in the US kinda weird. I can track my lineage
| back thru 100s of years of serfdom, my ancestors
| literally fleeing Europe to America during Reconstruction
| in 19th century to escape brutal peonage and serfdom..
| and nobody cares. I'm of the "priviledged class" because
| people who I have no relation to but shared my skin color
| were of the ruling class 250 years ago when we didn't
| respect human rights. Sounds racist as hell to me, all
| things considered. I just don't get it.
| pkkim wrote:
| I agree with much of what you've said, especially the
| part about the shared problems that poor minority and
| poor White people face. Based on what you've said I
| wouldn't say you were very "privileged."
|
| But responding to one of your points, and I don't think
| this is taught very well in schools, the specific
| discrimination that Black people faced went on for a long
| time after the end of slavery. For example, here in what
| is now considered progressive Oakland, CA, Black people
| were kept out of many jobs through the 1940s and 50s,
| including as streetcar drivers. Also, they were excluded
| from government subsidized mortgages through the 60s,
| which impeded their ability to build wealth and live in
| good conditions. These examples of explicit racial
| discrimination happened well within living memory.
| clairity wrote:
| > "It's actually my main criticism of the Left nowadays: we
| are shit at politics!"
|
| a good point in the making until this line, where you
| aligned yourself with a shallow identity. fuck left and
| right. stop trying to find a team to mindlessly root for.
| yes, it's hard, and yes, it means more mindshare devoted to
| evaluating what you think rather than who you want others
| to think you are in subservience to ideological hegemony.
| politics is shit because not enough of us do this, but
| rather settle on a tribe and leave our brains behind in the
| process.
|
| the left isn't right, it's a coalition for power, which is
| for delivering advantage to some people at the exclusion of
| others. power doesn't value or uphold right and wrong, so
| you're premise is profoundly misguided here.
| gegtik wrote:
| if you align yourself with nobody good luck being the
| single person changing the world. i guess it could happen
| clairity wrote:
| coalitions can form without being braindead. it's about
| being cognizant of the mechanisms of control that are
| impinging on us and resisting those so we can have
| meaningful dialog on issues that matter, not this
| bullshit.
| leephillips wrote:
| The world is _only_ changed by individual people.
| Alliances, parties, movements, schools of thought, etc.,
| are just mobs who have adopted the ideas of particular
| individuals.
| kergonath wrote:
| Single men do nothing. They still need others to do the
| hard work. The people who were truly successful did so by
| managing large organisations. Also, blind luck and
| circumstances.
| snikeris wrote:
| Tolstoy:
|
| In their present condition men are like bees which have
| just swarmed and are hanging down a limb in a cluster.
| The position of the bees on the limb is temporary, and
| must inevitably be changed. They must rise and find a new
| home for themselves. Every one of the bees knows that and
| wishes to change its position and that of the others, but
| not one is able to do so before the others are going to
| do so. They cannot rise all at once, because one hangs
| down from the other, keeping it from separating itself
| from the swarm, and so all continue to hang. It would
| seem that the bees could not get out of this state, just
| as it seems to worldly men who are entangled in the snare
| of the social world-conception. But there would be no way
| out for the bees, if each of the bees were not separately
| a living being, endowed with wings. So there would also
| be no way out for men, if each of them were not a
| separate living being, endowed with the ability of
| acquiring the Christian concept of life.
|
| If every bee which can fly did not fly, the rest, too,
| would not move, and the swarm would never change its
| position. And as one bee need but open its wings, rise
| up, and fly away, and after it a second, third, tenth,
| hundredth, in order that the immovable cluster may become
| a freely flying swarm of bees, so one man need but
| understand life as Christianity teaches him to understand
| it, and begin to live accordingly, and a second, third,
| hundredth, to do so after him, in order that the magic
| circle of the social life, from which there seemed to be
| no way out, be destroyed.
|
| But people think that the liberation of all men in this
| manner is too slow, and that it is necessary to find and
| use another such a means, so as to free all at once;
| something like what the bees would do, if, wishing to
| rise and fly away, they should find that it was too long
| for them to wait for the whole swarm to rise one after
| another, and should try to find a way where every
| individual bee would not have to unfold its wings and fly
| away, but the whole swarm could fly at once wherever it
| wanted. But that is impossible: so long as the first,
| second, third, hundredth bee does not unfold its wings
| and fly, the swarm, too, will not fly away or find the
| new life. So long as every individual man does not make
| the Christian life-conception his own, and does not live
| in accordance with it, the contradiction of the human
| life will not be solved and the new form of life will not
| be established.
|
| My note: Tolstoy's Christian concept of life is quite
| different from what most people think of Christianity. He
| places emphasis on Jesus' teaching of non-resistance to
| evil by force and was against organized religion.
| andrepd wrote:
| You're assuming too many things about me. "Left" is a
| term with centuries of history. I use it because it
| accurately describes my positions, and the traditions and
| schools of thought that most influenced my views.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Suppose that 80% of the population support something that
| me and my friends don't like. If we can divide this group
| into two, by finding things that they strongly disagree
| over, then we can guarantee that this 80% never gets to
| express its majority.
|
| So if we can put 50% of these people in a group called
| "Left" and 50% of these people in a group called "Right",
| and then prevent direct democracy with something such as
| elected representatives, then neither the Left nor the
| Right ever has to vote on the issue, because instead they
| are fighting over the most important thing, e.g.
| abortion. When the Left are in power, they are focused on
| the things that the Right is trying to take away, and
| vice versa. There is an eternal struggle. As a result,
| the things that a majority agrees on never get voted on,
| and even if they did, whoever is not in power would vote
| against them.
|
| This is not hypothetical. There are several major issues
| that have the support of the majority (sometimes as much
| as 80%) of the population, and yet they are never voted
| on.
|
| Left and Right is a trap.
| andrepd wrote:
| But I'm not arguing to "divide" or anything ffs, I simply
| used the word to describe a broad range of political
| positions, whose people which defend them I think are
| often making those two mistakes.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > There are several major issues that have the support of
| the majority (sometimes as much as 80%) of the
| population, and yet they are never voted on.
|
| Can you provide examples?
| pasquinelli wrote:
| > This is not hypothetical. There are several major
| issues that have the support of the majority (sometimes
| as much as 80%) of the population, and yet they are never
| voted on.
|
| maybe there just isn't really much democracy in the
| united states.
| kergonath wrote:
| This is what happens when "left" and "right" are two
| massive blocks. Your point is a very good demonstration
| of why a two-parties system is not much better than a
| single-party one.
|
| There is an optimum in the middle. Governments lasting
| for a day like several European countries have had in the
| past is also harmful and alienating. But if there is
| nothing forcing people to compromise and collaborate,
| what you describe is the expected outcome: frequent
| swings from one side to the other, each time with a slim
| majority, and nothing good happening over the long term.
|
| The problem is not left and right. The problem is that
| you cannot represent a full spectrum of ideologies with a
| binary choice.
| wrycoder wrote:
| If left is a term that "goes back centuries", then I
| don't know what it means anymore. In the 18th century it
| was the group that sat on the other side of the room from
| the royalists.
| kergonath wrote:
| It's been basically "power to the individuals" (one
| person, one vote, this sort of things), as opposed to
| "power to the elite" (long live the kings etc) since the
| beginning. The elite makes do without a king, but the
| aristocratic class reflex is still there.
|
| This spectrum is limited and one-dimensional, but it
| still is meaningful. The people who claim it isn't are
| usually con men after your vote. "The third way" always
| turned out to be a scam.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Read a little deeper into that history, things haven't
| changed all that much. I can offer a Quora answer I wrote
| some time ago as a jumping off point:
| https://www.quora.com/How-did-America-become-a-country-
| of-tw...
|
| Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move
| the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the
| people". Those on the right generally want to keep power
| with the established power base.
|
| This can be contrasted with liberalism, which is the
| belief in a core platform of liberty, consent of the
| governed, and equality before the law. Though liberalism
| is often conflated with leftism, it's not, and neither is
| it the opposite of conservatism.
|
| Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms
| mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless. They
| still are relevant, people just aren't really
| understanding the political philosophy.
| worik wrote:
| Yes, but.
|
| How is liberalism not the opposite of conservatism?
| Conservatives wish to maintain the status quo, true?
| Liberals wish to change it....
|
| Liberalism has had a horrendous crash lately, many
| internal contradictions and fallacies have become clear,
| but the I still adhere to those principals.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| You're thinking of progressivism, not liberalism. The
| American right has turned "liberalism" into a pejorative
| despite mostly being liberal themselves. (Trump
| supporters aren't liberal, hard to be liberal when you
| support fascism)
|
| The only two terms that are really opposites here are
| 'left' and 'right', because they literally mean which
| side of the aisle you're sitting on. It shouldn't
| surprise anyone that the extremes of both sides are going
| to line up around who belongs in power, the elites, or in
| publicly accountable institutions.
| Izkata wrote:
| > Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move
| the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the
| people". Those on the right generally want to keep power
| with the established power base.
|
| This is the opposite of the positions taken by those
| described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans
| are individualist, "power to the people", "states'
| rights", etc, but would never be described as "left",
| while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing
| power in the federal government.
|
| > Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms
| mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless.
|
| They are certainly approaching that point if people don't
| mean remotely the same thing when using them.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| > This is the opposite of the positions taken by those
| described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans
| are individualist, "power to the people", "states'
| rights", etc, but would never be described as "left",
| while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing
| power in the federal government.
|
| I wouldn't describe these aspects of Republican messaging
| as their core platform. They're just conservative
| standards, all conservatives tend to imagine themselves
| this way. Rugged individualists, callbacks to tradition,
| even "states rights", aren't particularly leftist in that
| they aren't calling for moving power anywhere, but rather
| keeping it where it is. You vote for Republicans if you
| like their messaging, it just so happens that how
| Republicans want to achieve these goals means the old
| white people are empowered to do things the old white
| way.
|
| If you pierce through the dreck of the messaging, the
| platform's the same as any other conservative ideology.
| Law and order, another pillar of conservative rationale,
| is the name of an actual political party in Poland, guess
| what, they're actually the majority party.
|
| There's just not that much special about American
| politics when you get right down to it. What's dangerous
| about it is that America has more money than the average
| European country, but our society is far less well-
| educated on humanities subjects. If you think that makes
| us prone to misinformation and propaganda, well, it does.
| nl wrote:
| The left-wing perspective on "power to the people" often
| means the use of state power on behalf of people to
| counteract private sources of power (eg commercial
| power).
|
| The right-wing perspective often means the removal of
| state power in favor of private (ie, "personal") source
| of power (often in the form of commercial entities).
| clairity wrote:
| such concepts are not static across a population, nor
| through time. beyond the author(s) and early adherents,
| the population itself has a separate conception of such
| ideas that can be markedly different from the initial
| conception, and that also changes through time. it's
| certainly useful to understand this sort of history, but
| trying to stake a definition in time and defy the
| dynamism of these concepts is inherently political (e.g.,
| originalism). sometimes that can be done deftly and
| sometimes hamfistedly.
|
| in any case, the concepts can be relevant and meaningful
| and still not be useful as identity markers in any
| meaningful and relevant way. identification principally
| with a single school of thought is simply a mistake of
| rationality, and how we get unthinking tribalist
| extremism. it happens with any -ism: libertarianism,
| socialism, nihilism, capitalism, etc. the world works as
| a non-linear composition of all of these ideas and much
| more. not a single one can be considered "correct" in any
| meaningful sense.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| They retain meaning across populations and through time.
| That's the whole point of philosophy. People's opinions
| on the matters change, but that doesn't change the
| matters.
|
| Liberalism didn't change because people are using the
| term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it
| properly. Like a market, eventually the political
| landscape returns to rationality. At the end of the day,
| Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are
| supporting fascism.
|
| They don't get to rewrite the meanings of the words
| because they don't like the connotations. Many through
| history have used his playbook, and it all follows the
| same general arc.
| nl wrote:
| > Liberalism didn't change because people are using the
| term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it
| properly.
|
| Well...
|
| _Actually_ it has changed. _Classical Liberalism_ [1] is
| primarily an _economic_ belief system that advocates
| small, non-interventionist government. It evolved into
| Right-libertarianism in the 20th and 21st century.
|
| "In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed
| into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for
| government to be as small as possible to allow the
| exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form,
| neo-classical liberalism advocated social Darwinism.
| Right-libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical
| liberalism."
|
| This odd positioning is most visible in Australia, where
| the conservative party is called "The Liberal party"
| after the mid-20th century view on this.
|
| This is a long way from any modern understanding of
| Liberalism particularly within the US:
|
| "Social liberalism, also known as left liberalism in
| Germany, modern liberalism in the United States[4] and
| new liberalism in the United Kingdom, is a political
| philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses a
| regulated market economy and the expansion of civil and
| political rights....
|
| In the United States, the term social liberalism may
| sometimes refer to progressive stances on sociocultural
| issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage as opposed
| to social conservatism."[2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
| clairity wrote:
| yah, that's a political (and politicized) assertion. you
| also don't get to define terms only to your convenience,
| without consideration for the long arc of history and the
| breadth of the world's imagination.
|
| > "At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and
| his supporters are supporting fascism."
|
| impulsive statements like this reveal the limitations of
| that kind of rigid thinking. trump isn't a fascist, he's
| a self-centrist. he's one of the simplest human beings to
| understand because of this. politicized projections such
| as yours are overfitted at best, and completely unfitted
| in most cases, as in this case.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| > he's a self-centrist
|
| Those are the very same thing. A fascist does not care
| about anything other than personal power. All
| philosophies and ideology are superfluous. Fascists run
| on the very basic political premise of "you like me,
| elect me and let me run things because you like me and
| you'll like what I want to do." That's the core message,
| anything else is pointless to understanding. _That 's
| what fascism is._ I'm not misunderstanding Trumpism, I'm
| giving it the same name everybody else who understands
| political history and theory gives it.
|
| Everything people like about Trump, are the same things
| that cause people to put fascists in power. Have a look
| at this explainer:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8
|
| Fascism isn't some long slow slide down to Nazi Germany
| that Americans seem to think of when they consider the
| term. The Nazis are the most visible and publicly know
| version of fascism, but countless others throughout
| history, in Europe, Latin America, Africa, have managed
| to subvert the mechanisms of their republics using the
| tactics of populism to put themselves in power,
| unaccountable to any sort of checks.
| nl wrote:
| > A fascist does not care about anything other than
| personal power
|
| This isn't a widely accepted definition of fascism. There
| are plenty of left-wing dictators who fit this definition
| and weren't fascists.
| clairity wrote:
| > '"Left" is a term with centuries of history...'
|
| so has "slavery" but that doesn't make it right.
|
| 'left' (and 'right') is a term to subvert thinking in
| ways that advantage the already powerful, and short-
| circuit the formation of coalitions that can bring about
| real prosperity and equity to more people.
| advrs wrote:
| No one is arguing about right/wrong, he is simply saying
| the term has an accepted definition (especially in
| historical context, zooming out past the modern US
| political media landscape)
| clairity wrote:
| the issue is that once you stake your identity on a
| singular position, you've lost objectivity. that's when
| it becomes political, not personal.
|
| further, as argued elsewhere, there is no singular
| correct ("accepted") definition of "left" that isn't a
| political insistence rather than objective and unyielding
| fact.
|
| if you believe in "power to the people" or "equal rights"
| then state that explicitly. don't hide under the highly
| amorphous tent of "left", which invariably can be
| contrived into any extant principles that suits the
| propounder in the moment. spell out what you mean, not
| your professed identity and (wrongly) assume everyone
| shares a singular definition of that identity.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Left has a long history, yes. But there is so much
| diversity within the groups that identify as leftist. And
| some people you might call leftist (like the folks at
| raddle.me) reject the term wholeheartedly. They are
| committed to thorough antiracism, but do not want to be
| associated with communist or socialist regimes or
| ideologies.
| andrepd wrote:
| Absolutely. I probably have more in common with some
| people who call themselves "right-wing" that certain
| people who call themselves "left-wing".
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| > _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_
|
| Yeah, I totally need that, because there is not enough churn in
| tech. For instance, every release of Android since 4 has been
| identical in terms of UI, so I haven't had to learn any new
| subconscious habit in the use of a phone.
|
| Web developers haven't had to learn new framework in over a
| decade; they could use this, too, not to mention C++ devs.
| LunaSea wrote:
| So you admit that you were not offended by it but would still
| like it to change and would also impose said change to everyone
| for a reason that has yet to be identified.
| dang wrote:
| Please do not post in the flamewar style to HN. We're trying
| for something different here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| I generally agree with your statement. I am also an African
| American but my first reaction to the change was very positive.
| On a more technical and pedantic level, having a "master"
| branch really doesn't make any sense without slave branches. So
| in this context a "main" branch eliminates any negative
| historical connotations and has a more precise meaning. To me,
| this another case of "that's how its always been" and some
| people react very negatively towards sudden change.
|
| Related to this conversation: years ago Nikon removed the
| terminology of Master and Slave in their flash units in favor
| of Commander and Remote.
|
| https://petapixel.com/2020/07/08/nikon-says-it-stopped-using...
|
| To the author: We have to start somewhere and it is a sign of
| progress (no matter how small) that finally there is some
| awareness around this issue and now something is being done
| about it
| yannickt wrote:
| What's next? Are we going to rename master's as an academic
| degree? Are we going to start using words other than master
| or grandmaster to refer to experienced martial artists? What
| about chess?
| incrudible wrote:
| > Are we going to rename master's as an academic degree?
|
| Good Idea! I'm going to start a gofundme for a petition on
| change.org right now.
|
| > What about chess?
|
| Don't get me started about all the sexism (only one female
| character), classism (royalty vs pawn) and racism (black vs
| white) as well as animal abuse (war horses) in chess...
| webstrand wrote:
| "master" has been in use for decades in the recording
| industry, the "record master" does not, and never did, have
| any slaves. This terminology was incorporated into software,
| back in the CD-ROM days, with their "gold master" from which
| copies would be produced.
|
| I don't have a horse in this race, I just wanted to point out
| that the language is far more flexible than some people seem
| to think.
| matt-attack wrote:
| Christ just then verb "mastering". I work in Hollywood at a
| big studio and mastering is incredibly common term for the
| process of ordering and creating digital masters. That is,
| the uncompressed "official" version of our movies that are
| used to for archiving and for creating other downstream
| versions of lesser quality.
|
| I'm actually wondering if I should create a tongue-in-cheek
| movement to renaming this term across studios. It's
| incredibly ingrained.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > the "record master" does not, and never did, have any
| slaves.
|
| Are you sure about this? It seems the music industry is
| going through a parallel exercise. I'm not familiar with
| music industry terminology really, but it seems those who
| are disagree with you:
|
| "Following that thread, [Pharrell] Williams suggested that
| the company "get ahead of this and do the right thing.
| Start with the terminology -- like 'master' and 'slave.'
| Master being the main recording and the slave being all the
| copies made."
|
| ...
|
| Williams recalls hearing the loaded words "master" and
| "slave" paired in such a manner as a teen, when learning
| the ropes of the music business from R&B star Teddy Riley
| in Virginia Beach, Va. As his career took off, Williams
| spotted the terms woven into many of his contracts."
|
| https://variety.com/2020/music/news/pharrell-williams-
| master...
| el_nahual wrote:
| > On a more technical and pedantic level, having a "master"
| branch really doesn't make any sense without slave branches.
|
| The reason master branches are called master branches is as
| an analogy to a music/record "master", which means "the
| original, the truest, the canonical".
|
| (In an analog world where every copy necessitated
| deterioration, there was a need to say "this is THE
| version").
|
| So git master branches meant the same thing: canonical.
| That's why the name "makes sense" even though there are no
| slave branches.
|
| Just adding this here out of a sense of duty for historical
| accuracy, and not commenting on the name change itself.
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| Since we are talking about branches, wouldn't a "root"
| branch makes more sense?
| el_nahual wrote:
| It doesn't really matter which makes "more sense." You
| could call it the canon branch, the root branch, the
| trunk branch, the main branch, the master branch,
| whatever.
|
| The point is that the word master, in _this_ context, has
| a different etymology that the word master in say, a
| database. Now, that might not matter: if you care about
| changing the name of the branch you probably care about
| the way the name makes people feel, not the etymology of
| the word, and perhaps that 's a good argument (personally
| I don't know and don't really care). Nonetheless, the
| etymology of the word is a factual statement, so I was
| correcting a poster who was assuming it was an analogy to
| a different context.
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| words do matter.. if they didn't, none of us on the
| thread would be talking about it. You can't splain away
| how a person from a different group feels or why. What is
| nice about other SCM systems like Mercurial, Fossil, CVS,
| SVN.. or basically anything not Git.. is that the
| language is clear and not offensive to anyone. It really
| is that simple
| dreamer_ wrote:
| No, because root has already an established, clear
| meaning in Unix world.
| kps wrote:
| I wanted 'trunk', like SVN. That ought to be safe, since
| there's no one speaking for the trees.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The Lorax would like a word with you.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I look forward to the tech sector getting into fights
| with The Lorax, or more seriously, the Sierra Club.
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| Coming from Mercurial which calls its default branch.. well
| "default" to Git which calls its default branch "master"
| was very jarring for me. So yeah, I definitly noticed
| matt-attack wrote:
| Does having a master bedroom make sense without having "slave
| rooms"?
| ravoori wrote:
| They already got to it
| https://www.tmz.com/2020/06/26/master-bedroom-canceled-
| houst...
| yannickt wrote:
| This is insane.
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| No it doesn't.. It is a room where the master of the house
| would sleep. Therefore it has to be the largest and more
| fully featured, etc
| waheoo wrote:
| Self censorship is never healthy [1]. A default, widely
| accepted value for the main branch of git repo had immense
| value from a usability perspective. Creating a confusing system
| and calling it beneficial because it becomes a reminder about
| bias as it interrupts your workflow? That's some post modern
| intersectional bullshit right there.
|
| I really don't care about the name change in this case, the OP
| was mistaken, master record also has roots in a master
| slave[tape] relationship. So please, change it, just do it
| upstream and leave me the fuck out of your culture war.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/5fHvjM_4F6w
| agloeregrets wrote:
| This! Virtue signaling is worthless, but it does keep ideas
| fresh in people's minds when you experience it and that isn't
| worthless.
| cphajduk wrote:
| To me, "master" and "slave" are historic terms used throughout
| electrical, software, even entertainment industries.
|
| Eliminating words from a vocabulary is very 1984-like. Those
| words have a deep historical meaning, allowing ourselves to
| just "remove them" is akin to forgetting and ignoring the dark
| past of slavery, rather than remembering and acknowledging it
| (with the hopes it will never happen again).
|
| Saying that it helps change habits (in my opinion) is analogous
| to saying that preventing kids from playing violent video games
| will reduce mass shootings (there is evidence it does not). I
| disagree with your premise that this pushes us to change habits
| and is only a mechanism to be ashamed of our shared (and dark)
| history. Lest we forget.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Github isn't eliminating any words from anyone's vocabulary.
|
| This thread has demonstrated that plenty of people are
| committed (har har) to calling their repository's je ne sais
| quoi branch `master`.
|
| While I'm with you that I don't understand how this will move
| the needle on racial equity, I'm uncomfortable with how
| visceral of a reaction a group of technology professionals is
| having to what is essentially a library changing a default
| value.
|
| Like, vocabulary changes all the time. Technology changes
| even more frequently. Why y'all so scared to use a different
| label?
| jgwil2 wrote:
| When you write software, you should only change a default
| value for a good reason. This was...not that.
|
| I agree that the outrage can sometimes seem out of
| proportion to the change itself, but I can also understand
| why people who write software in general would be offended
| by the _silliness_ of the whole episode.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Has Github stated a reason?
|
| I read the announcement from Oct. 1 [1] and it doesn't
| have any explanation outside of a link to a Software
| Freedom Conservancy [2] (the folks now maintaining Git)
|
| A lot of people here are assuming virtue signaling, but
| it could just as easily be "a majority number of our
| staff was behind this change". Unless GitHub has stated
| the why somewhere (I spent ~5m googling to no avail) we
| simply don't know.
|
| [1]: https://github.blog/changelog/2020-10-01-the-
| default-branch-... [2]:
| https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/jun/23/gitbranchname/
| malandrew wrote:
| > Why y'all so scared to use a different label?
|
| Because you just created a massive amount of tech debt that
| needs to be addressed in the here and now without
| convincing people that creating this tech debt was worth
| creating in the first place and when there is a lot of
| other tech debt that actually matters that still hasn't
| been paid off.
|
| Like someone else said here: "On one hand, here I am trying
| to get work done and on the other hand you have these
| people actively slowing me down. These people are my enemy"
| mathgorges wrote:
| This change only affects newly created repos, how does it
| create tech debt? I suppose some tooling may need to be
| updated, but if your tools are to brittle to support a
| different branch name.. _sheesh_
|
| I would posit to your quotee that they're being
| phenomenally self-centered.
|
| Github has been mum about the why behind this change, but
| I'd bet my hat it wasn't because they wanted to actively
| slow down't their users.
| flukus wrote:
| > This change only affects newly created repos, how does
| it create tech debt?
|
| Every book and piece of documentation on git is now
| obsolete. People learning git will now hit a wall trying
| to do very basic things.
| BadCookie wrote:
| At my organization, we are being pressured to change
| existing repos to use "main" with the implication that we
| are racist if we do not. But even if we leave existing
| repos alone, now we all have to remember which repos use
| master and which ones use main. We tend to have people
| working across many different repos, so it's a headache
| waiting to happen either way.
| rrook wrote:
| > This change only affects newly created repos, how does
| it create tech debt? I suppose some tooling may need to
| be updated, but if your tools are to brittle to support a
| different branch name.. sheesh
|
| This is overly dismissive. Build pipelines that interact
| with bespoke branches now need dynamism for backwards
| compatibility; a value that was previously static is now
| changeable. That doesn't really qualify as brittle to me;
| that any value in a codebase must be changeable is a
| ridiculous requirement from a codebase.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Can you give me a real example?
|
| I work with build systems in my day-to-day, and I can't
| remember the last time I worked with something that
| didn't support dynamic branch names _but did support git_
|
| But my experience is obviously skewed by where I work.
| rrook wrote:
| I'm specifically thinking of git-flow
| (https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-
| model/); every build system I've interacted with has been
| some flavor of this. The crux here is that there is a
| single branch that deploys occur from. Not uncommonly,
| this is the default branch.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Sure, I defo have opinions on git-flow.
|
| But with every build system I work with (which are:
| Jenkins, Concourse, Github Actions, and Gitlab CI) you
| can make any branch you want the branch-to-build-on.
| rrook wrote:
| I don't mean to say that it's not totally fixable. Up
| until this change, it was a reasonable assumption for any
| org to make, that the default branch will be the same for
| all projects. Now, either the default branch on any new
| repo must be manually set to the old default, or the
| build system must be updated to handle non homogenous
| default branches.
| Izkata wrote:
| Don't forget documentation. Massive amounts of tutorials
| and FAQs will now be _more_ confusing to newbies.
| geekraver wrote:
| While there may be plenty of people of all races who were not
| offended by the name, when you operate at the scale of a GitHub
| there is going to be some percentage who are. Some of them will
| complain. A company like GitHub then has two main options:
| change the name, or defend not changing the name. Whichever one
| they pick is going to cause various forms of backlash from
| various people, but it's pretty obvious that changing the name
| is more defensible and the better long-term approach.
| deadbytes wrote:
| No, this is a terrifying precedent to set.
|
| You are completely inverting democracy.
|
| If 98% of people vote that something isn't offensive, and 2%
| vote that it is, and your takeaway from this is "the thing is
| offensive", then how can anything ever be determined to be
| not offensive?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| You are not required to change the name of your main branch
| on existing repos.
|
| If you really want to, you can use "master" as the name on
| your _new_ repos. You simply have to manually type that in
| now.
| josteink wrote:
| So it's not really a forced change. It's a just _soft_
| change. Soft like the ocean is soft[1].
|
| Glad we settled that one!
|
| [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/The
| Culture
| josteink wrote:
| > A company like GitHub then has two main options
|
| Nobody would have complained about GitHub doing nothing had
| GitHub done nothing.
|
| Now we get to complain about their mindless actions, and
| possibly later on their spineless back-pedalling.
| eplanit wrote:
| But, this argument rationales mob rule over reason. The name
| change is defensible to avoid "various forms of backlash from
| various people".
|
| "Some of them will complain" -- a majority? Then yes, it
| makes sense to listen and adapt. Or, a loud minority who
| threatens? I don't believe that the change was made due to
| any overwhelming user feedback.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >it's pretty obvious that changing the name is more
| defensible and the better long-term approach.
|
| Is it the better long-term approach? If you give in to a
| vocal minority what is stopping them from trying to change
| something else? Git means "an unpleasant or contemptible
| person". Surely that could be construed as offensive. What
| happens when / if a vocal minority decides Git and Github
| need to change their name? Should Github just change their
| name to prevent backlash?
|
| Not to mention it appears to be mostly white people pushing
| this change, not even the alleged victims.
| hintymad wrote:
| I don't get this "implicit bias" concept. According to media
| and social media, if I deny that I'm a racist, then I'm just
| not aware of my implicit bias. Honest question, how is it this
| different from:
|
| 1, If you believe in Jesus, then you can walk on water. If you
| can't walk on water, then you don't truly believe in Jesus.
|
| 2, Chinese saying, "Sha Ren Zhu Xin ",meaning that accusing
| one's motive is worse than killing that person, as the accused
| couldn't even defend against the accusation. Attacking the
| Motive is a logical fallacy, no?
|
| 3, Back in the 1960s in China, if you were born in a not-so-red
| family and denied that you were counter revolutionary, then you
| were just deeply counter revolutionary, and therefore deserved
| more severe punishment.
|
| Since when people are not judged by their behavior but their
| thoughts that someone else assert?
| alasdair_ wrote:
| You may want to try out one of a number of empirical implicit
| bias tests at
| https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
|
| These tests have been administered to large numbers of people
| and on average, almost every single person that has taken the
| test has scored some level of implicit bias. As a result,
| it's very likely (but not certain) that you ARE unaware of
| your implicit bias.
|
| Of course, if you take the tests and score perfectly, you'll
| now be able to demonstrate empirically that you have no
| measurable implicit bias and will have an answer to those
| people who insist you do.
|
| The reason why this is different to the walking on water
| statement, is that there are hundreds of thousands of data
| points all showing implicit bias is almost universal, whereas
| there are zero data points showing people can walk on water
| after believing in Jesus.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I've always wondered, have there been variations on these
| tests that control for camera exposure levels and lighting
| conditions, or try to separate color from luminosity from
| morphology? In reaction-delay-based tests, is the delay
| because of bias or because of something else about what's
| being presented (e.g. strange wording or visual layout)
| requiring additional mental processing?
|
| Teasing out those differences could help e.g. layout
| information and design cameras and image pipelines to
| reduce the effects of bias.
| anchpop wrote:
| Good post by a psychiatrist on implicit association tests:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iYJo382hY28K7eCrP/the-
| implic...
|
| The good news:
|
| > There's been some evidence that the IAT is pretty robust.
| Most trivial matters like position of items don't much much
| of a difference. People who were asked to convincingly fake
| an IAT effect couldn't do it.
|
| The bad news:
|
| > A common critique of the test is that the same individual
| often gets two completely different scores taking the same
| test twice. As far as re-test reliability goes, .6
| correlation is pretty good from a theoretical point of
| view, but more than enough to be frequently embarrassing.
| It must be admitted: this test, while giving consistent
| results for populations, is of less use for individuals
| wondering how much bias they personally have.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| The OP seemed to be talking about implicit bias in the
| framework of critical race theory, hence the quote
| "According to media and social media, if I deny that I'm a
| racist, then I'm just not aware of my implicit bias". That
| is, denying that you're racist is the proof that you're a
| racist. It's not about self-awareness, but about assertion.
|
| Otherwise, I don't think the implicit bias is what OP said.
| Our HR would remind us recency bias, for instance, during a
| perf review. That kind of implicit bias does exist and is
| worth reminding.
| [deleted]
| mplanchard wrote:
| Honest answer, generally people aren't talking about
| _judging_ people for their implicit biases, but asking them
| to be aware of them to prevent those biases from influencing
| their actions in ways they don't intend. Those actions then
| may be judged, naturally.
|
| Hopefully an example that's not too prickly: I'm from the
| south of the US. I don't have a southern accent (except when
| drunk or sleepy!). A lot of people, myself included, have an
| unconscious bias that people with southern accents are less
| intelligent than people without. However, I've known lots of
| smart people with southern accents, and lots of unintelligent
| people without them. I don't know why I have this bias: it
| was instilled in me by the culture I grew up in, I guess.
| But, because I am _aware_ of it, I can watch out for those
| reflexive feelings that make it more likely for me to dismiss
| something someone is saying just because of their accent. I
| can adjust my _actions_ to align with the kind of unbiased
| person I'd like to be, even though I can't control the
| lingering feelings the bias creates.
|
| This is the general idea of wanting people to be aware of
| their implicit biases: not to judge them due to those biases,
| but to help them see that, due to societal or cultural or
| familial influence, they may not be living up to the kind of
| person they'd like to be. There's a huge difference between
| someone who's consciously racist and someone who has racist
| priors due to the culture they grew up in. Many in the latter
| group accidentally propagate racist systems, even though they
| would never _want_ to do so if they had a conscious choice.
| But it's hard for anyone to see how their subconscious
| affects their day-to-day opinions. The hope of teaching about
| implicit bias is that people can see its effect in their
| lives and make adjustments, hopefully reducing the systemic
| problems that people face in the process.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| As a WASP, also from the south (the deep south, below the
| Gnat Line), I'm constantly reminded that I have an implicit
| bias however I've never seen nor heard of how to identify
| or measure such. It's really just that 'if you think this
| way then you have it', which is overwhelmingly
| unsatisfactory if it's indeed a problem I should solve. I
| should have awareness of what the conditions are
| measurements are so that I can address them appropriately.
| For instance if/when my doctor tells me to lose weight I
| need to know how much.
|
| But this escapes me and no one seems to have a good answer.
| Until then I have to categorize it as an emotional response
| and handle it in the same way, which is basically just
| empathizing, consoling, and not necessarily fixing the root
| of the problem. I need to know what to measure and how to
| fix it: I've been through the corporate unconscious bias
| training a couple of times and it did _none_ of that. Until
| then I 'm a skeptic.
| mplanchard wrote:
| I hadn't heard the term "gnat line." Thanks for
| introducing me! I also grew up south of gnat line, along
| the gulf coast of Mississippi.
|
| To get to your comment, unfortunately I think that
| measuring our own thought processes is far from a solved
| problem. And I'm not sure that implicit biases are
| necessarily a problem that can be "solved." A huge part
| of being in society is subduing certain of our more
| damaging natural inclinations, essentially being civil:
| not yelling and hitting people when we're angry, being
| willing to be bored for long periods of time in order to
| get something we need, etc.
|
| I really do think you hit the nail on the head with this:
|
| > Until then I have to categorize it as an emotional
| response and handle it in the same way, which is
| basically just empathizing, consoling, and not
| necessarily fixing the root of the problem
|
| Largely, these things _are_ emotional responses, and just
| like emotional responses, they 're not necessarily
| rational or useful. Often the only thing we can do is
| recognize that they're there, let them exist, and refuse
| to act on them.
|
| To be clear, I'm not making any claims here about any
| kind of corporate training. I'm not sure that I'm
| personally convinced that mandatory corporate training
| does any good in any situation, although I'm inclined to
| say that I guess it's better than nothing, in that it at
| least (hopefully) makes clear what the official company
| line is on things, and makes it clear that e.g. blatant
| sexism is not okay in the workplace, even if it doesn't
| actually change the opinions of any workplace harassers
| or misogynists. That being said, I am also deeply
| skeptical of its ability to effect any real change in
| people.
| awbraunstein wrote:
| If you're interested in measuring your implicit bias,
| this site has a lot of interesting tests you can take
| https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
|
| I was shocked with my own results from the gender/career
| bias test.
|
| At the end of the day, the test doesn't tell you how to
| fix it, it shows you that these patterns of thought are
| deeply ingrained in how we think and the way to "fix" it
| is to actively go against the biases we have been trained
| on. There is are some good resources here as well.
| https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs.html#faq14
| brodouevencode wrote:
| It also says
|
| > The results may fluctuate and should not be used to
| make important decisions.
|
| which is the gap.
| Izkata wrote:
| Because of exactly that, the creators of the original
| implicit bias test have said it should not be used the
| way it has been. I think they've pretty much said the
| test is worthless.
| manfredo wrote:
| This output of this kind of test is determined by the
| order in which the categories are presented. Put male on
| the left and humanities on the right first, then put male
| and science simultaneously on the left side and it will
| produce the opposite result: men associated with liberal
| arts and women with science.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Don't disagree exactly, but asking people to be aware of
| their biases assumes the presence of those specific biases.
| That's easily weaponised.
| V-2 wrote:
| Yes, and as the grandparent comment pointed out, denying
| or questioning the existence of the bias is by itself
| treated as evidence of it. That's the vicious circle you
| can't win against - a non-falsifiable dogma.
| mplanchard wrote:
| Please see my sibling comment to yours. I don't generally
| see this treated as a "dogma," nor do I think it should
| be. It's an important part of self-reflection.
|
| Saying "I'm not a racist" may be treated as having failed
| to do that self-reflection in some camps, because
| usually, for most people, things are more nuanced. So a
| sign of having done that reflection is often an
| unwillingness to make such categorical statements about
| something as complex as our own internal motivations and
| feelings. I'm not sure whether or not that's fair, but I
| would imagine that's where some of that comes from.
| mplanchard wrote:
| To my knowledge people generally are not saying that
| literally everyone has every implicit bias common in
| their societal groups. It's saying that certain biases
| are particularly common among certain societal groups,
| and that it's important to introspect your own life and
| consciousness to see which ones you have or don't have.
| Each person has some subset of implicit biases determined
| by their experiences, their upbringing, and so on. The
| important thing about knowing and acknowledging that
| implicit biases are a thing is that it's the first step
| towards understanding your own.
|
| It is also important to realize that most humans are
| biased against admitting they're wrong, and that it's
| hard to see things you haven't perceived before. So, it
| can be hard to recognize our own implicit biases without
| conscious and honest work. All anyone is saying is that
| doing that work can help to make everyone's collective
| lives easier.
| jfengel wrote:
| What's also easily weaponized is the tendency to assume
| that they don't have them. Observing one's own implicit
| bias takes work, while denying they exist is easy. Being
| asked to look makes you feel put-upon, and that feeling
| is easily turned into grievance.
|
| So if you're on the lookout for weaponization, be sure to
| look around widely. None of us is immune to having our
| "common sense" flattered.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Introspection, reflection, and self control have been
| valued for millennia. It's thinking you can read someone
| else's mind that's new.
| mplanchard wrote:
| So it seems like you're arguing against a point that I'm
| not making and a perception I don't hold, so it's hard
| for me to engage here.
|
| Almost (probably everyone) has biases. That is nothing
| new, and I would think is uncontroversial. Allowing your
| biases to dictate your behavior in an uncritical way can
| be damaging, either for yourself or others. That I also
| think should be uncontroversial.
|
| People who grew up in a given culture tend to have shared
| biases. Some of those will be useful, some will be
| harmful. This is not to say they that every member of
| that culture shares those biases. My guess is that what
| you're talking about is the tendency to assume that a
| particular member of some culture has a bias that is
| common in their culture as a whole (for example, to use a
| US-specific example, if I assume that any Southerner I
| meet is biased against socialistic ideas). This is
| clearly not always going to be accurate, but may be an
| assumption made for safety's sake when you're in a
| vulnerable population and you know that those biases can
| be damaging to you (if I'm secretly a communist living in
| the South, it may be better to hold that in on average to
| avoid problems).
|
| I think the reason these conversations may seem
| "targeted" at well-off white people in the current
| cultural context isn't because other groups don't have
| biases (they do!), or that every white person holds a
| given bias (they don't!), but because well-off white
| people on average hold more power, and therefore their
| biases are as a consequence more likely to cause harm.
|
| And also, sure, I'm sure there are people who go
| overboard with all of this, but that is true of literally
| any position. Letting the extremists define the discourse
| isn't going to help anything.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's true. The constant accusations of "virtue signaling"
| are novel. "You don't really mean what you say; you just
| want people to think you believe it". It's quite
| annoying, but I soldier on.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I wasn't talking about accusations of virtue signalling.
| Being holier than thou is also a well worn path.
| vc8f6vVV wrote:
| Biases exist for a reason. That tiger in the woods could be
| just a big cat, but my bias tells me he can eat me. Is it
| wrong and should I be aware that not all tigers eat people?
| Now, bias is usually applied when you don't know somebody.
| That black guy on an empty street at midnight, should I
| consider him completely harmless? In the middle of a black
| neighborhood? Well, I wouldn't. Why? Because of statistics.
| Does it make me a racist? What if it was a white guy in the
| middle of a poor white neighborhood with the same crime
| rate? Same reaction. What if I live next door and know that
| black guy? Now it depends, because there is no bias, I know
| exactly what to expect. Maybe now I know I can be killed
| (or quite opposite, I can say hello), but I _know_ it, not
| assuming, and now his skin color or neighborhood means
| nothing at all. Bias is a survival mechanism to substitute
| information we can't get by other means. Judging somebody
| by their skin color while _knowing_ them is a different
| story.
| mplanchard wrote:
| This comment I think is implying that all biases are
| evolutionarily encoded, which I am certain is false. Many
| biases are formed by your absorption of the actions and
| words of the people you grow up around.
|
| The point isn't "biases shouldn't exist." The point is,
| "not all biases are accurate or useful," and "some biases
| can be actively harmful to either yourself or others."
|
| I used to work with chemicals frequently. Humans have a
| bias towards treating clear, odorless fluids as being
| safe. That is a deeply dangerous bias in a biochemistry
| lab. You've got to be aware of it and act to counteract
| it. In my experience, that's all anyone is asking for:
| that we recognize where our biases might be harmful and
| try to limit that harm.
| kergonath wrote:
| Since we are operating in a sectarian environment based on
| purity tests. Your actions can become irrelevant at any time
| once someone prominent puts a label on you, be it "communist"
| or "racist".
|
| I am not familiar with Chinese philosophy and find your
| perspective very interesting.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| beowulfey wrote:
| The viewpoint stems from the idea that implicit biases mean
| racism is the default state. To do something is to be anti-
| racist, which requires energy. To do nothing means racism
| persists, which could be considered pro-racism. A big part of
| this definition is trying to realign it with a temporary
| modifier, one to be avoided, but not a permanent tag.
|
| The difference from your examples is that an act or attitude
| can be racist, but that doesn't make YOU racist. You are not
| defined by a single event any more than a single belief
| defines your broader theology.
| NwtnsMthd wrote:
| Hm, never thought of it like that.
|
| I was caught off guard by the change when it was implemented,
| and was frankly quite annoyed. My suspicions were the same as
| the author's, that the reasons were likely insincere. But I
| never made the leap you did to (try and) assess my subconscious
| biases. Thank you for the insight!
|
| On an other note, 'main' is fewer letters to capture the same
| idea ad therefore more efficient.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| Subconscious bias is the modern day original sin.
|
| It's creepily similar to the indoctrination technique of
| teaching people they are evil and can only be redeemed by
| following <belief system of choice>.
| Glide wrote:
| James Lindsey hit the nail on the head years ago comparing
| it to religion.
|
| I think you're optimistic in your formulation that there is
| redemption in that system. That or it's a very useful
| paraphrase.
| mathw wrote:
| Not really, because subconscious bias is actually real.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| If it was significant and of consequence, my suspicion is
| it wouldn't stay subconscious for long.
|
| Original Sin is just as real to the worldview of millions
| over centuries as Subconscious Bias is to others.
| svieira wrote:
| So is Original Sin. Unless you believe than mankind is
| naturally depraved, in which case the state of the world
| makes perfect sense right now and cannot be changed.
|
| To delve into this a little bit more - if mankind is _by
| nature_ depraved / evil, then there is nothing more to
| say or do. We are fighting against our nature, trying to
| pull ourselves up by our bootstraps out of a morass which
| we were born into. There is no point in trying, because
| we are broken. We can only hope that the principle of
| sufficient reason (a cause must be sufficient to explain
| its effects) is false and that our AGI children will be
| able to be born free from our defects and destroy / save
| us.
|
| IFF mankind is not _by nature_ depraved, then either: *
| We are not currently depraved (and live in Eden [which
| seems ... unlikely]) * We are injured (in some way).
|
| The doctrine of Original Sin, looked at from a purely
| natural perspective, is the declaration that "man is not
| by nature depraved, but he is suffering from an ancient
| injury". Which is much more hopeful than any of the other
| options.
| hexane360 wrote:
| By that definition of original sin, subconscious bias is
| just a specific kind of ancient injury. So subconscious
| bias isn't analogous to original sin, it _is_ a form of
| original sin.
|
| So either subconscious bias is religious and dogmatic
| like original sin, or subconscious bias is hopeful and
| not religious like original sin.
| frongpik wrote:
| People need to fear something. In medieval ages it was
| heresy, 50 years ago it was communism, 20 years ago it was
| terrorism and today it's racism.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >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.
|
| This is an extremely privileged and dangerously ignorant point
| of view.
|
| There are more people living in slavery across the world _right
| now_ than ever before in human history.
|
| Maybe we should reflect on that fact instead of simply covering
| up words which make us uncomfortable in a vain attempt to
| expiate self imposed guilt for being born with a particular
| shade of skin.
| conradfr wrote:
| Or I'll reflect about an American company imposing change to
| the rest of the world about domestic issues.
| jssmith wrote:
| Fair enough. American companies (and people) definitely have
| a home bias. I guess to be constructive, I would suggest that
| perhaps there are parallels in your country.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| the author of this article is British
| conradfr wrote:
| But not the person I'm replying to.
| CRConrad wrote:
| It's not as if "master and slave" terminology is all that
| much better in the rest of the world; it's not a "domestic
| issue" -- at least not an _American_ one.
|
| Or did you mean "domestic" _to you?_ Live in Arabia or
| something, do you?
| sjm wrote:
| So which utopian country do you live in where racism is not
| an issue?
| dang wrote:
| Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar. We're
| trying to go the other way here, to the extent possible.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| conradfr wrote:
| I never said that, I answered in the context of changing
| "master" and thinking about bias.
|
| FWIW I live in Paris, France and I think the tech scene is
| quite diverse here.
|
| And I'm not saying racism is not an issue, but I also have
| black friends that told me that they never experienced it.
| Ragingweb wrote:
| "I also have black friends" is anecdotal evidence at
| best. Regarding the diversity of the tech scene, it's not
| that good in France.
| conradfr wrote:
| Well ethnic studies are forbidden in France so it's hard
| to not relying on anecdotal data for this topic, so all I
| know is that I've got managers and colleagues of all
| colors.
| aerosmile wrote:
| > ethnic studies are forbidden in France
|
| Yep, crazy. As an offshoot of that, affirmative action is
| also forbidden. True story.
| remh wrote:
| Less crazy when you learn why: "There are no public
| policies in France that target benefits or confer
| recognition on groups defined as races. For many
| Frenchmen, the very term race sends a shiver running down
| their spines, since it tends to recall the atrocities of
| Nazi Germany and the complicity of France's Vichy regime
| in deporting Jews to concentration camps. Race is such a
| taboo term that a 1978 law specifically banned the
| collection and computerized storage of race-based data
| without the express consent of the interviewees or a
| waiver by a state committee. France therefore collects no
| census or other data on the race (or ethnicity) of its
| citizens."[0]
|
| tl;dr: such data was used during the Nazi occupation and
| France helped deportation
|
| [0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/race-policy-in-
| france/
| aerosmile wrote:
| I am not implying that France had some hidden motives in
| passing this legislature. But WW2 trauma is preventing
| them from making policy decisions that would benefit the
| society today. Here's just one very practical example of
| that: in the below WSJ article [0], it's claimed that the
| lack of ethnic statistics has contributed to housing and
| employment discrimination, among many other problems.
|
| [0]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/coronavirus-
| fran...
| malandrew wrote:
| > the lack of X statistics has contributed to problem Y
|
| The term "contribution" implies active impact on a
| problem. It comes from the Latin "contribuere" which
| means to "bring together" or to "add". If X contributes
| to Y, you should be able to measure the contribution, but
| there's no way to measure the impact of something that
| never existed in the first place.
| remh wrote:
| Agreed. I'm not defending the lack of ethnic statistics.
| Just offering the perspective from the other side. I
| strongly believe you cannot improve things you do not
| measure.
| kergonath wrote:
| It depends. Affirmative action depending on skin colour
| is giving someone a different treatment because of their
| skin colour, which is racist.
|
| There are several forms of affirmative action that depend
| on things like income and local disparities.
| remh wrote:
| I'm also French (but living in the US). How is that not
| selection bias if you only ask your friends which I
| presume you met through school or work? These friends
| have already overcome the hurdles that minorities have to
| go through.
| conradfr wrote:
| Of course it's selection bias and that's why I
| specifically did not generalize their case, but I'm not
| sure what "hurdles they had to go through" if they
| basically said they had none?
|
| In the end you'll find that it's the classic divide
| between Europe and America, seeing society as different
| classes versus different "races".
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I'm also French (but living in the US). How is that not
| selection bias if you only ask your friends which I
| presume you met through school or work? These friends
| have already overcome the hurdles that minorities have to
| go through.
|
| Many statements are selection bias or apex fallacy. The
| author of the original article talks about $20m donations
| as though that's the case for the majority of white
| people, instead of just a rounding error. What's worse is
| assuming that an observation must be selection bias, when
| selection bias needs demonstrating.
| remh wrote:
| I was not replying to the article but to conradfr.
| aerosmile wrote:
| It would be very disingenuous to credit the French with
| being a very tolerant society. They are many other
| things, but tolerant is not one of them.
| nullserver wrote:
| 20 years ago, Now and then someone would make a fuss about hard
| drives.
|
| Specifically master and slave drives.
|
| Wasn't a common complaint and was treated with eye rolls. Maybe
| others had different experiences.
|
| Last few years there has been a dramatic change in fringe
| groups becoming the masters of speech.
|
| At least for those outside the Bay Area.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rattray wrote:
| 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).
| dustinmoris wrote:
| The word master has so many meaning that it's quite difficult
| how a minority in SV has decided to reduce it to master/slave.
|
| The biggest genocide in human history was committed against the
| Jewish community. When is Microsoft going to change their
| vocabulary in order to raise more awareness of crimes against
| humanity and the genocide of Jews?
|
| Why is Microsoft still using words such as "concentrate" and
| "camp"? Microsoft employees tweeting things such as "which camp
| are you, GIF or JIF". Isn't that plain offensive to Jewish
| people? Why is Microsoft still using words such as "work",
| calling employees "workers" when we all know too well that that
| the Nazis used "Work makes free" (Arbeit macht frei) as their
| slogan for Auschwitz?
|
| Lots of Majors commanded the killing of Jewish people, yet
| Microsoft uses the word "command" in all their software such as
| "SqlCommand" and many more. They call something a "major"
| feature or use phrases like "you can fire up a server" when we
| know that firing up things is the act of bombing and killing
| innocent people.
|
| It almost seems like that Microsoft is a Nazi organisation or
| why else would they use such obvious outrageous offensive and
| bigoted language in their every day communications?
|
| I'm not sure how Microsoft can be inclusive to all people
| including engineers from the Jewish community when they use
| such language.
| blackoil wrote:
| Holocaust has its own impact. Swastika is pretty much a taboo
| in west, despite it being an ancient symbol and has major
| significance in Hinduism and Buddhism.
| john_max_1 wrote:
| "Hitler Never Used Swastika: Evangelical Defamation Of
| Hindu Symbol" - https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/swastika-is-
| hindu-and-the-hook...
| [deleted]
| skinkestek wrote:
| Not to mention that slave owners were probably more often
| referred to as owners, not masters.
|
| When will Microsoft stop using deeply racist language such as
| e.g. owner and ownership?
|
| Mentioned together with your example it is clear that this is
| lip service to hide their real racism and antisemitism.
|
| /sarcasm
|
| I wish we could stop this nonsense now :-/
| wreath wrote:
| Small correction but the holocaust wasn't the biggest
| genocide in human history.
|
| Obviously this isn't a competition nor it should be.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_tol.
| ..
| dustinmoris wrote:
| Thanks, I should have done a better homework.
|
| I guess it's worth mentioning as well that the Holocaust is
| still extremely recent in terms of history and therefore
| quite surprising how people who put so much emphasis on
| language are so ignorant to this event.
| wreath wrote:
| Yes!
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > What's powerful about this name change is that it pushes us
| to alter a habit, in my case one embedded deeply in my fingers,
| something that I do every day without realizing that I'm doing
| it. Thus it is a useful reminder of the implicit bias that
| contributes to the lack of diversity in tech. Never mind that
| the old name was harmless, the change brings repeated awareness
| to an important topic, and it reaches a the developer community
| in a targeted way.
|
| My guess is that it ingrains a different habit--patting
| ourselves on the back for 'defeating racism' via some banal
| change or other. Or worse, that it leads them to write off the
| whole movement as disingenuous for all of its focus on
| pointless endeavors. It's probably another drop in the bucket
| of things that make people actively unsympathetic and perhaps
| even drives them toward the open arms of the far-right. Call me
| cynical, but it seems unlikely that any substantial change is
| going to manifest from this. Just a little more self-
| righteousness for some people and a little more bitterness for
| others.
| ratamattat wrote:
| How exactly did it break your workflow? The change only affects
| new repositories and doesn't prevent you from creating a master
| branch on those new repositories. You're even able to set any
| branch name as default on a user, org, or enterprise level.
| dleslie wrote:
| I had a bunch of scripts that would automatically clone repos
| and ensure that they were pointing at the correct branch;
| they started breaking when the branch names started changing.
| 8note wrote:
| Assuming branch names don't change on a package you don't
| control seems like the real issue?
| dleslie wrote:
| Until recently the base branch of git repositories was
| fairly stable. Coming from a long history of revision
| control systems where the base branch was incredibly
| stable.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| Lolz! GitHub did not change any branch names - they only
| changed the default help text file that suggested a command
| you can use to initialize a new repository.. that's it...
|
| If someones existing repo changed their own branch name
| then it was the decision of that repo owner.. not related
| to anything GitHub did - technically if you see what's
| happening, Github barely did anything for this change..
| dleslie wrote:
| A bunch of repos followed suit. It's related to what
| GitHub did because GH led by example.
|
| I don't really care; I fixed the scripts. The question
| was if there was any impact, and not if the impact was
| onerous.
| jssmith wrote:
| I don't remember exactly how it broke the first time, but the
| cognitive overhead shows up in various places. E.g., start a
| new project, create a branch, then merge back to master... oh
| wait, it's main now? But then I'm back to an old project, or
| another person's project, so let me look up what name I need
| to be using, etc...
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| It didn't break 99.9% of workflows and for the remaining 0.1%
| they have to write an or statement. Not that big of a deal.
| The only constant is change.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _What 's powerful about this name change is that it pushes us
| to alter a habit, in my case one embedded deeply in my fingers,
| something that I do every day without realizing that I'm doing
| it. Thus it is a useful reminder of the implicit bias that
| contributes to the lack of diversity in tech. Never mind that
| the old name was harmless, the change brings repeated awareness
| to an important topic, and it reaches a the developer community
| in a targeted way_
|
| This is a really interesting framing and I appreciate it.
|
| As a Caucasian American, I have been perplexed by this issue.
| The terminology change itself didn't especially annoy me - you
| don't have to change your existing repositories after all - but
| it didn't seem to really accomplish anything useful. My
| instinct was that this served no purpose beyond PR ("virtue
| signaling") and might be mildly harmful at worst (as a
| _distraction_ from important structural issues, a constant
| reminder to right-wing people how _annoying_ liberal scolds can
| be to them) without any upside I could actually envision.
|
| I feel like what you describe was very far from the original
| intent, whatever it might have been, but I appreciate that it
| may help in some small way I did not envision.
| jfengel wrote:
| I agree that it served no purpose, and yet this thread
| appears to have found one: the virulence of the objection is
| so out of proportion to the magnitude of the change that it
| raises the question of just what is really at the root of it.
|
| It is entirely about those "annoying liberal scolds"... and
| the way anything they say will be turned into an existential
| crisis. I feel like this is less about any actual change as a
| constant search for a thing to be aggrieved about, and when
| found, pounced on with absolutely maximum force.
|
| I think of it as "vice signaling": performing the objections
| without even a moment's thought, not for the purpose of
| refuting it but to be seen as being the most, loudest, most
| obnoxious opposition.
| rrook wrote:
| > the virulence of the objection is so out of proportion to
| the magnitude of the change that it raises the question of
| just what is really at the root of it....I think of it as
| "vice signaling": performing the objections without even a
| moment's thought, not for the purpose of refuting it but to
| be seen as being the most, loudest, most obnoxious
| opposition.
|
| I don't feel like we're reading the same thread. There are
| plenty of reasonable objections in these comments, and
| dismissing as you do is, to me, as intellectually shallow
| as the change in question.
| veeti wrote:
| 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.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Can sympathize: the reason Im in the US is because my Irish
| ancestors went into indentured servitude to come to the
| states, landed in the deep south and because of my low
| economic status growing up actually shared more in common
| with the black folks around here (went to a school system
| where I, 7/8 Irish, was the minority) yet I'm constantly
| being reminded by white folks to check my privilege. It's
| just hilarious from this perspective.
| jonahrd wrote:
| I'm not trying to diminish the experience of your
| ancestors, mine were also Irish.
|
| But in most contexts, white privilege doesn't care about
| your actual ancestry. A 2nd generation black immigrant from
| Africa to NYC will face some of the same discrimination as
| a descendant from slaves. And with your white skin you will
| receive some of the same privileges as a wealthy descendant
| of the Mayflower.
|
| It doesn't really hurt to recognize this, and it doesn't
| have to "erase" the pain that your ancestors went through.
| It's simply recognizing that there are inherent subliminal
| biases in our systems and society.
| cronix wrote:
| It's actually "majority privilege." It's just called
| white privilege in the USA because that has historically
| been the majority color. Go to any country, or geographic
| area, and you fill find a majority
| race/sect/tribe/religion that gives them more
| privileges/rights than the rest of the people who live in
| smaller numbers, because there are less of them in
| numbers to win a vote (or whatever.) You will also find
| that majority holding some sort of power over the
| minorities in the area. Can you think of a country where
| this hasn't been true at some point in world history?
| China? Russia? Nigeria? Mexico? Cambodia? Vietnam?
| Greece? Rome? Rwanda?
| jonahrd wrote:
| I totally agree with you. We were talking about the US.
|
| In some cultures, the aspect of giving every single
| person inalienable rights and equality isn't explicitly
| valued like it is in the west. I wouldn't want to impose
| western values on those cultures.
|
| However, your argument boils down to whataboutism. Yes
| there are other countries with other forms of privilege.
| Yes there are civilizations in the past with other forms
| of privilege. In the US we tend to value equality, and in
| the pursuit of that we must recognize all forms of
| privilege that exist in our society. It doesn't matter
| that it exists elsewhere.
|
| FYI I am not at all talking about the original article. I
| was simply responding to this tangent comment thread.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| My white privilege must have been on vacation growing up
| because my parents were too poor to pay the light bill
| several times and eventually were foreclosed upon (this
| was way before 2008). And it certainly wasn't around when
| I had to work as a farm hand for less than minimum wage
| in high school to help pay the bills. A lot of what's
| perceived as white privilege is actually economic
| privilege, and most of the rest is made up.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I wonder how poor whites react to their resume getting
| tossed out for not being diverse enough [0][1].
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/2/17070624/google-
| youtube-wi...
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/story/new-lawsuit-exposes-
| googles-desp...
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| "You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period
| of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula
| of doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting
| among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together,
| something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold
| the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together,
| that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let
| us maintain unity."
|
| -MLK
| jonahrd wrote:
| Again, even people with privilege can have a really hard
| life. But you do in fact have the privilege of driving a
| car without the threat of being pulled over for how you
| look, or walking down the street without being asked
| questions, or boarding a plane without being "randomly"
| searched.
|
| It's a form a privilege. It doesn't make you bad. It
| doesn't mean your life is easy. But it's worth
| recognizing.
| sneak wrote:
| The "master" bedrooms in houses are now being called
| "primary" bedrooms by some realtors.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is insane and disgusting.
| jfengel wrote:
| That seems a bit of an overreaction, doesn't it?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Using black justice as a pawn to further their own image
| and agenda? No. Not really. These realtors want to cash
| in on this bandwagon. I am disgusted, indeed.
| worik wrote:
| That is quite cheap disgust, surely?
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| Disgust always is, is why humans partake in it so
| frequently.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| More charitable reading would be that they don't want to
| offend potential customers. I mean, I guess that can be
| seen as "cashing in," but then all good customer service
| could be dismissed in the same fashion.
| vmception wrote:
| yeah, but how out of touch do you have to be to realize
| that the customers this would actually affect would not
| be offended.
|
| its only the people that would be vicariously offended.
| jfengel wrote:
| Let me just thank you personally for the money I'm
| getting out of this. I went into Social Justice
| Warrioring for the feel-goods, but the buttload of cash
| is definitely a nice bonus.
| krferriter wrote:
| Imagine being disgusted by the largest bedroom being
| accurately described as the "primary bedroom".
|
| There's nothing objectionable about this.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| 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 thing
| about what Git is will be viewed as racist and morally
| inferior. E.g. (Master of Ceremonies, Master of Arts, etc.).
| Explain how a tech worker can agree that "master branch" is
| offensive but putting that they have a "Master of Science" on
| their CV is fine.
|
| 3) Somewhat arbitrarily changing words with a tenuous relation
| to racism seems like an extremely passive aggressive, murky,
| and dangerous path to go down. Not only does it lay a trap for
| people to be accused of being racist but if this is acceptable
| it is inconsistent with not removing all words associated with
| slavery. Even words with a distant relation to slavery.
| bingbong70 wrote:
| >(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.
| samatman wrote:
| Good point, I gotta stop calling my feature branches
| `slave` it's a bad habit!
|
| Real talk though, when this first blew up, I took the
| opportunity to change all my master branches to trunk, the
| oldest and best term for "that from which branches grow".
|
| "main" is lame, it reeks of compromise and giving the least
| amount of thought possible to the replacement. Worse, it
| shares the same first two letters with "master", and that
| means more time spent typing out the wrong branch name,
| muscle memory being what it is.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| "Master of Science" is simply a use of a different meaning of
| the word. If anyone is suggesting to not use "master" across
| the board, even in the sense of "being really good at
| something," they can shove off.
|
| While the "master" branch is clearly using master in the
| sense that it asserts control of the other branches in some
| way.
|
| So IMO, explaining could be done by pointing at the
| dictionary.
| kelnos wrote:
| Ok, let's look at the dictionary:
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/master?s=t
|
| If we scroll to the adjective section, we see three notable
| definitions:
|
| > 28 directing or controlling: a master switch.
|
| I assume this is the definition you are thinking of?
|
| But I don't agree that this is the definition git is
| thinking of. I think it's either:
|
| > 27 chief or principal: a master list.
|
| or
|
| > 29 of or relating to a master from which copies are made:
| master film; master matrix; master record; master tape.
|
| I would agree that the definition you are referring to has
| racist connotations, but I don't think #27 or #29 does.
| DonaldPShimoda wrote:
| Git's terminology descends from BitKeeper, which was
| explicitly using master/slave:
| https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-
| list/2019-May/...
|
| Additionally, I don't think sense 29 actually makes sense
| here. A "master copy" is _immutable_. Once somebody burns
| a master record, that 's it -- you're done. You make
| copies from that one because it is deemed "correct" in
| some sense.
|
| But git branches are _not_ immutable; they are able to be
| added to at any point. The master branch can be
| interpreted as collating the work done by all of the
| other branches: non-master branches do some work, then it
| gets merged back to `master`. Which means... the master
| branch is coordinating work done in other branches. And,
| in many git workflows, work on the master branch itself
| is discouraged, meaning almost _all_ work is done in
| separate branches and then the master branch is used to
| accumulate that work, and is the main reference point to
| see "the current state of things". I don't think it's a
| stretch to see why the master/slave relationship seems a
| more fitting sense of "master" than "master copy".
| CountDrewku wrote:
| No that's not how it works. You're making up definitions
| and applying your own meaning. This sort of thinking breaks
| language entirely. It's along the same lines of saying
| there are multiple genders and you can make up any on the
| spot and apply them whenever you feel like. Language
| doesn't work anymore if you do this.
|
| Expecting others to know what's happening in your own head
| and getting offended when they don't is absolute insanity.
| This is why we have language standards.
| advrs wrote:
| You do realize languages change (constantly), right? This
| gives me the sense of someone echoing talking points
| picked up from spending time listening to reactionary
| Youtube agitators (especially the gender-focused
| dogwhistle)
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| Language is an entirely human creation with "standards"
| and definitions that have been changing constantly since
| humans began creating it. With the internet the english
| dictionary has been growing at an almost exponential
| rate.
|
| Not knowing how language works and being mad that it
| changes LIKE IT'S ALWAYS DONE is absolute insanity. Not
| being able to handle change is a common problem for a lot
| of humans, but it doesn't mean the change is at fault,
| it's your ability to cope with differences as they
| emerge.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| "Language is an entirely human creation with "standards"
| and definitions that have been changing constantly since
| humans began creating it."
|
| Your point? Those changes happen as people in the ENTIRE
| society agree on them. They don't happen because a small
| minority or some ridiculous elitist in San Francisco
| pulled it out of his/her/xer ass one day and decided to
| dictate to everyone what a word means. If we do not agree
| then you're essentially creating your own language and
| communication becomes ineffectual.
|
| Equally, one individual doesn't get to dictate what a
| word means in their own head and expect others to follow
| along, while accusing them of being bigoted for not doing
| it. The minority of offended individuals don't get the
| power to make these decisions.
| elefanten wrote:
| You're making unproven assumptions about which meaning
| applies to what.
|
| Quick search of definitions of master include (paraphrased
| slightly for brevity): -(n) person with people working for
| them -(n) person in charge -(adj) showing great skill
| -(adj) main/principal -(v) to acquire complete
| knowledge/skill in something -(v) to overcome (as in one's
| emotions)
|
| Depending on whether it had a more literal or more abstract
| genesis, I could see almost all of those variants apply to
| Master of Science.
|
| Similarly, for master branch -- it could easily be 4 of the
| 6.
|
| Now add in the fact that these meanings change over time,
| that they can be coined organically vs. explicitly, and
| that different early adopters can themselves have different
| connotations of the meaning in mind.
|
| TLDR: There's nothing simple or clear about the case for
| removal.
| edc117 wrote:
| Same meaning, but different context of use is what I think
| you meant. The context is key in all these discussions. No
| one thinks 'master' means 'owner of human (black) slaves'
| in 'Master of Science' any more than they do for Github,
| yet here we are.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| > the "master" branch is clearly using master in the sense
| that it asserts control of the other branches in some way
|
| Master as in expert, meritorious of command, arbiter of
| truth.
|
| They all mean the same and you can't have a master's degree
| without a master copy of information.
|
| Control is exerted only by virtue of being correct.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Git's usage is clearly more like "golden master" in the
| recording sense -- the original from which other copies
| are made.
|
| Compare to other uses in technology that are far more
| directly related to control, and far less likely to
| change, e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface
| dhimes wrote:
| I was going to stay out of this, but I'll add that I
| agree entirely with this.
|
| Master/Slave flip-flops, on the other hand, are named for
| behavior closer to the connotation github is trying to
| avoid.
|
| And, I'll also add, as a young White child who built and
| played with master/slave flip-flops, it never occurred to
| me to associate it with people, slavery, or racism. Maybe
| if I had been Black it would have been different.
| DonaldPShimoda wrote:
| > Git's usage is clearly more like "golden master" in the
| recording sense -- the original from which other copies
| are made.
|
| Maybe it's easy to spin this way, but that's not where
| git's terminology comes from. It originated in a system
| meant to migrate away from BitKeeper, which _did_ use the
| master /slave terminology. Citation:
| https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-
| list/2019-May/...
| nitrogen wrote:
| Has Linus or another early Git developer commented on
| this? If not, what matters is how people actually use Git
| today, to the extent that it should matter at all
| relative to other more significant things.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| yes[1], but it doesn't really matter because even if the
| intention is not to be a "master/slave" reference, people
| will still say it is offensive. So therefore it makes
| sense that banning other terms like "master of science"
| or "master record" would also be consistent here.
|
| [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200706203737/https://t
| witter.c...
| evanlivingston wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILIkmLiT6d0
|
| wherein a black musician explores the idea of
| master/slave ownership in the recording industry.
|
| EDIT: So confusing to me why this was voted down. Please
| help.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _EDIT: So confusing to me why this was voted down. Please
| help._
|
| I'm just speculating here -- HN doesn't even allow
| downvotes to direct responses, so it's not me -- a little
| more tie-in to the thread might help understand the
| context and relevance of a music video (HN tends to
| prefer text over video, and prose/exposition over music).
| Or maybe there's a bot that downvotes anything with
| certain words. Or maybe there are one or two people who
| happened to accidentally downvote because the button was
| lined up with their thumb when they were scrolling on
| their phones.
| evanlivingston wrote:
| alright, that's reasonable.
| mokarma wrote:
| Don't forget "Scrum Master", which seems to be a term
| everyone is fine with.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That sounds appropriate, scrum and slavery go well together
| javcasas wrote:
| Well, as a scrum master, some days I feel like a scum
| master, which may not be that far from the truth.
| geodel wrote:
| > some days I feel like a scum master
|
| I'd only add for me it is every time.
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| Funnily enough, "scrum master" has been renamed to "scrum
| facilitator" at my workplace...
| CountDrewku wrote:
| "Not everyone uses Git each day and I am certain that people
| who continue to use the word "master" without knowing a thing
| about what Git is will be viewed as racist and morally
| inferior. E.g. (Master of Ceremonies, Master of Arts, etc.).
| Explain how a tech worker can agree that "master branch" is
| offensive but putting that they have a "Master of Science" on
| their CV is fine."
|
| Honestly I find it terrifying that high ranking tech people
| can't see the cognitive dissonance they're showing.
|
| Either they're lying in a pitiful attempt to fit in with the
| silicon valley leftist elites or they're actually
| intellectually inept. Either way it's not good.
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| I actually thought you meant people like the comment you're
| responding to, but then I realized you also appear to be
| arguing in bad faith.
|
| "Master of <subject_matter>" is pretty clear in that a
| person has mastered a trade or an area of study! No one
| confuses that with the idea of "Master/Slave" or "Master
| Branch" which implies a hierarchy that reminds some people
| of slavery, particularly the slavery that was practiced in
| the US.
|
| There's an obvious contextual difference, and it's not some
| political conspiracy from an imagined "leftist elites" that
| I assume you think are coming for you. Conspiracy theories
| are unhealthy and I personally think you should let this
| one go.
| everfree wrote:
| "Master Branch" does not imply a hierarchy any more than
| a master key does. It's simply an original from which
| copies can be made.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| You know what actually sounds like a conspiracy theory?
| Believing that a word with no link to racism at all is
| racist because a company told you it was in a disgusting
| attempt to garner social justice points without actually
| doing anything helpful.
|
| The only thing unhealthy here is inventing problems where
| there aren't any and then trying to force the majority
| population to go along with your insane ideology while
| trying to paint them as bigoted if they don't like it.
| Sounds like a recipe for creating a dystopian society.
|
| Please tell me what good will come out of this? Because I
| can think of a lot of negatives.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > silicon valley leftist elites
|
| Outliers like Peter Thiel aside do we actually know the
| personal politics and beliefs of people like Mark
| Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, or Marc Benioff? They all seem
| perfectly fine on the PR-positive side of any issue and
| likely skew fiscally conservatives privately on matters
| that concern their personal fortunes.
|
| Sure their companies skew "progressive" with LGBTQ
| inclusion, some diversity hiring (YMMV and some of it
| appears to be purely projection), and the banning of hate
| speech, fake news, and calls for violence, on Twitter and
| the de-platforming of Parler - but is that leftist or just
| doing the right thing?
| CountDrewku wrote:
| What their personal beliefs are is irrelevant to the
| discussion. Their rhetoric and actions are what define
| them. Right now it's aligning with far left ideology. If
| you believe what you wrote then you should be even more
| upset with what they're doing because that means when the
| pendulum swings back right they're gonna be smacking you
| in the face with tea party politics in order to garner
| favor of whatever right wing politician is in office.
|
| " banning of hate speech, fake news, and calls for
| violence, on Twitter and the de-platforming of Parler -
| but is that leftist or just doing the right thing"
|
| Hard to argue it's doing the "right thing" when Twitter
| lets actual dictators post to their platform and Facebook
| was found to be the main gathering platform for the
| capitol insurrection.
| advrs wrote:
| I find it troubling that people can find themselves so
| wrapped up and agitated by culture war wedge issues that
| they would characterize the rhetoric and actions of Jeff
| Bezos as aligned with "far left ideology", when Amazon is
| currently working to prevent workplace
| solidarity/unionization (a very core component of
| moderate leftist ideology in the context of a capitalist
| state).
| Igelau wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Which sounds okay(1) if all I'm working on is a simple
| document. If I'm in the larger context of making a change in
| code because it's breaking something somewhere else, the
| cognitive overhead of switching gears from "technical mode" to
| "political mode" to "what the heck was I really doing again?"
| is costly.
|
| (1) I had "great" but downgraded it to "okay" because literally
| no one is offended by this -- it's virtue signaling to make
| rich people feel like they look better.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| "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."
|
| Yes and so were the ancestors of every race on this planet at
| some point.
|
| "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"
|
| What exactly am I supposed to be reflecting on? I don't need
| useless word changes that cause issues at my job to do that.
| This sort of strange thinking that somehow language causes
| racism and not the other way around needs to stop. It lacks so
| much logic it's infuriating, especially for people in tech
| fields. Additionally, you're simplifying words to one specific
| meaning when in reality the word master gets used in a
| multitude of different contexts that don't have any relation to
| black slavery AT ALL.
|
| How about we do something useful with our time instead of
| constantly looking for victim hood and racism where it doesn't
| exist? I guess I should be somewhat encouraged because the fact
| that people have the time to worry about which words might be
| offensive (or make things offensive that aren't) means they're
| doing pretty damn well. So well, in fact, that they don't
| actually have enough going on in their lives and are making
| problems where they don't exist. The massive con here though is
| that eventually if you tell enough people they're victims of a
| system and can't help themselves it'll eventually cause real
| societal harm.....
| jdkoeck wrote:
| "Yes and so were the ancestors of every race on this planet
| at some point."
|
| Great point! Everyone acts like history started in the 19th
| century. When you take a step back and learn about history on
| larger spans, it's obvious that enslavement was common all
| over the globe. More people should learn that the world slave
| originates from the ethnic name "slav", because Slavic people
| from central and eastern people were frequently enslaved by
| Moors, who come from the north of Africa.
|
| "The massive con here though is that eventually if you tell
| enough people they're victims of a system and can't help
| themselves it'll eventually cause real societal harm....."
|
| Agreed, and I'm afraid we've already reached that point.
| cronix wrote:
| > 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
| sorokod wrote:
| This is a thoughtful and patronising post. Since you give
| advice frelly, let me offer one back: every time you type the
| word 'slave', take a deep breath and consider the etymology of
| that word.
| barefootcoder wrote:
| I have an honest question for you and others who are directly
| impacted by this, and would love to hear your perspective.
|
| I work on a software team that has the usual level of
| diversity, an almost equal mix of East Asian, Indian, Middle-
| Eastern, and White developers, a few women, and not a single
| black developer. Here's the problem though... I've been part of
| the screening and interviewing process and we've only had ONE
| black person apply, he was an immigrant from Africa. He made it
| all of the way through the interview process, but did not get
| the job for reasons that I am unaware of, though I did give him
| a yes vote as he seemed competent and friendly to me.
|
| Given that we have screened and interviewed hundreds of
| applicants and as far as I'm aware he was the only black
| developer to apply, how can we as individuals on the team make
| a difference to try to be more inclusive?
|
| This has been true everywhere that I've worked. In my entire
| career spanning > 25 yrs I've only had the opportunity to work
| with one black developer. He was extremely good, but timid,
| very soft spoken, and too quick to self-judge, leading to him
| not very proactive at advertising his successes, which was
| unfortunate as he was doing great work, but not recognized by
| the majority of the team. When I later became his manager I
| would go out of my way to ensure that every major
| accomplishment of his was widely publicized, but by then the
| perception had already been set.
|
| It seems to me that the root problem is further up than the
| hiring process -- it feels like it's something that needs to
| start at a younger age, encouraging more people outside of the
| usual circle to consider tech as a career in the first place,
| but maybe I'm not blind to my own short-sightedness and would
| love to be shown where I personally can effect change.
| vmception wrote:
| recruit at universities where they attend.
|
| reach out to people with the skillset you like.
|
| black engineers have jobs. the government and defense
| contractors recruit at schools that have a higher percentage
| of black software engineers. its not that hard of a concept.
| samatman wrote:
| There's no amount of shuffling the deck chairs that gets
| out of the stark fact that black developers are a lower
| percentage of the developer population than black people
| are of the American population. I'd be surprised if the
| former broke 5%, but let's say 5% for the sake of argument.
|
| I know a few black developers. They have no problem staying
| employed. Big surprise! They're developers, we're blessed
| to have a chronic shortage of labor. There isn't an
| untapped labor pool of chronically underemployed black
| developers, because they aren't incompetent at greater
| rates than their non-white peers.
|
| So with extraordinary effort, a company can get up to the
| ~13% ratio which would represent parity. Or a black startup
| founder from an HBCU could draw on her peers and get a much
| higher percentage.
|
| But, relentlessly, that means other companies will have
| even fewer than 5%. If having 13% of American-born
| developers be black is a worthwhile goal (and I don't see
| why not), hiring harder can't reach it. It just can't.
| mscuwa wrote:
| So what you are suggesting is to go beyond normal company
| business to recruit black developers? I.e. to give black
| developers an advantage over all others. That's a textbook
| definition of a racism, don't you think?
| vmception wrote:
| normal company business involves recruiting at
| universities. that person's company business does not
| seemingly recruit at all "nObOdy ApplIeD?!?!", many
| companies like theirs do recruit and chose to recruit at
| certain universities and act just as confused as that
| person's company, when there are simply more universities
| that can be recruited from and many of those have a
| higher percentage of engineers that are black.
|
| you are desperately looking for something that wasn't
| suggested or said, but if you weren't (despite asking a
| question and responding with a conclusion you already
| had) the answer to your first question is "no". it would
| not be racist to expand recruiting to more engineering
| schools. and outside of that many existing recruiters
| have no difficulty reaching out to engineers with skills
| they like, this person's company does not seem to do
| that.
| mscuwa wrote:
| Expanding recruitment won't be racist by itself, no. But
| going beyond what company is doing now to hire more
| _black_ devs would be (they didn't ask where to recruit
| people, so they probably have enough candidates, the
| question was "where to recruit black devs if we don't
| have any black candidates").
| vmception wrote:
| its not prejudiced
|
| its not harming other groups
|
| expanding recruitment efforts to places that include more
| black developers is not racist by any definition. maybe
| you aren't reading this the same way, its places that
| _also_ include more black developers
|
| it is not racist by any definition of the word. just
| because they change a practice does not make it racist,
| even if their reasoning was as contrived as you think it
| is, it still would not be racist/prejudiced/exclusionary-
| to-other-groups when the result is simply expanding
| efforts to places that also include more black developers
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| If you recruit from best universities and you decide to
| recruit from some universities because they have more
| people of a specific race, that is a racial based
| decision and it makes it racist. Including based on race
| is as racist as excluding based on race.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| You need to better define the problem you are trying to
| solve. For example in my team in Europe there is no black
| member; there is no black person in the entire building and
| just a few in the entire city, maybe none in this kind of
| job, so I don't consider we are not inclusive by not having a
| black member in the team. You can have a problem if you are
| exclusive, but you cannot force inclusivity for the sake of
| just doing something that sounds good.
|
| What is the goal of inclusivity? What is better for your
| team, having the best developers or having the most diverse
| developers? What is the productivity and value of diverse
| developers versus expert developers? Is a developer more
| valuable because of the skills or because of the skin color?
| Would you want to be treated by a competent doctor or by a
| black doctor? I am not saying there are no competent black
| doctors, but you make it sound that color is more important
| than competence.
| mola wrote:
| Just a slight perspective, I'm not from the US, I'm from
| israel. We have a black jewish population here, they yearned
| their return to Zion(israel) for thousands of years. The state
| of israel, invested money and effort in organizing their
| return.
|
| Non of their ancestors were slaves.
|
| We have social issues, mostly because the huge differences in
| culture and exposure to technological and educational advances.
| And the fact these people are immigrants. Sure there's racism,
| and troubles.
|
| But the narrative is completely different from the american
| narratives. Because of the US hagemony in entertainment and
| media, you see young jewish black (mostly from ethiopian
| origin) espousing the American narrative. This is extremely
| hurtful for their cause as it is not into touch with their
| reality.
|
| So basically, I hate the american wokeness wars because of the
| havoc the wreck on non american societies. Not because the
| blacks in the US are treated fairly, but because the media
| frenzy is making it impossible to actually get things better.
|
| Not much to add, thought it might be interesting.
| worik wrote:
| The problems of racism in Israel run very deep. The echos of
| that are felt all over the world, and are creating havoc. So
| Pot meet Kettle.
|
| Racism in the USA is a terrible thing. But the law is not
| racist. In Israel it is the law that is racist: "Jewish
| people have the unique claim to national self-determination
| in the State of Israel"
|
| Apartheid
| rattray wrote:
| Err, that example would be religionist, not racist, right?
| The African folks in question are Jewish.
|
| I'm not saying there aren't problems with racism in Israel,
| or that the state isn't actively cruel to people it views
| as different, just that your citation doesn't seem to imply
| racism per se.
| deadbunny wrote:
| How about we just use the term bigotry? Same end result.
| TheDong wrote:
| To quote the law:
| https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israel-s-law-of-
| return#...
|
| > 4B. For the purposes of this Law, "Jew" means a person
| who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted
| to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion."
|
| The "or" there is very important. If my grandmother were
| a religious Jew, and she had a secular daughter, that
| daughter would still be a jew (a secular jew). If that
| daughter then births me, that is now a generation
| further, where my mother was not religious, I am not
| religious, but both my mother and I are considered to be
| Jews for that law.
|
| Due to how that is worded, one can be a secular Jew,
| Jewish by the bloodline of the mother (aka "race"), and
| one can be a religious Jew. The law applies to both, so I
| think it's fair to say that it's a racist law.
| rattray wrote:
| That's an interesting argument, I do see what you're
| saying. I'd counter that since someone of any race can be
| a Jew by this definition, it doesn't _exclude_ on the
| basis of race.
|
| The intent is also quite clearly to establish the country
| as a religious nation, and while I'm quite glad to live
| in a secular nation (the US) I don't begrudge religious
| nations their right to exist (eg; islamic ones).
|
| (disclaimer, I am a secular Jew)
| lightcatcher wrote:
| I also find the "or" wording of the law interesting.
|
| I do think it's racist as it grants the privilege of
| abandoning the Jewish religion while remaining a legally
| privileged class (Jew) to people with some ancestries
| (Jewish) but not with others.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Surely that episode where they tried to give birth control to
| the Ethiopian refugees in their food didn't help things?
| worik wrote:
| I am no fan of the Israeli state, but that is not a thing.
| THere were reports of racist doctors using Depo Pravera
| (sp?) on Ethiopian women without their consent, if true
| they were rouge.
| boromisp wrote:
| The original story was about injections not food, and was
| most likely false. Unless you are referring to a different
| story?
|
| https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2013/01/did-israelis-
| force...
| kergonath wrote:
| Racism is not uniquely American, and does not require
| slavery.
| takeda wrote:
| I'm white, but first generation immigrant. I think the change
| that GitHub did is as well for the wrong reasons. It's not
| because it is offensive, but because it might be reminding
| people of US history that many people are ashamed of (it
| reminds me of Aushwitz, the reason the place is still open and
| allows tourists is so we don't forget about it and won't repeat
| the history). The master in git wasn't even related to slavery,
| its meaning comes from meaning like master copy.
|
| I don't mind change if it is for the better, for example
| postgresql instead of master-slave uses master-standby which is
| much more accurate how the replication works. Perhaps using
| main by GitHub is better, but because of timing, it feels like
| it was made to help forget about that part of the history,
| which IMO is doing the opposite of what was intended.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I vehemently disagree. Such virtue signaling is okay when one
| is on empirically high moral ground. If the lesson were "stay
| away from snakes" or "stop, drop, and roll", there would be no
| possible debate over those topics and we might all agree that a
| frequent refresher would be welcome.
|
| However, there remains considerable discussion over oppression,
| race, and politics. For you to shoehorn in your personal
| viewpoint here immediately ends the discussion and implies that
| your side is right, when that may not be the case.
|
| Think about if we changed the names literally to "n-word" and
| "white whip". You'd be just as disgusted as I am for the
| opposing side to claim empirical moral high ground and to force
| you to accept something that you don't find to be a settled
| debate.
| aksss wrote:
| I think you mean "objectively", not "empirically". Your word
| choice is problematic as it invokes the authority and
| propriety of empire as the most rational form of governance.
| While we're arguing for linguistic purity tests, let's
| maintain some principled consistency here.
| president wrote:
| > Thus it is a useful reminder of the implicit bias that
| contributes to the lack of diversity in tech.
|
| Implicit bias is made to be the boogeyman when it reality, it
| is probably a very a small fraction of the cause of "lack of
| diversity" in tech, if at all. Anyone who has attended computer
| science courses in college anytime would know the number of
| black students were little to none. It has always been a
| pipeline problem from the education side of things. To say that
| typing a word that so happens to have a relation to slavery
| caused a "lack of diversity" in tech is the biggest farce in
| this industry and it is extremely sad to see this line parroted
| by many in the industry. I expect to be heavily downvoted and
| even flagged for "wrongthink" but I think it tells a lot about
| how irrational and unhealthy our state of discourse is in
| today's world.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Do you really need to type master/main frequently?
| a9h74j wrote:
| Consider the documentation alone.
|
| A google search on "git master" shows 446,000 results -- now
| to be revised?
|
| A google search without the quotes shows 171,000,000 results.
|
| This is not to mention all of the company-internal
| documentation, correspondence, etc. which now becomes subject
| to pressure/demand for revision.
| skohan wrote:
| If you're switching branches frequently, or doing a lot of
| merging you might
| colllectorof wrote:
| _> Thus it is a useful reminder of the implicit bias that
| contributes to the lack of diversity in tech._
|
| This _is_ a useful reminder. It 's a reminder that associative
| thinking can invert causal relationships and turn anything into
| a symbol for anything else. There is no rational limit to
| things that can be attacked this way. Someone can demand you to
| change the way you talk or dress, what you read or watch, how
| you do your job. The changes themselves can be _anything_ and
| the only limit to their extent is your willingness to say no.
|
| And by the way, don't ever forget _who_ is enforcing this. This
| is not your coworker individually asking you do something
| differently to accommodate them. This is coming top-down from
| one of largest tech corporation in the world.
| ipsocannibal wrote:
| Remember MS once told us 'Linux is Cancer'. Should we have
| believed them then? Now 'Microsoft loves Linux'. Which is it?
| I think which ever one aligns with their business interests
| at the time. That lens should used to view any change pushed
| by Redmond.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| > This is a useful reminder. It's a reminder that associative
| thinking can invert causal relationships and turn anything
| into a symbol for anything else. There is no rational limit
| to things that can be attacked this way.
|
| I've never heard this stated so clearly and succinctly.
| Thanks for advancing the conversation.
| yarcob wrote:
| > who is enforcing this
|
| Let's not exaggerate, they just changed the default for new
| repos, everyone is free to continue naming their branches
| "master" or "stable" or "trunk" or whatever they want.
| deadbytes wrote:
| You are right that nobody is being physically forced to
| make this change, but I think you vastly underestimate the
| power of propaganda and social pressure.
|
| In today's hyper-socialized society there is not really
| much difference between "you are forced to make this
| change" and "make this change or else you will be socially
| outcast by all your peers".
|
| Github is used by millions of developers all over the
| world. There is almost certainly at least one person in
| every western software company that regularly uses github.
| They have the power to broadcast messages into every
| software company in the western world, and right now this
| message is "make this change or you are racist".
| mesozoic wrote:
| Dude your virtue is spilling out all over my nice sneakers get
| a handle.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Black SWE here as well, highly disagree with this. If
| Microsoft/Github wanted to issue "a useful reminder of the
| implicit bias that contributes to the lack of diversity in
| tech", they could've founded an non-profit dedicated to
| training and job placement for BIPOC and underrepresented white
| women, they could've kept a continuous banner on their site
| that linked to relevant legislation, initiatives, causes, etc.
|
| They changed the goddamned name of the master branch.
|
| You're gonna have to explain to me how changing that name makes
| much more significant headway than any initative I enumerated
| above or adjacently related. There's a lot of heavy lifting
| being done by "a useful reminder".
|
| I mean, you or I don't need reminders, that's what the article
| is about. As for the rest of the tech industry, its a crapshoot
| to even suggest even half would be moved by changing the name
| of the branch nevermind possibly not caring at all about the
| greater issue for whatever reason.
|
| The FTA is about _continuous action that requires investment_ ,
| you're applauding cheap, low-effort PR moves. This country, and
| you and I, deserve better than what amounts to yet another
| TikTok affirmation, and it's difficult to discern tangible
| value for actual Black people that someone somewhere thought to
| themselves as they typed 'git checkout main', "Ah, yes, let me
| reconsider the web of power-relations I'm enmeshed in".
|
| > 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.
|
| There is no amount of reflection that is ever going to
| substitute the actual presence of Black folk in the tech
| workforce, and thinking we'll over come this waiting on some
| kind of ethical consensus that eventually leads to a beneficial
| outcome is not reflected by history, see Civil Rights
| legislation.
|
| Suggesting you're surreptisously altering behavior via minor
| language changes is just "spooky action at a distance" come
| alive. It lends the sense that someone is "effecting" outcomes
| without actually having to be accountable for actual outcomes
| occuring.
|
| The "postmodernists" (in quotes cause it tells you nothing,
| more accurate would be to call them postmarxist) developed
| something resembling this (predominantly American) language
| theory, though much broader in scope, looking at documents from
| the 19th, 18th, and early 20th century when there was a small
| elite regulating knowledge, language, and education. (the
| official language academies of France, Spain, early communities
| of biologists, crimonologists etc). Those conditions simply
| aren't the case today precisely owing to mass communication.
|
| All this that is accomplished by this (IMO as a former
| philosophy academic) complete bastardization of so-called
| "postmodern" language theory is a new out/game for standing
| institutions to play. The FTA points out how Microsoft is
| changing the name of master with their right hand, but
| supplying facial recognition software to police to identify
| protesters and mistake Black folk for Gorillas with their left
| hand.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| You seem to be suggesting that this is all Microsoft has done
| to help underrepresented groups and is their main focus in
| the push for inclusion, but that isn't the case:
| https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/06/23/addressing-
| racia...
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| First off. Thank you for your comment. As a white European I
| need to hear these perspectives and I don't hear them enough.
|
| Your comment reminded me of those email signatures that say
| something like, "Please think of the environment before you
| print this." Do they actually accomplish anything or do they
| just annoy people?
|
| We need to weigh the real impact of actions against their
| potential annoyance. Because otherwise we're turning people
| off to the goals we're trying to achieve.
|
| There was recently an environmental action in my city to stop
| traffic with a banner during a busy Sunday when lots of
| people were returning to the city. The activists did it
| because they wanted to get people to notice and care about
| the environment. The motorists were of course very annoyed
| and many of them posted on social media about this. Does
| annoying a bunch of motorists work towards saving the
| environment or just alienate people who could have been your
| allies?
|
| There's a similar dynamic happening here.
|
| A name was changed.
|
| The change annoyed some people. Some people were not annoyed.
|
| Nothing else happened.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| A complete tangent, but when I interned at Toyota, they had
| a sign on the large inkjet plotter equating cost of
| abandoned prints per year to number of manufactured
| Highlanders.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Lol, "let's spread awareness of climate change by causing a
| bunch of cars to idle unnecessarily"
|
| Society needs to take a stronger position against virtue
| signaling type behavior that has a facade of benevolence
| while being ineffective. Doing something ineffective for
| the right reasons is worse than doing nothing at all: it
| wastes productive energy and will to act on those reasons.
| aksss wrote:
| To your point though, it's not just that some people are
| annoyed but that some people become aware of the absurdity
| of it all and attribute that to even more measured, less
| absurd critiques/initiatives and disassociate from even
| healthy aspects of a debate. Seeing the excesses drives a
| desire to disassociate.
| kaitai wrote:
| I just want to quote because in my opinion your last sentence
| is right on & bears repeating: "The FTA points out how
| Microsoft is changing the name of master with their right
| hand, but supplying facial recognition software to police to
| identify protesters and mistake Black folk for Gorillas with
| their left hand."
|
| On an individual level, I don't find it useful to get too
| worked up about name changes. Pronouns, names, whatever -- if
| someone's got a strong feeling I'll use what they want. You
| know why? (rhetorical HN you, not imbnwa in particular) Talk
| is cheap. Follow the money, though, the actual money, and
| supplying crappy facial recognition software that allows mass
| surveillance and leads to unsupportable arrest of innocent
| people is $$$. Selling a shitty "AI" program to screen
| resumes that uses a model that tells you a name like Jared is
| the best predictor for getting hired is $$$$. Perpetuating
| inequality through crappy AI/ML design is $$$$, and then
| noting that it exists and charging to "fix" it is $$$$$! As
| the beauty and pharma industries know, the best way to make
| money is to introduce a problem and then introduce a "cure"
| six months later.
| unreal37 wrote:
| Microsoft does not sell it's AI technology to police. So...
| let's avoid accusing them of things they aren't doing.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/11/micros
| o...
| cwkoss wrote:
| I wonder if they won't sell their facial recognition
| technology to vendors that serve the police. Does this
| policy have teeth or is it just going to induce reseller
| middle men to sell it police for them?
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The sad thing is it's not corporate generosity coming up with
| these initiatives, they are pushing them because it's a PR
| benefit.
|
| Changing the name of something or issuing a press release
| costs absolutely nothing. When you actually dig into the
| issue you find corporations have no problem with racist
| practices if changing them would be expensive or challenging.
| Running background checks on employees and not disclosing
| what they will discriminate on, acting like meritocracy is
| anything more than a fiction, the incredible bias towards
| hiring from places their friends worked at, etc. And most of
| big tech are falling over themselves to take contracts from
| oppressive governments and institutions.
|
| I have to laugh a little when Amazon or Microsoft takes a
| stand against racism but does business in China, possibly one
| of the most racist, and human rights abusing government on
| Earth. Turns out the only thing these companies won't
| discriminate against is cold hard cash.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It's extremely disappointing to see that the primary reaction
| on HN to this terminology chain is to bemoan the minor
| inconvenience of having to type fewer letters or run a replace-
| all on your scripts. Oh god, the horror. It's almost like
| people on HN have never used a text replacement tool before.
|
| A "master recording" is the _immutable_ "official recording"
| and is the source from which all copies are made, but the
| "master" in this term comes from the historical use of a
| "mastering lathe" to create vinyl records. It's quite clear
| that a "master branch" in git is _not_ like a master recording,
| because a master branch isn 't immutable and moreover is the
| branch that changes get _merged into._
|
| Given that the "master" in historic VCS programs (like
| Bitkeeper) is explicitly based on master/slave terminology,
| that git deliberately picked the term to maintain continuity of
| context with other VCS systems, and that "master" is ultimately
| a inaccurate description of what a "master branch" actually is
| in the context of git, it absolutely should be changed to
| something less inflammatory, like "main" or "working" or
| "local."
| cheez0r wrote:
| This.
|
| These changes to remove subconscious bias from our language are
| necessary. They are microaggressions which the average user
| doesn't even realize exist- but which do harms to some
| individuals in our society. This may be a minority group within
| our society- even a very small fraction of a percent- but
| removing biases which are perceived as harmful is one way that
| we as an organization demonstrate that we are being actively
| inclusive to all, instead of falling back on habits developed
| to favor, or carrying the embedded biases of, one social or
| cultural group.
|
| I look at it like ADA requirements for language. If you have a
| curb a wheelchair user can't climb, that's a harm to that
| individual- and so we require actions, by law, to ensure that
| wheelchair users are accommodated in our society. 30 years ago
| the similar complaints were made against ADA ramps, handicap-
| accessible restrooms, etc.- that they weren't really necessary
| because the minority who were being hurt by their absence were
| such a minority, and weren't really the target served
| population of the organization, etc. That was anti-inclusivity-
| and so we passed the ADA and support accessibility for all in
| our organizations- and nobody these days chafes at it at all,
| for the most part.
|
| Removing harms from how organizations execute their business
| operations is part of inclusivity. It's not cargo culting, it's
| not engaging in a self-pleasuring but pointless behavior, it's
| not a meaningless act that carries no value- it's ensuring that
| our organization does as little harm to folks as possible as we
| move forward doing business in the world.
| oji0hub wrote:
| Microaggressions aren't a well defined concept that actually
| exists.
| colpabar wrote:
| The problem I have with this name change, and reasoning like
| this, is that there is no "slave" component of the master
| branch convention. There is no reference to slavery. My
| understanding is that it's taken from the way records are
| made, by using a "master" copy which is copied. Should that
| change?
|
| Should all uses of the word "master" be changed? Is the main
| character of the Halo games a microaggression? Metallica's
| "Master of Puppets"? Is "master bedroom" a microaggression?
|
| Like the author said, it just feels like a meaningless
| gesture so people can feel better about themselves without
| fixing any real issues.
| Cd00d wrote:
| Actually, I think residential real estate as an industry
| _has been_ moving away from references to master bed /bath.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/realestate/master-
| bedroom...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The problem I have with this name change, and reasoning
| like this, is that there is no "slave" component of the
| master branch convention. There is no reference to slavery.
|
| It's apparently an indirect reference, because its taken
| from the master/slave usage in BitKeeper, even though there
| is no slave on the git context.
|
| In any case, "main" is simply descriptive rather than
| either a not very apt metaphor or an out-of-context
| reference to another (also not very descriptive) metaphor,
| so it's an improvement independently of whether "master"
| had social problems on top of it's descriptive ones.
| dreamer_ wrote:
| It's not an indirect reference. Word "master" in
| BitKeeper was used for context where word "origin" is
| used in Git.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Can you name a single person the term 'master branch' has
| hurt?
|
| Your subconscious bias of being an oppressor is showing. You
| are pushing your views onto others. This is what some slave
| owners tried to do. Maybe you should check your privilege and
| stop engaging in microaggressions before accusing everybody
| else of doing the same.
| 1337shadow wrote:
| The master branch has caused many civilian casualties. This
| change is great but not going far enough, the github
| background color is white which is offensive, it should use
| a background that all humans of all colors are equally
| related to. Options are many: fushia, blue, and green.
| Also, this comment textarea I'm writing on, is mostly a
| white background with some black for the text, it's
| offensive to see that the white occupies a much more real
| estate than black. And don't even get me started on chess,
| which is racist because white has the advantage over black,
| but also sexist because you sacrify the queen to save the
| king.
| JPKab wrote:
| Your entire theory ascribes a mysticism to language that is
| not evidence based at all.
|
| Changes to language like removing the term master are absurd
| and performative. You have jumped onto a movement that is
| operating like a religion. Telltale signs are capitalization
| of certain words that aren't normally capitalized, and making
| a big deal about certain interchangeable words.
|
| Growing up as an evangelical Christian I was not allowed to
| say the word lucky and was insisted that I would say blessed
| instead. The people who were a minority of my church that
| made a big deal this did so for personal gain in the social
| hierarchy.
|
| You can sit here and moan all day long about stupid theories
| that came out of disciplines in universities where the
| practitioners are universally illiterate in statistics.
|
| At the end of the day the entire theory is rooted around
| essays and very very shaky implicit bias science where the
| test which I have taken several times are not reproducible
| for a single individual. Depending on the day I take an
| implicit bias test I am either anti-black or anti-white.
|
| Naturally there's no implicit bias test that has other races
| featured because these all came from US universities who have
| a myopic view on race driven by politics and title 9.
|
| Enjoy your silly religion. The rest of us are going to set
| about building a better world for everyone while you ride
| along on the technical progress and its fruits.
| phlakaton wrote:
| I would not call it mystical, but rather social. The term
| "master branch" was established by convention, not science.
| Now a group of people has proposed a different convention
| that they like better, and it's gained traction.
| Conventions often change over time, and rarely require
| science to justify it.
|
| Interestingly, this new convention is superior to the old
| in several ways, including one you might call scientific:
| it has two less keystrokes! I can only assume Jef Raskin
| would heartily approve.
| oji0hub wrote:
| > Now a group of people has proposed a different
| convention that they like better,
|
| Umm, no, they were pressured into it. That also means the
| reason they're doing it is pressure, not liking it.
|
| > and it's gained traction.
|
| It didn't "gain" traction. It was forced on people by
| various means of pressure.
| phlakaton wrote:
| Let's look at your terms:
|
| "They": who do you mean by this? Do you mean every group
| of engineers who has made the change? Just GitHub? The
| Software Conservancy?
|
| "Not liking it": I suppose you have evidence that these
| changes were generally unsatisfactory to the people
| making them? And not, say, you projecting your own anger
| upon them?
|
| "Pressure": You seem by this to posit that conventions
| ought not to act by pressure at all, which is a really
| weird way to imagine how the world works. How could a
| convention, or a change in convention, _not_ generate
| pressure?
|
| "Forcing": You seem determined to strip engineers of
| their own agency, but this is silly. Only defaults have
| changed. Master branches still abound, and renaming
| within Git itself remains a relatively trivial matter.
|
| "Gain traction": You have not been paying attention if
| you think this terminology shift was a sudden change made
| all at once from the top down. I've been in debates about
| master/slave terminology in CS (and specifically Git)
| going back to Ferguson, maybe even longer.
|
| I get that you like your old branch name and you don't
| want the hassle of changing it, but all this talk of
| "pressure" and "forcing" by nameless adversaries is quite
| unnecessary to get that point across.
| JPKab wrote:
| "Blessed" was the new convention the evangelical tyrants
| at my church "proposed" to use instead of "lucky".
|
| They were totally cool about it, and I was left to my own
| free will to choose which word to use..... oh wait, no,
| they were aggressive and coercive, because that's what
| moralistic narcissists do. Shamers are gonna shame.
|
| It's funny how few people who are actually substantive
| contributors are vocal about this. It's all these
| peripheral people with minimal accomplishments, just like
| at my church. The bus driver was the biggest moralistic
| enforcer I've ever seen.
| nicky0 wrote:
| This post actually helped me process something that
| happened 20 years ago. I said to a fellow student at uni
| "good luck". He snapped back severely "I don't believe in
| in luck, I believe in God!" and I just stood slack jawed
| unsure what I had said to offend. Bizarre.
| JPKab wrote:
| Yes, these people make their entire religion their
| identity, and react accordingly.
|
| The recent batch of radical identitarians on the left
| make their ideology into a religion, make that religion
| into their identity, and react accordingly.
|
| They are slightly different approaches that reach the
| same end: Intolerant, miserable human beings who can't
| help but contaminate every social interaction with
| intolerance.
| pmlnr wrote:
| lol.
|
| https://wptavern.com/proposal-to-rename-the-master-branch-
| fr...
|
| `main` is just as bad as `master` but for a part of the world
| which is not domestic US.
|
| Plus... you do know there's this thing called "Masters"
| degree, right?
| dijit wrote:
| Relevant section:
|
| > As harmless as the word "main" seems in most Western
| cultures, a comment posted by Mike Schroder (original
| Japanese text by Takayuki Miyoshi and translation by
| Shinichi Nishikawa) pointed out that it was problematic in
| Japanese culture. "In Japan, for example, to put 'main' and
| 'others' as different groups has been utilized as an excuse
| to justify discrimination," said Miyoshi. "Not caring about
| suppressing the Ainu people and their culture at all is
| possible because of the assumption that Yamato folk is the
| main and others are secondary. I now came to a point to
| think we should consider that to set one thing as 'main'
| creates marginals that get oppressed."
|
| I didnt know that, though it does not sound as bad?
|
| maybe thats my own cultural bias speaking?
| honkdaddy wrote:
| >They are microaggressions which the average user doesn't
| even realize exist- but which do harms to some individuals in
| our society.
|
| Just so I'm understanding this point of view correctly, every
| time I or any other dev types git checkout master, a micro-
| aggression is taking place and someone somewhere is
| indirectly suffering?
|
| I just can't take that line of thinking seriously, I'm sorry.
| merouan wrote:
| Not the parent, but your characterization of the stated
| perspective reveals quite well that you aren't taking it
| seriously! This is a complex issue, so let's treat it that
| way.
|
| The micro-aggression, as I understand it, is having to ask
| yourself whether the term 'master' _did_ originate from
| slavery (in the context of git, IIRC it didn't, but master-
| slave replication is the stronger example). The context and
| plan fact is that programming, as a broad culture, to date,
| _has_ been excluding Black people and others. So it is not
| hard to imagine some folks desiring to make a symbolic
| change to make the culture more inclusive.
| spoiler wrote:
| I understand your intentions are noble, but we kinda go
| back to one of the points the author of the post was
| making: Has anybody bothered to asked black developers if
| the terminology alienates them, or makes them feel
| uncomfortable?
|
| I don't believe it was the technical terminology that
| caused unwelcoming conditions, but the people in the
| industry.
| merouan wrote:
| Black people (or developers, for that matter) are not a
| monolith, obviously. So me providing one example
| (https://dev.to/afrodevgirl/replacing-master-with-main-
| in-git...) only goes to show that it is a concern among
| some in the community.
|
| And, of course technical terminology _alone_ is not the
| issue! Totally agree that there is more to be done. I
| just find it amusing that there is so much pushback on
| this particular aspect (the naming of the branch).
| Clearly it is a concern, and it is on the whole a small
| thing to change. Larger systemic change is of course more
| ideal, but sometimes the battle starts at the symbolic
| level and expands from there.
| spoiler wrote:
| So before I answer, I'm aware that there's a bit of
| "cognitive dissonance" going on in my head about this
| topic. One one hand I fully agree with you, but on the
| other it feels like it's deflecting/trivialising the
| issue and creates a false sense of accomplishment that
| will delay the necessary change.
|
| > I just find it amusing that there is so much pushback
| on this particular aspect
|
| I think push back comes not from attachment to "master"
| but from the emotions the virtue-signalling crowd causes
| in people who desire real change. The virtue-signallers
| are like the kid on a school project who did virtually
| nothing, and then tried to claimed all the credit once
| the project was done. It's a bit "hashtag-contribution,"
| but ironically. It awakes a sense of righteousness in
| people (whether it's misguided or not is another topic)
| that think this is stupid, useless, and some probably
| think it's harmful because it pacifies a large group of
| people with thinking change happened, when it didn't.
| It's a bit like seeing a broken website, then changing
| the button colour and calling the website fixed and being
| done with it.
|
| However, it's like you said, people aren't monoliths.
| Various people have trigger words. Some people get
| triggered by "moist," someone in another comment
| mentioned Jews have the right to be offended by the word
| "concentration" or the word "camp" (yes, even if it's out
| of context; master in the case of git is also very out of
| context to slavery).
|
| I don't think changing the world for the sake of
| individuals is possible/scalable, but what we _should_ do
| is try and accommodate them. I 'm all for making people
| included and accommodating them, to a degree in which it
| doesn't make me feel uncomfortable in; I want to be given
| the same courtesy.
|
| It feels like Alex from the blog post waited for the
| world to change, instead of being the change he wants to
| see. Waiting for the world to change is futile, you can
| only influence your environment to a degree, and if that
| doesn't work look for a better one that suits you better.
| I don't know if Alex did that or not, but it reads as if
| he was passive until now. I guess better late than never.
|
| > Larger systemic change is of course more ideal, but
| sometimes the battle starts at the symbolic level and
| expands from there.
|
| I fully agree with you on this, which is where my
| cognitive dissonance kicks in. I guess part of the reason
| is that, even though I agree symbolic changes are good, I
| don't feel that this was even symbolic enough. A better
| symbolic change in my mind would be for Github to
| announce a paid apprenticeship program for people without
| a STEM/CS background, and try to also somehow cover more
| black communities. I don't know how this would be
| executed[1], or if it even can be executed, so maybe it's
| not a well thought-out idea.
|
| [1]: Maybe engage/market more proactively at
| schools/communities where the majority of the
| students/people are black?
|
| _Edit_ : This comment describes the issue more
| eloquently and succinctly than I could!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26492686
| istjohn wrote:
| Imagine that your great-great grandparents were enslaved.
| Your grandparents weren't allowed to go to white schools.
| Your dad was harrassed by the cops as a young man in the
| deep south. You worry that your colleagues may think you
| wouldn't have been seriously considered for this job if you
| weren't an underrepresented minority.
|
| During onboarding you learn "git checkout master". You type
| those words everyday for six months, never thinking twice.
| Your confidence has grown over those months and you begin
| to feel like you belong here. But there's one coworker,
| Brad, who just doesn't seem to like you. Or maybe that's
| just his personality. But Brad just never seems to have
| anything nice to say. His code reviews are abrasive, though
| they don't rise to the level of bullying. Maybe that's just
| how he is.
|
| This morning Brad picked apart a commit you were
| particularly proud of. Code you thought was rather clever,
| he tore into as overcomplicated and premature optimization.
| Okay, fine maybe he was right, but he didn't have to be
| rude about it. You feel like maybe Brad just doesn't like
| you. What did you ever do to him? Is it because you're
| black? No, you don't have any real evidence for that.
| "But...maybe?" a small voice whispers in the back of your
| mind. Unfortunately you can't look to how other black
| developers are treated by Brad. There aren't any.
|
| You get some fresh air to clear your mind before sitting at
| your desk to make those changes Brad suggested. "git
| checkout master". Typing those words, you notice for the
| first time that "master" is a word with other connotations.
| Really, they had to choose that word? I mean, it would be a
| silly thing to complain about aloud.
|
| Nevertheless, for months, every time you type that word
| part of you thinks "Really?" It doesn't upset you, exactly,
| but it reinforces a sense that this workplace is--hostile
| is too strong of a word--but not welcoming to black people.
| Maliciously indifferent. The kind of indifference that sees
| an enormous racial disparity and shrugs.
|
| It's called a _micro_ -aggression for a reason. It's a
| small thing. But small things add up. And it's an easy fix,
| so why not?
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Hypothetical offenses do not add up, because they are
| insubstantial. That is why not.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Imagine that your great-great grandparents were
| enslaved. Your grandparents weren't allowed to go to
| white schools. Your dad was harrassed by the cops as a
| young man in the deep south. You worry that your
| colleagues may think you wouldn't have been seriously
| considered for this job if you weren't an
| underrepresented minority.
|
| My country was destroyed by Nazis, milions of my country
| citizens died cuz of it and it was less than century ago.
|
| I'm working fine with german companies / people just fine
| as I'd work with other country based companies, no bias.
|
| Time to move on.
| blackoil wrote:
| Will you be equally fine, if the company talks about
| building 'Economic Reich'. Or if people on probation are
| sent to 'concentration camp' for a week long training.
| tester756 wrote:
| You mean if they used "concentration camp"? then I'd
| laugh off my ass just like I did now because of how
| ridiculous it sounds
|
| I guess other people could be pissed off, but I think
| "concentration camp" is nowhere even close to "master"
|
| maybe "camp"/"bootcamp" is close to "master", but then I
| don't think people would be annoyed over it.
|
| "We're sending people to a week long bootcamp", just
| pretty normal and neutral statement.
|
| equivalent of "concentration camp" would be "we'd want
| you to work as our slave" in job description sent to
| black person.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >Imagine that your great-great grandparents were
| enslaved.
|
| I am going to go out on a limb and say 99% of people have
| had their ancestors enslaved. Is having an ancestor
| enslaved 150 years ago different than somebody who had
| their ancestors enslaved 200 or 300 years ago? If you,
| your parents, quite possibly even your grand parents
| never even met the slave in your family then it is
| irrelevant.
| kaitai wrote:
| I think your stats are quite suspect (in fact, made up,
| as you pretty much mention) and no, it's not at all
| irrelevant. I know my family history back to the 1600s;
| these folks were poor as dirt and indebted at times but
| they were not enslaved. (Some were part of this European
| 'crofting' system but that is not the same as slavery.)
|
| More importantly, I can ask around in my family and find
| out family health history, how long people lived; I know
| where they came from and can find relatives. My African-
| American friends cannot all do the same. For some, their
| known family history only goes back to the last slave
| sale. They don't know where their ancestors came from in
| Africa. They have limited knowledge of family health
| history, compared to what I know. I know the language my
| great-great-great grandparents spoke; they don't. I can
| do research on historical foods from my area; they can't.
| With the advent of modern genetics, some can figure out
| some of that (look, maybe I'm Igbo, let me go to
| Wikipedia and look that up....) but it's quite different
| than being able to ask your aunt to set you up on a tour
| of where your ancestors lived in the 1700s and her being
| able to just look on her desk for those files.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Many white people were literal slaves around the same
| time (in the 1800s and before). Look into the Barbary
| slave trade. Over 1 million white people were held as
| slaves in Africa. Even some Americans were held as slaves
| in the Barbary Coast.
| aksss wrote:
| "Sufferings in Africa" is a fascinating memoir of some
| white sailors shipwrecked and enslaved in Africa. The
| book inspired many white leaders in the US to empathize
| with the abolition movement.
| istjohn wrote:
| My ancestors may have been slaves 1,000 years ago. Even
| serfdom in Europe began to fizzle out 500 years ago. My
| ancestors were never enslaved in the US, under the US
| Constitution, under a US Congress, US President, and US
| judicial system. If your grandfather can tell you stories
| about his grandfather who was once enslaved, I think that
| matters. I think our understanding of where we come from
| matters.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Many white people were literal slaves around the same
| time (in the 1800s and before). Look into the Barbary
| slave trade. Over 1 million white people were held as
| slaves in Africa. Even some Americans were held as slaves
| in the Barbary Coast.
|
| I guess I don't think where our ancestors came from is
| very important. I only know where my ancestors lived
| about 200 years ago and it is just general areas not any
| specifics. I don't know anything more than that. This is
| quite possibly about the same amount of years as many
| blacks whose ancestors came over during the slave trade.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The last African American former slave died in 1972. This
| isn't ancient history for some people. Given that, I
| think yes, it is very different if someone deep in your
| family tree was enslaved versus your parents or
| grandparents.
|
| I mean, the mere fact that you can trace your lineage
| back that far is indicative of the difference. Many
| people find their identity through their culture, and
| often times that perspective is gained by tracing their
| origins back generations. The foods you eat, the customs
| you share with your family, even your name.
|
| Some people can trace their lineage back through dozens
| of generations. Other people can't see past a few levels
| up the family tree because their history was destroyed by
| a more recent slaver society. For some people, the
| traditions in their family are the traditions of their
| enslaved ancestors. The songs they sing were sung on the
| fields their ancestors were forced to work. The names in
| their family are the names forced upon them by their
| oppressors. Their family cook book contains recipes their
| enslaved ancestors used to make the scraps they were
| thrown palatable. Theirs is not an organic culture, but
| one that formed out of necessity due to the conditions
| forced on them by slavers (relatively) recently. So yes,
| I think it does matter that even if a person has never
| met a slave themselves, they can still feel the
| reverberations of slavery quite strongly.
| wreath wrote:
| Micro aggression is not about the size of the action,
| it's about the scale (on how many people it is applied).
|
| I'm not black, but i worked with Brad before. Years
| later, I realize Brad was largely right, although a bit
| of a dickhead with an attitude, but I learned not to be
| emotionally attached to my code and not think everyone
| has a beef with me.
|
| We are teaching people how to be a bunch of cry babies
| with all this microaggression nonsense and safe spaces.
| People need to have a thicker skin, not everyone who
| disagrees with you or doesn't treat you right has
| something against you, they sure as hell have reasons for
| it, not an excuse, but reasons.
|
| Checkout Ego Is The Enemy, a light/easy read book, but it
| introduces you to what I'm saying a little deeper.
| istjohn wrote:
| Of course, everyone has minor workplace tension and
| conflict at times, and working through those things is
| just part of the job. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't
| do what we can to make people feel welcome and at ease.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The concern is that, by promoting the mindset that these
| terminological disputes are real aggressions, we're
| making people feel _less_ welcome even as we take more
| concrete action. We 're building a culture that
| encourages people to assume they're unwelcome until
| proven otherwise, never trust or take at face value their
| coworkers' stated commitments to inclusivity, always
| assume the worst rather than give the benefit of the
| doubt.
| mscuwa wrote:
| Yeah, sure. So when I argue with Brad and he doesn't like
| my commit, it's because I'm ... no, not black, no, not
| gay, not even a woman, even if my ancestors were enslaved
| (quite possibly) I don't know it for sure. Hell, why
| can't I find an easy explanation? Have to live with the
| white guy privilege. Of course I will never assume I'm a
| jerk (or maybe he is), or simply the code is not so
| great. So every time he tells me to type git
| (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/git) I feel his
| aggression. Maybe it's time to grow up?
| spoiler wrote:
| I think they mean that if a black person types in `git
| checkout master` they are inflicting microaggression
| against themselves... I personally think this is mental
| gymnastics on par with homeopathy[1].
|
| On the other hand, I guess the "habit" thing might hold
| _some_ credibility, but it's not probably not going to be
| as effective as they think. They say it roughly takes 40
| days to make a habit, so in the most optimistically woke
| scenario, this person will be hyper aware about the branch
| name for about 40 days, after that they'll stop noticing
| it[2].
|
| [1]: I can also never tell if these people are trolling or
| genuine.
|
| [2]: I'm not really an expert on habits, so maybe my
| analysis makes no sense.
| cheez0r wrote:
| We are eliminating gender from our colloquial terms for the
| same reason. Serviceperson instead of serviceman; mail
| carrier instead of mailman, police officer instead of
| policeman. This is the same thing- just eliminating a term
| which injuries a different minority along a different
| identity axis.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure I can disagree with you more.
|
| > Removing harms from how organizations execute their
| business operations is part of inclusivity. It's not cargo
| culting, it's not engaging in a self-pleasuring but pointless
| behavior, it's not a meaningless act that carries no value-
| it's ensuring that our organization does as little harm to
| folks as possible as we move forward doing business in the
| world.
|
| Serious question - What harm are you removing here?
|
| Let me ask again - Who is being harmed, how is this helping
| them?
|
| Because to me... I see a giant company (MSFT) using political
| theatre as advertising.
|
| Worse, as a developer in one of the areas that's actually
| fairly racially diverse (South Atlanta) I sure as fuck don't
| see any of my black co-workers doing anything other than roll
| their eyes at this.
|
| This was a change engineered by white people, to appeal to
| white people's current sense of morality, so that a large
| company can continue its practices of fucking minority and
| non-white folks over, and yet here you are congratulating
| them on wasting billions of dollars on it.
| drngxn wrote:
| > What's powerful about this name change is that it pushes us
| to alter a habit, in my case one embedded deeply in my fingers,
| something that I do every day without realizing that I'm doing
| it
|
| This is the entire point, this sentence right here.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Because every time I have to stop to write main instead of
| master, I become less racist?
| aksss wrote:
| The sentence right there is what a lot of people find inane
| and absurd, though, too. It's often less a case of people not
| "getting" what the nominal intention is; it's that people _do
| get_ the nominal intention and think it's an idiotic waste of
| time that's being done to satisfy a pretty ignorant and
| narrow-minded view of language and history. It also has no
| limiting principle to what gets targeted except the energy of
| ninnies. It's worth considering now where your line of
| tolerance is going to be - the point where you think, "okay,
| this has become too ridiculous, even for me". Is it when I
| suggest removing "chain" from blockchain because it evokes
| slavery? Point being that many people see this issue with
| GitHub as having crossed the line of absurdity already.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Folks, we have the unsung hero of the thread right here.
| Remove the chain from blockchain!
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| But you could do _that_ by changing any word. Renaming
| 'rebase' would be equally effective.
|
| So if that's the point, then it shows that we shouldn't be
| doing this.
| wtetzner wrote:
| But why is it important to change that habit, if it has no
| beneficial impact?
| blub wrote:
| I've seen many replies, but not this one, so I'll chime in.
|
| I am not concerned about diversity in tech and this was never
| on my mind until it started getting shoved down everyone's
| throat by American companies and activists. Many European
| countries blindingly copy whatever comes out of the USA, so now
| it's here too.
|
| For me it's just one more annoying thing I feel that some
| privileged brats that I never met and don't care to meet are
| forcing others to spend time on.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| 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.
| ipsocannibal wrote:
| Microsoft can't stop publishing shit code full of security
| holes that get hacked every other day. If you want your
| software project to go south in a hurry take a dependency on
| any Microsoft product. This should be reason enough to ditch
| M$.
| krferriter wrote:
| Almost none of what you just said is true.
|
| > - 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
|
| Neither git nor GitHub is forcing the branch names to change.
| git added the ability to specify a default branch instead of
| hardcoding it to 'master'. Github is taking this into
| consideration by allowing the users to specify their own
| default branch as well, and updating documentation and
| command examples to use 'main' as the default branch name.
|
| > - Branch names, and many other similar things, are now a
| battleground for freedom of expression, exposed to dangerous
| storms of political correctness
|
| No freedom of expression concerns here. You actually have
| more freedom now as git, GitHub, GitLab now make it easier to
| choose your own default/primary branch instead of hardcoding
| it to initialize to 'master'.
|
| > - GitHub has the arrogance of trying to control how people
| call their branches, and ultimately people's political
| ideology through the manipulation of language
|
| GitHub is not controlling anything. You, like always, can
| name your default branch 'master' if you want.
| ipsocannibal wrote:
| What habit is being changed? Aren't the default names defined
| by the git software? If so just change the software and push,
| but what habit was changed? Doesn't change current repos but
| why exactly is that the problem? If you are trying to set a
| precedent, i.e. stop the bleeding, then a git update would work
| just fine. Is it assuming that 'master' should be the default?
| The name 'master' doesn't have any special significance to the
| software interacting with it as the branch name is just an
| identifier. The term 'master' in the Comp. Sci. sense is jargon
| meaning basically 'the source of truth' not 'one that controls
| the wills of others'. The only habit I see being altered is to
| be readily conditioned to accept without question the dictates
| of political interest groups and large corporations as to what
| terminology is acceptable. Who defined these groups as the
| rightful arbitrators of this jargon?
|
| "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."
|
| In order words, the next time you have the urge to think
| critically about what you are allowed to type and who is
| forcing that decision upon you take a deep breath, shallow your
| skepticism, and reflect upon whether you have been
| indoctrinated enough into the new political Zeitgeist.
| newacct583 wrote:
| That's exactly how I see it too. These performative bits of
| nonsense are how we as a society build consensus, in this case
| something like "racial injustice is real, it matters, and it
| needs to be addressed with action".
|
| And by all getting together and renaming our white/blacklists
| and master branches and slave devices, we're all agreeing that
| this is important.
|
| And.... yeah, it's also a way to find the people who aren't
| willing to mildly inconvenience themselves in this pursuit.
| Yes, cranky posters like the OP are _ALSO_ signaling with their
| refusal to go along. What they 're telling the rest of us is
| that this racism stuff isn't something they want to care about.
|
| And that's why we do this stuff.
| aksss wrote:
| So it's a purity test? Many people are just wired to reject
| this conformist line of thinking from the very starting
| point. You're saying, let's all do this pointless activity so
| we can see who has an attitude problem. It reminds me so much
| of how children are treated in schools or churches, and I
| really chafe at it. I couldn't care less about your nominal
| cause or sense of self-righteousness, it's the attitude and
| behavior of you imagining your fellow citizens are children
| that strikes me as offensive and drives resistance. I don't
| doubt your good intentions but this way of thinking about
| solutions (your tools) is rather poisonous and places the
| banner under which you use them in pretty bad company.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > So it's a purity test?
|
| Deliberately? No, of course not. But it's a good way to
| tell where people stand, nonetheless. And I can tell right
| now that you personally feel much more strongly about
| opposing woke excesses than you do about opposing genuine
| racial injustice. So the performative nonsense has done its
| job.
| aksss wrote:
| What do you mean "Deliberately, no"? It is intentionally
| so, just as you had no trouble describing and then
| eagerly applying with exactly the kind of wrong-headed
| witch-hunting logic these exercises _predictably_
| inspire. Make no mistake - the problem and criticism here
| isn 't with a cause that's bigger than you and noble.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Your conclusion is not sound.
|
| To you, it is a "genuine racial injustice".
|
| To others, it is simply nothing of the sort.
|
| Said another way, I also feel much more strongly about
| opposing woke excesses than I do about opposing genuine
| racial injustice--expressly since I very much support
| opposing racial injustices and do not find the
| master/main debate as a genuine racial injustice.
| eplanit wrote:
| I appreciate learning your perspective. Frankly, though, the
| argument you make for accepting and embracing such things to me
| reinforces the notion that the BLM movement feels like forced
| cultural revolution. Though you are not coming across with any
| such tone, the idea seems like "shut up, and take your
| medicine".
| jnwatson wrote:
| I was on the fence before I read this comment. I don't mind
| changing insignificant things if it makes people feel better.
|
| Now I'm firmly in the camp that this wasn't worth it. Even
| having this remotely associated with the real important
| change that BLM is pushing for really dilutes the message.
| We're talking about a name and not the real injustices that
| some people face everyday.
| dagmx wrote:
| All cultural revolution is forced for those who do not
| benefit directly from it.
|
| Nothing worth fighting for comes easy. Women's rights, racial
| rights, gay rights... It all had to be forced to happen,
| because it's much easier to maintain an unfair status quo
| than it is to convince millions of people that perhaps their
| world view is wrong and holding others back.
| DC1350 wrote:
| > Nothing worth fighting for comes easy.
|
| Thank you for your service.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > All cultural revolution is forced for those who do not
| benefit directly from it.
|
| How would you say the American Civil War fits into this
| picture? Most of the people fighting (and dying to fight)
| slavery were not slaves. Or when the British made slavery
| illegal in their Empire? Why choose that, in your model?
| mariksolo wrote:
| Fighting for people's rights does not put an unnecessary
| burden on other people. Rosa Parks wanted to allow black
| people to ride anywhere on the bus, not make white people
| stand up and give them their places instead.
| dagmx wrote:
| I think we're in agreement? I'm saying that regardless,
| fights for equity are still a fight and therefore forced.
|
| I'd also argue they do put a burden on people, though not
| an unnecessary one, to reevaluate their thinking and
| world view. Rosa Parks didn't force a white person to
| give up their seat for her. But she, and others, did
| force white people to rethink what they took for granted
| as the status quo.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| For the people who were always able to sit in the front
| of the bus, having black people sitting there was a new
| burden, and meant they had to stand more often.
| mariksolo wrote:
| Certainly, but it was a burden in that it took away an
| unnecessary privilege. The point of the boycotts was
| ultimately not to put an extra burden on others to remind
| them of their privilege.
|
| The point of the original comment was that renaming
| master to main served as a reminder for people. But
| movements in the past that you were referencing never
| served a goal of solely putting burdens on other people.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| This is a matter of perspective. Creating awareness is
| usually the first step to changing things. Your take here
| only really works of you believe that burdening people
| with awareness is the end goal.
|
| To use the standing example, it's like saying that
| Parks's goal was just to get arrested to burden people
| with the knowledge of inequality.
|
| If you accept that racial privilege exists, and that it's
| causes are correctable, even in part, then raising
| awareness of those helps. This is doubly true if you
| think that stone of the causes are social cognitive
| biases, where awareness and mindfulness directly address
| the causes.
| cherrycherry98 wrote:
| The difference between the current social justice movements
| and the previous civil rights movements is that they're
| more about changing culture than policy. Voting rights,
| marriage rights, desegregation, abortion rights, these are
| things with concrete laws that could be changed.
|
| If anything, the protests should have been about police
| reform. Change qualified immunity, change police training
| to avoid inadvertent deaths. That's something that a lot of
| people could support because more than just Black people
| get harassed by cops.
|
| Instead, everything from master bedrooms, to math, to
| western civilization itself has been called "white
| supremacist", "racist", and "problematic". It's diluted the
| ability for these movements to make real substantive
| progress and is creating growing animosity towards
| themselves.
| nicky0 wrote:
| I agree. Changing 'master' to 'main' is going to help a lot
| of people.
| blackearl wrote:
| But changing this word was easy and doesn't really benefit
| anyone. A corporation gets to pat themselves on the back
| and US police continue to brutalize people just the same.
| Nothing really changed
| dagmx wrote:
| But that's irrelevant to what the person I was replying
| to said. They made a statement indicting BLM not githubs
| actions.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| My reaction was to instantly think that I'm on one side trying
| to get things done and SJWs are on another side slowing me
| down.
|
| I don't care if it's a new JS library breaking dependencies to
| support import instead of require or if it's idiots changing
| names of things. These people are my enemy.
|
| If I already have zero tolerance for whatever virtue signalling
| crap is popular in the mostly white and affluent San Francisco,
| is because of behaviours like this one.
|
| On the bright side, this can help more people to discover there
| is a world outside of the liberal bubble, hopefully
| contributing to a more balanced society.
|
| (black ancestors, libertarian background)
| stronglikedan wrote:
| 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.
| sennight wrote:
| ...and nobody in the valley seems to be aware of the etymology
| for "slave" :)
| benrbray wrote:
| For the lazy, here [1,2] are some wiktionary links. Assuming
| these are correct, wow, this makes the whole main vs master
| thing seem even more silly.
|
| > SLAVE: From Middle English, from Old French sclave, from
| Medieval Latin sclavus ("slave"), from Late Latin Sclavus
| ("Slav"), because Slavs were often forced into slavery in the
| Middle Ages.[1][2][3][4][5] The Latin word is from Byzantine
| Greek Sklabos (Sklabos), see that entry and Slav for more.
|
| > ROBOT: Borrowed from Czech robot, from robota ("drudgery,
| servitude"). Coined in the 1921 science-fiction play R.U.R.
| (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Capek after having been
| suggested to him by his brother Josef, and taken into English
| without change.
|
| [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slave#Etymology [2]:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robot#Etymology
| sennight wrote:
| Well that ruins the fun of the surprise a little... but I
| guess people can still look forward to real plot twist: who
| the "masters" were. Hint: it wasn't the Moops!
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Because it doesn't matter. Slavery isn't an just an old
| concept.
| sennight wrote:
| What, so now words don't matter? Funny how that works, if
| only somebody pointed this out in the very beginning...
| 3saryHg6LP2e wrote:
| Or "robot"/"bot".
| sennight wrote:
| Well I think heavy industry will do better weathering the
| wave of tech articles helpfully suggesting laughable
| solutions to non-problems. They don't share the same weakness
| to slacktivist pull-requests.
| qaq wrote:
| Here's github leadership https://github.com/about/leadership
| thats all you need to know about how deeply they care
| arunc wrote:
| 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 industry is marginal (in the US, not
| sure elsewhere). I don't know what we can do about this. But we
| have to change as a society and as individuals.
| bluecalm wrote:
| 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.
| stewx wrote:
| > I'm not pissed off because I expected tech companies to do
| more, no, I didn't expect them to do anything. I'm pissed off
| because they pretended to be doing good and wanted me to
| congratulate them for it.
| airhead969 wrote:
| It's virtue-signaling nonsense like planting a tree, declaring
| climate change "mission accomplished" and calling it a day.
|
| If software engineers actually cared about diversity, they'd work
| with community leaders on the rough side of town to mentor kids
| who otherwise don't get all the chances they did. I seriously
| doubt many would do that. I hate to say it, but a lot of office
| tech people don't have a lot of life experience. And maybe as a
| consequence, they tend to act like stereotypical self-absorbed
| yuppies who don't engage with the world or donate emotional
| labor. It's easier to outlaw certain words because of incidental
| associations rather than help real people.
| vesinisa wrote:
| I know the topic is explosive, but I see a pattern here that is
| being repeated over and over again: people thinking they know for
| better what is good for some minority, and then making a big fuss
| about it. At no point does anyone think to ask people in the said
| minority if they think this is actually a good idea and what they
| want.
|
| Another similar(?) example. In my country, there is a growing
| immigrant Muslim minority. Recently, there was an extremely rare
| case of the anti-immigration right wing party and the liberal
| green party rallying behind a unified cause: criminalizing male
| circumcision. The anti-immigration folk will of course get on any
| bandwagon that marginalizes the immigrant minorities.
|
| But I also talked to some of the liberals who supported the
| initiative. They support it because they view circumcision as
| torture, mutilation and a violation of the child's rights. One
| even described circumcised males are "handicapped". I got the
| impression that many of these supposedly "liberal" people have
| never actually discussed circumcision with a person who is
| circumcised. Nevertheless, they seem eager to ban the entire
| practice and further marginalize an entire section of the
| population.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > At no point does anyone think to ask people in the said
| minority if they think this is actually a good idea and what
| they want.
|
| This literally happened.
| himujjal wrote:
| My problem is that this is an American company trying to impose
| their culture to us. There are a lot of developers from China and
| India whom Github didn't even consider asking.
|
| Question is why should "we" who face far worse challenges than
| the Blacks in US be asked to change the name. That is what
| doesn't make sense to me.
|
| The idea imposition happens just because we are a poor country
| and nothing else. I am sure 20 years down the line, if I don't
| follow an American culture I will be a villain.
| dagmx wrote:
| Why is the change of the name of the default branch such a
| hardship for you?
|
| Also how do you quantify far worse challenges? Are you treated
| worse relative to your other country people?
| [deleted]
| Mashimo wrote:
| What is the problem for you about the name change?
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Does master not also designate a person that has achieved mastery
| in a given craft or art, like a "Kung Fu master"? Within git I
| think the term is used in the meaning of a "master copy" in the
| sense of a reference. I also think this change is pointless, and
| it will break so so many things.
| yoavm wrote:
| It does not origin from "master copy" or "Kung Fu master".
|
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/474419/does-the-...
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Thanks, that's a comprehensive answer.
| vmception wrote:
| 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,
| watching people be vicariously offended without asking if context
| in question is offensive, and the obsession with signaling
| instead of meaningful action.
| guscost wrote:
| What do you think about the claim that LBJ's great society
| effectively incentivized breaking up black families, with
| tragic consequences?
|
| Seems another good reason to "walk away from the left" if even
| their apparently sincere projects keep backfiring like that.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I think the War on Drugs was far more responsible for that
| than LBJ.
| dleslie wrote:
| 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 like you and their corrupt
| representatives!
|
| We have this where I live, but thankfully we also enjoy a fair
| amount of mobility; it's less common to be entirely surrounded
| by those who vote the same as you, and most ridings have
| flipped between two or three parties over the coarse of most
| constituent's lifetimes. While the ethnic diversity of the
| ridings has generally increased over the same time.
|
| Americans could use more political diversity; you're choosing
| between neocons and neoliberals, and fighting visciously
| against each other to do so.
| vbtemp wrote:
| A good distillation of what you're saying is here:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
| anythin...
| remarkEon wrote:
| 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.
| aiilns wrote:
| Lol I'm not American and people have already pointed out
| problems with your reasoning as regarding to the American
| "left". No one has pointed the most obvious flaw though: what's
| the alternative? So you walked away from the "left" and went
| where?
|
| Does the "right" even care about racism?
|
| Granted I don't know much about American politics; in Europe
| though, I don't really see right wing parties having an issue
| with racism, or sexism or even poverty.
|
| Maybe Trump & the Republicans really see black people, women,
| minorities as equals. Oh wait...
| vmception wrote:
| Its actually not a statement about what I personally do, it
| gives context to why black Americans and other minorities
| would and have, at the surprising surprise to seemingly
| everyone.
|
| The "right" simply does other things and a core part of that
| is rejecting virtue signaling _even if that results in apathy
| that perpetuates adversity._
|
| People are willing to choose the right, in absence of other
| choices, partially because it more honestly matches the last
| 250 years of apathy by all administrations. Where its clear
| there is a kind of vapid reckoning occurring in the left that
| simply assumes their minority constituents are all struggling
| victims that cant possibly be interested in any nuanced
| platform. And there's just other things that Americans can be
| interested in like certain trade deals or certain people
| confirmed into government positions or something completely
| irrelevant. Your own snarky comment really suggests only some
| people have the privilege of playing the game of America.
| Within America, people on the left have trouble believing
| minorities could have any interest in that, as in the
| Democratic Party doesn't factor it in at all, while their
| ranks are filled with posers who are willing to weaponize
| their understanding of race at a moment's notice, no
| different than a self-proclaimed supremacist.
| calibas wrote:
| >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
|
| To switch things around for perspective:
|
| "There's nothing wrong with being white and you should be proud
| of your race."
|
| Yep, if a black person told me this it would be patronizing,
| and if a white person told me this I'd assume they're racist.
| Swap white for black in my quote, and it's what the white
| community in the US is effectively telling the black community,
| if not in such obvious terms.
|
| It's precisely because of systematic racism that we white
| people get to share our "sage advice" on how to combat racism,
| while being almost totally ignorant on the subject. It's proof
| of privilege and hideously condescending.
| zeku wrote:
| 87% of voting African Americans voted for Biden
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...
| GordonS wrote:
| With Trump as the alternative, that was hardly surprising -
| Biden could have been just about _anyone_ and the result
| would likely have been the same.
| andyxor wrote:
| *with anti-Trump propaganda it's hardly surprising. He was
| slandered as 'racist' pretty much non-stop for the entire
| duration of his term.
| vmception wrote:
| > black Americans _and other people of color_
| ianai wrote:
| to be heard you do need to speak. Write your representatives in
| Congress your views on things they are or aren't doing. Write a
| blog or vlog.
|
| Oftentimes simply being talking in public gains otherwise
| obscure or even unhelpful views traction simply by being
| available.
| realfinec wrote:
| Lol, as another black guy, even before opening the thread I
| knew I'd find one of these grovelling comments from a house-
| type here.
|
| I, at least, completely support GitHub's actions.
|
| Btw, we're not "walking away from the Left", as is indicated in
| the recent election results. You might be confusing your own
| people for Hispanics.
| akvadrako wrote:
| _> Btw, we 're not "walking away from the Left", as is
| indicated in the recent election results. You might be
| confusing your own people for Hispanics._
|
| What do you mean? It looks like Trump got a higher percentage
| of black votes in 2020 than 2016. The change is larger than
| Hispanic votes even:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54972389
| flir wrote:
| My response here might be poor (difficult subject, not a
| great writer), but I'm genuinely interested in your opinion.
|
| "Microsoft stops selling software to American police
| departments" is a good response to BLM. "Microsoft changes
| 'master branch' to 'main branch'" is pointless deckchair-
| reshuffling that signifies nothing.
|
| By applauding the change of a noun that has the most
| tangential possible relationship with slavery, aren't you
| letting them off the hook of doing anything substantive?
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > grovelling comments from a house-type here
|
| ?!?
| [deleted]
| edbob wrote:
| I'm very familiar with this as I spent 10 years in prison.
| The term "Uncle Tom" is not used by black men in prison.
| They say "house n-word" (except not n-word of course). It's
| about the most offensive term possible.
|
| It basically means a "house slave" that was well-treated
| and is therefore sympathetic to or on the side of the white
| man. The anytonym is "field n-word", a slave that worked in
| the fields, which I probably heard more often as people
| sometimes identify as that term. E.g., if a guy is talking
| to his buddy who has a nice ("cadillac") job situation, he
| might say "I'm just a field n-word."
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I have heard/seen the phrase before, I was just very
| surprised to see it thrown out in this situation.
| vmception wrote:
| hi, for anyone looking for something to vicariously offended
| about, this is a racially insensitive comment to be offended
| by, colloquially (but not academically) called a "racist"
| comment.
|
| this person is referring to a dichotomy in the black American
| slave caste, where people that worked in the fields were
| considered different than people that worked inside the
| house. the adjectives being "house negro/n**r".
|
| It is used to invalidate the opinions of someone proclaimed
| as "black" that doesn't have consensus with a community that
| is pretending to be amorphous.
|
| There have _always_ been black Americans privileged enough to
| choose causes like any other American, while being lumped
| into the identity politics from all factions of the country.
| Even Martin Luther King 's letter from Birmingham Jail (1953)
| references this.
|
| I don't speak for anyone, and I am aware of black American
| people in my life that did bring up the "master/slave"
| terminology in computing as problematic and offputting and
| insensitive. The people in my life are of an older generation
| than me. The github issue, as this article points out, does
| not have a "slave" context only a master. To some that
| doesn't make a difference.
|
| I am speaking for myself and like I said I agree with what
| the person in London wrote.
| Silhouette wrote:
| Perhaps, in the spirit of sharing useful insight within these
| kinds of discussions, as a black American you could educate me
| about something?
|
| For context, I am neither black nor American, I have little
| time for woke virtue-signalling and fake outrage, but I do want
| to be properly respectful of others whose background and
| sensitivities aren't necessarily like my own. With that in
| mind, I often find socially acceptable terminology around race
| confusing.
|
| For example, take the word "color". I can understand why an
| umbrella term such as "colored people" could be problematic.
| However, if that is the case, I don't understand why "people of
| color" should be any more socially acceptable, nor why one of
| the most prominent advocacy groups still uses the former term
| in its name. There is so much unconstructive commentary about
| this particular example that it's hard to figure out what the
| relevant history and genuine sensitivities are here. Can you
| enlighten me?
| [deleted]
| edbob wrote:
| > I can understand why an umbrella term such as "colored
| people" could be problematic. However, if that is the case, I
| don't understand why "people of color" should be any more
| socially acceptable
|
| Scott Alexander explains this as a way for upper-class people
| to maintain their privileges: "The whole point is to make
| sure the working-class white guy whose best friends are black
| and who marries a black woman and has beautiful black
| children feels immeasurably inferior to the college-educated
| white guy who knows that saying "colored people" is
| horrendously offensive but saying "people of color" is the
| only way to dismantle white supremacy."[0]
|
| [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-
| for-...
| istjohn wrote:
| Scott Alexander is condemning woke culture in the essay you
| quote but the specific reason woke culture cycles through
| words is the euphemism treadmill.
| ModernMech wrote:
| You might consider this alternative perspective:
|
| "Indeed, what is acceptable for white people to call
| African Americans and for black people to call themselves
| has evolved over the last century. The standard term has
| shifted from "colored" to "Negro" to "black" to "African
| American" as people sought to redefine themselves and their
| place in America.
|
| Now, in 2020, "people of color" often is used to refer to
| the collective group of non-white Americans. It is
| offensive to single blacks out as "colored." That, in part,
| is because of the painful segregationist history associated
| with the term prior to the mid-1960s. "Colored-only"
| restrooms and water fountains are examples of harmful
| relics of the Jim Crow South that black people had to
| fight, and die, to remove from American culture."
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-
| da...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The question is why "people of color" isn't an equally
| harmful relic, which the article doesn't really seem to
| explain.
| edbob wrote:
| It also doesn't explain why "black" was preferred for a
| time, then it was verboten, and now it's preferred but
| you have to capitalize it. Nor does it explain why
| "African-American" was required for a time even though
| many Black people don't identify as African, and it's
| obviously completely inappropriate to apply to a Black
| person who has never left the UK, but that's what was
| required nonetheless.
|
| Scott Alexander's hypothesis explains all of that.
| Constant change is what makes fashion fashion, and
| fashion is a very effective way to discriminate between
| the in-group and the out-group.
| vmception wrote:
| Jesse Jackson took initiative in the absence of other
| civil rights leaders and chose a term, African American.
| It's really not that complicated. Just like people can
| acknowledge that BLM would be shitty branding and exists
| in the absence of other civil rights leaders, there is no
| committee and now its just about correcting people.
| edbob wrote:
| Do you have any thoughts on the cause of "the absence of
| other civil rights leaders"?
| Barracoon wrote:
| NPR looked into this 7 years ago.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070.
| ..
| vmception wrote:
| It's just symbolic, and still part of a consensus forming
| continuum based on advances in communication across large
| landmasses.
|
| Black people in America are from many different cultures and
| are simply people that noticed that they had a shared
| experience of being excluded from institutions and even
| entire states.
|
| The terminology simply comes from individuals taking
| initiative in the moment and saying "they treat everyone that
| looks like us all the same and we need umbrella terms to
| acknowledge our shared circumstance so that its easy to refer
| to ourselves". Other non-black people already had terms for
| us and these terms were typically also used in the
| pejorative. Many people consider "black" to be an affliction
| even today. So what you have is that some black people reject
| those older terms, some people try to repurpose and "take
| back" those older terms, some people create new terms, most
| terms are still in use.
|
| These aren't scientific terms, but they do permeate into
| academia to convey a shared concept. So there isn't much to
| read into it except learning what the consensus is, and the
| history of why it is. But trying to merge it into the lexicon
| based on pattern recognition with other words will only
| confuse you.
| Silhouette wrote:
| Thank you, that's an interesting reply. Again perhaps this
| is my own lack of informed perspective, but I had always
| imagined that grouping all "non-white" people together
| under a single term was part of the problem. It seems like
| an act that diminishes the distinct cultures all being
| lumped in together, as well as the obvious racism if the
| whole group was then treated as somehow inferior or less
| worthy. But from what you wrote, it seems like at least
| some people in the affected communities do find these kinds
| of umbrella terms useful, as a form of solidarity and
| recognition of shared problems? But then even within those
| communities not everyone agrees on _which_ terms are useful
| for positive reasons and which have too much negative
| baggage or pejorative history, and that 's how we get the
| apparent contradictions like "colored people" being
| socially unacceptable, but not in the context of the NAACP,
| and at the same time "people of color" being socially
| acceptable?
| pjc50 wrote:
| > the obvious racism if the whole group was then treated
| as somehow inferior or less worthy
|
| Well, yes, this is how the group forms in the first
| place. It's made up of people who don't have an identity
| in common other than the one that's forced upon them of
| "non-white" by the white people discriminating against
| them.
|
| Note that in countries which aren't white-majority you
| don't generally get a group of people holistically
| identifying as "people of colour", even if the same
| ethnicities would do so in the US. Instead you get
| different forms of racial discrimination.
|
| Similarly LGBT+ merges a group of people with very
| different identities and practices, the primary thing
| they have in common is _receiving the same kind of abuse
| from the same people_.
| vmception wrote:
| yeah mostly accurate, but a lot of people would not agree
| with me for saying so :)
|
| but lets look at your example source of cognitive
| dissonance, NAACP:
|
| The NAACP has done historically monumental things on
| behalf of a group of very different people that were
| being excluded as if they were the same. It comes from a
| different era and different motivated individuals taking
| initiative. It predates a different individual pushing
| "African American" much later on. That predates such
| rampant subsequent immigration and population growth in
| the US where enough people find African American to be so
| ambiguous to the point of ridiculous, while there are
| many slave descendants that take pride in the term and
| make it their whole identity (or have it forced on them
| like many black people in other English speaking
| countries with no American parents, this is particularly
| comical to me), whereas others who may also be slave
| descendants adopt black American or other adjectives and
| identifiers. With the NAACP there is no utility in
| changing that acronym and no need to or drive to, like a
| landmark. It wouldn't surprise me if they arbitrarily did
| change the name on their own, but there is no talk or
| consensus amongst its beneficiaries to do so (unlike
| other landmarks).
| Silhouette wrote:
| Thanks again. I learned something today. :-)
| istjohn wrote:
| This is an example of the "Euphemism Treadmill." Words that
| refer to things that some portion of society hold negative
| views about acquire negative connotations over time. These
| words are then discarded by polite society for clean new
| words without the baggage. E.g. latrine to water closet to
| toilet to bathroom to restroom, or retarded to mentally
| handicapped to developmentally disabled. See:
| https://aeon.co/essays/euphemisms-are-like-underwear-best-
| ch...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Meh, I just like 'main' because it's two letters shorter than
| 'master'. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| runarberg wrote:
| Usually I only type `ma<tab>` so in either case, for me it is
| just three keystrokes.
| jldugger wrote:
| The entire point of this is what the default branch should be
| called. You don't even have to type it 99 times out of 100.
| A12-B wrote:
| It's not that big of a deal really. Just a small name change
| vmception wrote:
| 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.
| knodi wrote:
| What are you walking away to, the reich right?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Perhaps because it's annoying to be affiliated with people
| who think any and all deviation from their political norms
| makes you "evil".
|
| Just a thought.
| [deleted]
| threatofrain wrote:
| What about the American right is attractive to black Americans?
| Which GOP policies really sold the story that black progress
| was in the air?
| vmception wrote:
| Its actually not a statement about what I personally do, it
| gives context to why black Americans and other people of
| color would and have, at the surprising surprise to seemingly
| everyone.
|
| The "right" simply does other things and a core part of that
| is rejecting virtue signaling _even if that results in apathy
| that perpetuates adversity._
|
| People are willing to choose the right, in absence of other
| choices, partially because it more honestly matches the last
| 250 years of apathy by all administrations. Where its clear
| there is a kind of vapid reckoning occurring in the left that
| simply assumes their minority constituents are all struggling
| victims that cant possibly be interested in any nuanced
| platform. And there's just other things that Americans can be
| interested in like certain trade deals or certain people
| confirmed into government positions or something completely
| irrelevant. Your comment really suggests only some people
| have the privilege of playing the game of America. Within
| America, people on the left have trouble believing minorities
| could have any interest in that, as in the Democratic Party
| doesn't factor it in at all, while their ranks are filled
| with posers who are willing to weaponize their understanding
| of race at a moment's notice, no different than a self-
| proclaimed supremacist.
| MrWiffles wrote:
| White guy here, just wanted to chime in and say HELL YES, you
| nailed it bro. There's more of an emphasis in "tech" toward
| _appearing_ "woke" than ACTUALLY SOLVING THE FUCKING PROBLEM.
| You nailed it with "you/they don't see us as equals [...]".
|
| The most important word in the term "African Americans", to me,
| is, "AMERICANS". You're in this with us. You're our friends,
| our neighbors, our brothers and sisters. We're in this
| TOGETHER. And this woke-ism bullshit is just that: bullshit.
|
| Changing a primary branch name from "master" to "main" isn't
| solving the damn problem. Execs want to do this to earn PR
| points and wash their hands of the issue of a lack of
| representation and equality in the industry as a result. It's
| cheaper than actually giving a shit. But the reality is that
| socioeconomic barriers to entry into high paying STEM roles
| amongst our African _AMERICAN_ friends /colleagues is a very
| real problem that needs to be addressed on both a cultural and
| economic level.
|
| Ya'll are every damn bit as capable as the rest of us and I'm
| fucking tired of seeing you thrown under the bus in this
| industry, especially under the guise of "woke"-ism. It's time
| we start tearing down these PR stunts as the falsehoods that
| they are and insist on real, monetary, quantifiable and
| results-driven investments in black communities that are damn
| well deserved.
|
| And to my colleagues in the industry that are non-black
| (especially white): it's time we stand up and "get their back"
| for our black friends, colleagues and family members. We're in
| this together, and it's well past time we stand up for our
| fellow Americans. This bullshit charade needs to stop and WE
| have the power to move things forward into an era of REAL
| representation and fairness, and as such we have a
| RESPONSIBILITY to do it. Enough talk - it's time to act.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen or
| a African English is absurd. You are your nationality.
|
| Unfortunately this export from America is starting to take
| root in Europe.
| eurocent wrote:
| The very concept of nation is quite euro-centric though.
| Most of the rest of the world definitely thinks in terms of
| ethnic and racial groups, and has done so for thousands of
| years.
| nicky0 wrote:
| It may be a European concept but the concept of a nation
| state is a good one. When it works, it unites everyone as
| one group. Humans have a psycholical need for a group
| identity. Better to unite diverse individuals behind a
| flag, than to form groups based on ethnicity.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| I am in the UK, which geographically is part of Europe.
| That not how we think _here_ and that is a good thing. I
| don 't want our politics to become racialised like it is
| everywhere else. All it seems to do is bring division and
| hatred and unfortunately it has imported from America.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Where do you live in the UK where you don't think our
| politics is radicalized? It's nit as bad as the US but
| Brexit is a thing ...
| KittenInABox wrote:
| The Troubles are within living memory in the UK and still
| have semi-regular terrorist attacks from it though, so I
| really am skeptical of this idea.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If people don't want politics to be racialised, they need
| to get better at shutting down the blatent racism of the
| press, police, and major political parties.
|
| Some of it is imported, but the UK is quite capable of
| its own characteristically British racism, most recently
| directed against Poles and Romanians.
| oaiey wrote:
| Wait a second. In Germany we had work related immigrants
| (dominantly Turkish) in the 60s. The descendants (2/3/4
| generation) of these immigrants are still classified as
| such (and share attributes about the black community in the
| US). I do not remember a proper title ... but that is just
| my brain right now.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen
| or a African English is absurd.
|
| Yes, but
|
| > You are your nationality.
|
| Only if you're a nationalist. Many believe in cross-
| national or non-national collective identities, e.g. the
| identity of being a wage worker.
|
| In other cases - it's groups oppressed by the state. The
| Catalan and Basque come to mind; and there are the Roma
| ("gypsies"), who are not territorially-defined.
|
| etc.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| > Only if you're a nationalist.
|
| Nope. That is how the _law_ and the _state_ sees it.
| einpoklum wrote:
| So, if I live in a monarchy, and the law and the state
| see my identity as a loyal subject of our glorious king,
| then that's what I should believe?
| Wintamute wrote:
| It's not an American import, or absurd to have an identity
| composed of both a nationality and ethnicity. Really, it's
| up to the individual - there are many 1st, 2nd and 3rd
| generation immigrants to the UK or Europe that value their
| cultural origins and ethnicities. Absolutely those people
| are British, but many, if not most will not wish to erase
| their heritage for the sake of 100% assimilation into the
| host culture.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| I should have expected such a reply. Your comment is
| exactly what I expect from white collar professional that
| works an office job.
|
| It is an American import and it is absurd. It also causes
| division. e.g Many labourers (both skilled and unskilled)
| see it as a slight for someone who is brought up here and
| have lived here their entire life to display a flag other
| than the Union Flag of the St. Georges Cross. I've seen a
| lot of guys in working man's pubs get quite angry and
| this sort of resentment is always hand waived away as
| "racism" when that isn't the problem at all.
|
| Many developers don't spend time with the lower classes /
| those that aren't university educated which have to deal
| with the worse parts of immigration. They only see the
| positive aspects of it.
|
| BTW the same happens with the British in the South of
| Spain btw. The British reputation in Spain is complete
| dirt because of the disrespectful party goers and expats.
| It is due to them not assimilating or even bothering to
| respect the local culture and language.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Many labourers (both skilled and unskilled) see it as a
| slight for someone who is brought up here and have lived
| here their entire life to display a flag other than the
| Union Flag of the St. Georges Cross. I've seen a lot of
| guys in working man's pubs get quite angry and this sort
| of resentment is always hand waived away as "racism" when
| that isn't the problem at all.
|
| No that's absolutely racism.
|
| > The British reputation in Spain is complete dirt
| because of the disrespectful party goers and expats. It
| is due to them not assimilating or even bothering to
| respect the local culture and language.
|
| This is also their racism.
|
| A special place is reserved for those people who post
| comments on the Daily Mail complaining about how many
| immigrants there in England are when they're a British
| immigrant to Spain.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| I never mentioned the race of the labourers. Many weren't
| white btw. But from your comments you are assuming they
| are. That btw is racism.
|
| > No that's absolutely racism.
|
| Why? Care to explain? I never mentioned the race many
| weren't white btw that were making a similar complaint.
|
| > This is also their racism.
|
| So Spanish people who are basically white are being
| racist against other white people? Is that what you mean?
| That isn't racism.
|
| Or British (not all British people are white) are people
| being racist against Spanish people? Or are you using
| Hitler's definition of what "white" is which means
| Northern European.
|
| Either way this is non-sensical.
|
| > A special place is reserved for those people who post
| comments on the Daily Mail complaining about how many
| immigrants there in England are when they're a British
| immigrant to Spain.
|
| What are you on about? Nobody said anything about that. I
| said there are people in Spain that are English that
| don't assimilate with the local population which is
| Spanish.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar and
| please don't cross into personal attack.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| istjohn wrote:
| This is rich. Britain colonized half the world, imposing
| it's culture on dozens of societies around the world
| while exploiting their labor and natural resources, but
| god forbid modern day migrants to the UK dare display the
| flag of their homeland and cherish the traditions of
| their parents. Meanwhile chicken tikka masala is hailed
| as Britain's national dish. I suspect your xenophobia is
| a personal foible, not a British sensibility.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| > This is rich. Britain colonized half the world,
| imposing it's culture on dozens of societies around the
| world while exploiting their labor and natural resources,
| but god forbid modern day migrants to the UK dare display
| the flag of their homeland and cherish the traditions of
| their parents.
|
| This old nonsense. This is the problem people like you
| will constantly bring up the past and won't let anyone
| forget about it. None of the people that were involved
| with that are alive today. Also BTW every country and
| people have invaded and colonised one another if you go
| far back enough in time. Are we going to start blaming
| the Italians for Caesar massacring the Celts and the
| Gauls? When do you want to stop? 50, 100, 500, 1000
| years?
|
| > I suspect your xenophobia is a personal foible, not a
| British sensibility
|
| When did I claim I had a problem with people having
| another flag up? I didn't say that. I said the labourers
| in the pub tend to and it has nothing to do with
| xenophobia (which is you basically euphemism calling
| them/me racist btw).
|
| If you re-read my comment I actually said that someone
| would just claim it was racism and not actually try to
| understand what the real issue is. You did _exactly_ that
| and you didn 't even direct it at the right person. You
| can never have a sensible discussion about these issues
| because mid-wits will scream racism almost as it were
| some Pavlovian reaction.
|
| BTW I am actually a xeno-phile. I actually have lived all
| over the globe and have only recently come back to the
| UK.
| istjohn wrote:
| Flop on the field all you want, no one called you racist.
| Your insistence that foreigners can't continue to
| identify with their own culture while also embracing a
| new one is aptly described as xenophobia. If you want to
| have a sensible discussion, lets start by engaging with
| what is actually said instead of what we wish was said.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| You actually implied it heavily by calling me xenophobic.
| You know full well they are synonymous. I am not stupid,
| so don't play silly games with me please.
|
| > Your insistence that foreigners can't continue to
| identify with their own culture while also embracing a
| new one is aptly described as xenophobia.
|
| Nope. I never insisted that at all. I never even
| mentioned foreigners. You keep on twisting what I am
| trying to explain and trying to pervert it into something
| you wish it to be.
|
| I said that this sub dividing people in the *same
| nationality* by *race* is an American import to the UK
| (and from what some of my Belgian and French friends have
| told me) a import into some parts of Europe as well. It
| isn't typically done in the UK, France, Belgium and I
| suspect it is the same in many of the other European
| countries.
|
| Then I said that working class labourers (not all of them
| white btw) don't like it when 2nd/3rd or 4th generation
| immigrants aren't patriotic or don't try to assimilate
| (like their parents did). I then said these concerns /
| complaints will always get hand-waived away by people as
| "racism" when the real problem is a feeling of
| disrespect. _Just like you have_.
|
| It got nothing to do with xenophobia as the people I am
| talking about are British.
|
| > If you want to have a sensible discussion, lets start
| by engaging with what is actually said instead of what we
| wish was said.
|
| I do. So if you could actually respond to what I said and
| refrain from this behaviour (which you are now accusing
| me of) that would be great. Pointing the finger at me,
| when it is actually you is disingenuous.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We're
| trying to avoid that here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| The whole story is flamebait. If you don't want it here
| you should have removed the story.
| dang wrote:
| Virtually every story is flamebait to somebody, so 'why
| bother' arguments that justify going straight to hell
| can't be valid.
|
| How HN works is that commenters need to resist
| provocation and focus on substantive, thoughtful
| discussion no matter how divisive the topic is. Please
| see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| This is something we're working on learning to do as a
| community. Most commenters in this thread are
| demonstrating that it is possible. Accounts that fuck
| with that process by casually setting fires or stoking
| them are particularly harmful, so please don't do that
| here.
|
| In terms of whether an article is on topic, the criterion
| is not "might someone take it as flamebait", but "is it
| intellectually interesting and substantive enough to
| support thoughtful discussion". More explanation about
| that if anyone wants it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRang
| e=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| This is flamebait for everyone and anyone with a lick of
| commonsense would know that.
|
| Also it is interesting that you've gone after me not the
| guy that was blatently calling me racist. But there you
| go.
|
| Go fuck yourself.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Read the comment again.
|
| > Many labourers (both skilled and unskilled) see it as a
| slight for someone who is brought up here and have lived
| here their entire life to display a flag other than the
| Union Flag of the St. Georges Cross.
|
| That's not anti-foreign culture, but it is insulting to
| be born in the UK and not see it as your homeland. Or
| would you be okay with me raising a British flag in India
| and claiming I was British, if my parents happened to
| move there before I was born?
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar and
| please don't cross into personal attack.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Shorel wrote:
| Their heritage has already been erased except for the
| genetic record and one or two holidays a year.
| pjc50 wrote:
| That _sounds_ great, but in practice doesn 't prevent
| people from receiving racial abuse or discrimination
| because of what it says in their passport. There's
| definitely a faction of people who think that if you're not
| white you're not British, regardless of what it says in
| your passport. And the Shamina Begum case proves that
| there's some support for this: the government can simply
| remove your British nationality if you're Bangladeshi
| despite her being born in London.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| She joined up with ISIS not the best example to bring up.
| She gave it up there and then. It not like she hooked up
| with some bad lads and got into a bit of hijinks.
|
| The faction of people that don't believe you are British
| if you aren't white has to be minority of people. Most of
| the people that may have brought up the subject are in
| their Winter years now. Pretending that Enoch Powell is
| still popular is a nonsense and tbh is nothing more than
| virtue signalling IME.
| splintercell wrote:
| > She joined up with ISIS not the best example to bring
| up.
|
| She's the perfect example. If a full on British person
| like Nigel Farage does a heinous crime (or make it apples
| to apples, he joins ISIS) would they take his citizenship
| away?
|
| If she was born in the US, it would be unthinkable.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| I would hope they would take his citizenship away. I
| don't want a ISIS member coming back to the UK.
|
| The case went through all the legal proceeding and she is
| not allowed back in the UK. Good!
|
| > If she was born in the US, it would be unthinkable.
|
| If they were born in the US, they would have just been
| assassinated by drone strike instead like they did with
| Anwar al-Awlaki.
| arwineap wrote:
| ISIS is bad, no one is denying this
|
| The citizenship concept is a requirement for modern life.
| If a person has their citizenship revoked, what are they
| to do?
|
| They are illegal where they are, and they are illegal
| where they go. To my knowledge, there's no processes in
| any country for becoming a citizen without a preexisting
| citizenship from another country.
|
| Back to this specific example, if she had wanted to come
| back and denounce ISIS; what should the UK offer her?
|
| What about if she wanted to come back and face trial;
| what should the UK offer her?
|
| In the end, just to point out the obvious, revoking
| citizenship is completely unneeded. If she comes back,
| charge her with her crimes. If she travels, extradite
| her. If she stays, let the leopards eat her face.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| I don't want any terrorist that has commited treason
| coming back to the UK. They can rot for all I care.
| splintercell wrote:
| > I don't want a ISIS member coming back to the UK.
|
| A lot of ISIS members came back, they faced persecution,
| some even death sentence but none had their citizenship
| stripped.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-k-strips-
| citizenship-is...
|
| > If they were born in the US, they would have just been
| assassinated by drone strike instead like they did with
| Anwar al-Awlaki.
|
| Yes, but the point is, is there are a legal treatment
| which is different for people who have been living here
| for generations vs those whose parents became a citizen
| in their lifetimes.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| > A lot of ISIS members came back, they faced
| persecution, some even death sentence but none had their
| citizenship stripped. >
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-k-strips-
| citizenship-is...
|
| Well they shouldn't have been let back in anyway. I also
| have no sympathy for a woman that said she felt nothing
| when she saw severed heads (of people executed by ISIS).
| Also there are claims that she enforced some of the
| Sharia laws and wasn't a passive member of the Caliphate.
|
| She revoked her citizenship when she left.
|
| > Yes, but the point is, is there are a legal treatment
| which is different for people who have been living here
| for generations vs those whose parents became a citizen
| in their lifetimes.
|
| No there is a different legal treatment for people that
| join a rogue state which literally wants to destroy
| yours. I don't care about these people. Her supporters
| can cry racism all they want, It isn't racism. We don't
| want terrorists back in the country.
| Shacklz wrote:
| > She joined up with ISIS not the best example to bring
| up. She gave it up there and then.
|
| While I do see your point (not British myself, but in
| Switzerland we had a few ISIS cases as well), I'd like to
| offer a different viewpoint as well: Our countries messed
| up at some point in their life - education, mental
| healthcare support, whatever; something went wrong when
| one of our citizens feels obliged to join something as
| heinous as ISIS. After all, we also feel like that with
| every other terrible criminal - murderers, rapists, etc.;
| our societies believe in their right to find the right
| path again, why not someone who joins ISIS?
| jen20 wrote:
| I'm not arguing for the continued power grab of the home
| secretary here (who is abhorrent), but the UK does not
| have birthright citizenship like the US does, so the same
| set of rules do not necessarily apply.
|
| Anyone born in New York is American, not everyone born in
| London is British.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes, the UK ended birthright citizenship in 1981. https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_Act_1981
|
| The empire caused all sorts of citizenships to appear;
| citizens of the Empire were "British" right up until the
| point where they actually started moving to Britain,
| causing that right to be taken away. https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Asians_from_Ugand...
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| In Europe, France and Romania are different countries, so
| you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France.
| "African American" isn't solely about skin color, but also
| about a shared history, migration path, acculturation, and
| regional population concentration. It's as much a valid
| "sub-nationality" of American as "Midwestern" or
| "Californian".
|
| Remember, America and the EU are on the same order of
| magnitude in terms of total population and land area. If we
| didn't have terms for differentiating Americans from each-
| other, it would be like Europeans having no term to
| distinguish a Pole from a Spaniard.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France
|
| Thanks to EU freedom of movement, that is absolutely what
| you do have.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| > In Europe, France and Romania are different countries,
| so you don't have "Romanian Europeans" living in France.
|
| I never claimed there were Romanians Europeans living in
| France. I claimed that if you were happened to be Black
| and British you were still seen as simply British (until
| relatively recently). The same is generally true in other
| parts of Northern Europe as well, I have discussed this
| with Belgians, Germans and Frenchmen online and they all
| tell me similar things.
|
| I am complaining that this nonsense of saying you are a
| White <Nationality> or a Chinese <Nationality> or Black
| <Nationality> idea has been imported from America. It
| doesn't make sense here.
|
| > "African American" isn't solely about skin color, but
| also about a shared history, migration path,
| acculturation, and regional population concentration.
| It's as much a valid "sub-nationality" of American as
| "Midwestern" or "Californian".
|
| I don't care what they do in the USA. That is their
| business. It isn't a thing here and it shouldn't be. Just
| because we speak English in the UK, doesn't mean we are
| like Americans.
|
| > Remember, America and the EU are on the same order of
| magnitude in terms of total population and land area. If
| we didn't have terms for differentiating Americans from
| each-other, it would be like Europeans having no term to
| distinguish a Pole from a Spaniard.
|
| I understand this and never claimed the opposite.
| ric2b wrote:
| I'm sorry but I still don't get it. Why is referring to
| people by their state not enough? It's more or less
| equivalent to nationality in Europe.
|
| Why is race necessary or useful in the same way?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >In Europe the notion of someone being a African Frenchmen
| or a African English is absurd. You are your nationality.
|
| Tell that to the Balkans.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| The recent wars in the Balkans are the result of too many
| nationalities in too little land, and they didn't involve
| significant numbers of African immigrants (who typically
| had the good sense of emigrating to other parts of
| Europe).
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| There is always a smartass isn't there? You know very
| well that I was generalising and obviously it will vary
| by region due to historical reasons.
| is-ought wrote:
| And also because you're wrong.
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| Or is Emmanuel Macron also wrong when he also said (and I
| am paraphrasing) "They are Frenchmen" when an American
| Talk show host said that Black people won the World cup
| for France?
|
| In our secular societies you are what your nationality is
| and your race is irrelevant (or should be considered to
| be) in the eyes of the state and in the UK it is
| considered rude to bring up someone's race (other than
| identifying them).
|
| I will accept that we aren't perfect, but perfect is the
| enemy of good. Bringing up areas of Europe which I
| obviously wasn't referring to and have been politically
| unstable for decades now is disingenuous and simply
| missing the overall point to be a smartass.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The Balkans are but one recent example. European history
| is littered with "you might live in the same place and
| speak the same language but you're not like me because a
| couple hundred years ago your people were from X".
|
| Europe has the same problems the US does just spread
| across fewer skin tones.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _White guy here_
|
| Are we at the point where we need to announce our skin colour
| so that can be the basis of judgment of our comments now?
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| GGP announced he was black. GP announced he was white.
|
| And you chose to only call out the white person? Do I even
| need to point out the irony of this?
| dsincl12 wrote:
| As a white dude, I feel really ashamed for this even though I'm
| not involved in this at all. Sorry man, you deserve a better
| world.
| motogpjimbo wrote:
| Isn't this the exact sentiment that is causing the issues in
| the first place?
| snakeboy wrote:
| I would disagree. I think the "woke" stuff is a more active
| movement to solve all of the 1% of the issue, while
| ignoring the 99% that actually effects peoples' lives (how
| universities perpetuate classism, living wages for people
| doing 'un-skilled' work, revitalizing disadvantaged
| communities that perpetuate historical racial injustices,
| etc.).
|
| Displays of misplaced white guilt like this - while bizarre
| psychologically - don't really harm or help anything.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Seriously. Compared to incarceration, poverty, and social
| mobility statistics, none of this matters very much.
| emteycz wrote:
| Why would you be ashamed because of your skin color?
| morlockabove wrote:
| I assume he's been taught to be and gets off on it.
| jason0597 wrote:
| "Sorry I'm white! Sorry I'm male!"
| morlockabove wrote:
| Yes, flog yourself! Repent for your sins! If you draw enough
| blood on your back, the plague will stop!
| vmception wrote:
| I appreciate the empathy, I hope that my thoughts can help
| people direct energy in more productive ways.
| deadbytes wrote:
| As a white dude, I feel extremely proud because my ancestors
| abolished slavery.
|
| Oh wait no I don't, because feeling shame or accomplishment
| for something your ancestors did hundreds of years ago that
| you had zero control over is a completely ridiculous concept.
| dsincl12 wrote:
| I don't understand how that little line could be so
| misinterpreted so wrong. I'm not ashamed of being white,
| I'm ashamed of asshats running around gunning for cheap SJW
| points while ignoring the real issues. We can do better.
| Master/slave, blacklist/whitelist etc has no relation to
| race at all so it's a completely pointless act. But instead
| this is taking center stage just so people can post
| "feelgood" LinkedIn/Twitter posts to make them feel better
| about themselves, or company PR blog posts like GitHub and
| GitLab while doing nothing to change the actual status quo.
| major505 wrote:
| And lets be honest. Changing one word that annoyed a few dozen
| of people because they think of slavery, well, thats a lot of
| change just because a shit excuse, that will not matter in the
| end.
| f430 wrote:
| "omg America is actually racist?"
|
| "quick somebody ban any word with master and black"
|
| "whew that was a close one"
| analog31 wrote:
| As one who leans towards the left, I can reassure you that I've
| never told anybody what to think, nor have I been vicariously
| offended, and I barely communicate anything to anybody, which
| renders my "signaling footprint" pretty darn small. I'm
| doubtful that those are fair generalizations, and skeptical of
| critical signaling theory.
|
| I read about the GitHub name change, then completely forgot
| about it until I saw this HN thread. At the time I think I
| asked our internal Git guru if this was going to change
| anything, and he said don't worry about it.
|
| My concern is that a few gaffes from here and there are
| combined into some unifying characteristic of my "wing," when
| most people simply take little or no notice of them.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| I think you're right about that. Coupled with the fact that
| extremes from both "wings" are, despite being quite small,
| very loud and have the megaphone of the news media and social
| media to make them seem larger than they really are.
| agumonkey wrote:
| > signaling instead of meaningful action.
|
| Oh this is a good short summary of the era
| froh wrote:
| yes! let me tweet this and post it on FB...
| agumonkey wrote:
| :)
|
| but really the web amplified the tendency to look and speak
| in shallow settings
|
| it's like morals on the map versus the territory
| benrbray wrote:
| In all fairness, this sort of silly business is more
| representative of the "Twitter left", comprised of cogs in a
| perpetual rage-inducing machine, than it is of "leftists" whose
| main objective is to address the limitations of capitalism, at
| varying degrees of willingness to work within the system vs
| burn it down.
|
| Of course, our media is run by billionaires so they capitalize
| on the identity politics to divide everyone and avoid having
| any real debate about economic policy, which is the only thing
| that really matters.
|
| I would _so_ much rather be debating about the best way to roll
| out UBI than whether to call something "main" or "master".
| [deleted]
| Aunche wrote:
| Billionaires capitalize on identity politics and political
| division because it gets them advertising dollars. That's it.
| While I agree that economic policy certainly merits more
| discussion, an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about "the
| elite" isn't any more productive than an unsubstantiated
| conspiracy theory about white people.
| deadbytes wrote:
| The capitalize on it because it keeps everyone focused on
| white vs black instead of rich vs poor.
|
| They want you constantly thinking about race instead of
| thinking about wealth inequality.
|
| They want you constantly fighting with your fellow workers
| instead of forming unions.
| Aunche wrote:
| The rich aren't a single monolithic entity and it doesn't
| make sense to treat them as such. George Soros is an
| obvious example. Unless if you have concrete evidence, a
| blanket anti-rich narrative only serves as a vector for
| another rich person to inject their ideology. Plenty of
| people think that Donald Trump's feud with Bezos was
| proof that he was on the side of the working class.
| deadbytes wrote:
| The rich aren't, but the companies they run practically
| are, from a political standpoint.
|
| Basically all large, multinational corporations now make
| their company logo rainbow for pride month, and all
| release the same sounding official statements about
| racial inequality on a regular basis, etc. etc.
|
| It's almost impossible to find a large corporation that
| doesn't do this now. And their statements are so bland
| and generic that they are almost all identical, and
| completely interchangeable.
| Aunche wrote:
| That's the symptom and not the cause. When people treat
| virtue signaling the same as positive change, it's
| natural for corporations to exploit that. It's a cheap
| way of building goodwill.
| majjgepolja wrote:
| I think more appropriate classification is something like the
| political compass.
| XorNot wrote:
| This is some technocrat fiction that has failed time and time
| again. There are towns in the US right now which actively
| reject help if it's not coming in the form of "more coal
| jobs" (which aren't coming back regardless of how much coal
| mining is actually on).
|
| Economic incentives don't change people's minds, they
| motivate them to double-down on their biases.
| benrbray wrote:
| Correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that such
| people have been duped by channels like Fox News into
| doubling-down on a way of life that is simply not possible
| anymore.
|
| What I'm saying is that if Fox and CNN (for instance)
| devoted the same air time to good-faith debate about the
| causes for, impact of, and solutions to wealth inequality
| and our changing socioeconomic landscape as they do reading
| Twitter comments live on air, we might be in a better
| position than we are today.
| edbob wrote:
| I'm not a leftist at all, but I'd also love to be rolling out
| UBI.
| kizer wrote:
| Mixing the politics of the day with business is bound to result
| in a bunch of low-effort "equal justic initiative" black and
| white styles block divs.
|
| The best thing a company can do the way I see it is to
| _dedicate_ a cut of regular profit to a black charity. Like, on
| a regular basis.
|
| Money can affect serious change in the right "hands".
|
| JUST MOVE MONEY TO BLACK CHARITIES OR ASSOCIATIONS. ITS CALLED
| DIVISION OF LABOR. Then, do your best to be inclusive
| intentionally. That's the answer IMO.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| I think important to distinguish between the radicals and the
| reasonable people. I would consider myself left but find this
| change ridiculous. Similar to e.g. how the American concern
| around blackface is pushed around the world and has madethe
| dutch Zwarte Piet or German equivalents 'offensive' (even as
| they probably relate to charcoal burners ('Kohler') [1]).
|
| You equate the few radicals that see some issue there with all
| 'on the left' which is presumably 50% of any population.
|
| Similar to veganism: the joke is that vegans are all very vocal
| about being vegan. But reality is that you simply don't notice
| all the ones that aren't vocal about it and silently love their
| lives or focus on other issues. Its just an issue of
| availability bias [2].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal_burner
|
| 2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
| vmception wrote:
| No, I equate it as an accurate criticism of the left.
|
| As in, it isn't an inaccurate criticism. It would be nice if
| the various camps just acknowledged their criticisms based on
| accuracy.
|
| Yes, a few predictably present radicals does make it an
| accurate criticism. It would be more difficult to predict
| this kind of behavior from people identifying as "the right".
| They do other things and a core part of that is rejecting
| virtue signaling even if that results in apathy that
| perpetuates adversity.
|
| People are willing to choose the latter, in absence of other
| choices, partially because it more honestly matches the last
| 250 years of apathy by all administrations. Where its clear
| there is a kind of vapid reckoning occurring in the former
| that simply assumes their minority constituents are all
| struggling victims that cant possibly be interested in any
| nuanced platform.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > Traditionally, Zwarte Piet is black because he is a Moor
| from Spain. However, since the late twentieth century the
| common explanation of Zwarte Piet's blackness has been that
| it is due to the soot on his body acquired during his many
| trips down the chimneys of the homes he visits. Those
| portraying Zwarte Piet usually put on blackface and colourful
| Renaissance attire in addition to curly wigs and bright red
| lipstick. In recent years, the character has become the
| subject of controversy.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The article seems to be demanding a much more radical change
| than GitHub is making so I don't think the author's issue is
| he wants more moderation.
| the_resistence wrote:
| I really appreciate this post. Somehow I think the media and
| its funders are trying to drive the wedge between similarly
| thinking people as hard as they can.
| mnsc wrote:
| > I'm a black American ...
|
| Do you think that there's a difference with using "master" for
| the main branch vs using "blacklist" for stuff you don't want
| in your system? Or are they equally non-offensive to you?
| vmception wrote:
| it will take more than a piecemeal approach of rewriting the
| English language to address prejudice
|
| it is part of an effort of acknowledging that things white
| are seen as good or less bad, and things black are seen as
| bad and worse, and this is consistent across the language
|
| this particular approach of extrapolating that towards skin
| color and ethnicity is just as misguided
|
| but I could have seen it coming: when I've used the words in
| context before, it becomes clear people have had race on
| their mind the entire conversation that they try to make a
| poor joke about the irony of me using those words. Seemingly
| for their own comfort.
|
| Not exactly what I would call privilege, in America.
| sfink wrote:
| Please let "blacklist" and "whitelist" die. I'm not sure
| whether the terms carry racial baggage or not, but I don't
| need to be. I have to repeat the logic of which means which
| in my head every time. It's as bad as "false negative" and
| "false positive" -- which means what, again?
|
| "allowlist", "blocklist", "denylist", whatever. They all mean
| something. I know that "blacklist" is used in a number of
| areas (blacklisted authors etc.), and I don't have much
| trouble understanding it there, but those uses also come with
| a whole set of connotations that don't necessarily apply to
| lists of URLs or whatever. It's a stretch too far for my
| brain to be able to hop over without thinking it through.
|
| (For the record, I'm also all in for "false alarm" in place
| of false positive, and "missed bug"/"undetected flaw" for
| false negative in the context of static analysis where it
| makes sense.)
| bobthechef wrote:
| Absolutely. The paternalism that's shown toward black Americans
| by white Americans on the left is so obvious. They're treated
| like children. This patronizing stance toward blacks is like a
| continuation of the general pre-Civil War ethos of the
| Democrats. You "took care" of your slaves, too. They were your
| "property", after all. But of course, you didn't really want to
| help your slaves in any real way, lest they forget their place.
| otikik wrote:
| > the American "left"
|
| I like that you quote it there.
|
| I don't understand why aren't there more real left (no quotes)
| organizations or parties gaining traction in the US. It seems
| as if it should have happened "naturally" one or two
| generations ago.
| dreen wrote:
| I don't understand it either. Looking from across the pond at
| what they do, the Democrat party would be considered highly
| conservative in Europe.
| [deleted]
| nivenkos wrote:
| They executed Joe Hill and Fred Hampton, and imprisoned
| Eugene Debs for years.
|
| Just look at COINTELPRO for example, that's what happens.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Propaganda and the dominant ideology, I think.
|
| Although there's still the CPUSA, PSL and even the DSA.
| zeku wrote:
| It's because of the 2 party system we are stuck with.
|
| Democratic Socialists, Social Liberals, NeoLibs, and
| NeoCons(because of the Republican party's shift to the right)
| are all stuck under one party, so the biggest group controls
| the entire thing.
| dagw wrote:
| _I don 't understand why aren't there more real left (no
| quotes) organizations or parties gaining traction in the US._
|
| There are. The Democratic Socialists of America has grown a
| lot over the past few years. They even managed to get four
| member elected Congress this last election cycle.
|
| _It seems as if it should have happened "naturally" one or
| two generations ago._
|
| I have no evidence, but I suspect McCarthyism and the
| following hard crackdown on leftists that followed during the
| cold war greatly slowed down this "natural" growth. It took a
| generation removed from the cold war for this growth to start
| up again.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's worth pointing out tho that the DSA members elected to
| congress were elected as Democrats.
| coolreader18 wrote:
| Not necessarily - Bernie Sanders runs as an independent
| and just caucuses with the Democrats (same for Angus
| King, the other independent in the Senate, although he's
| not of the DSA). However, it doesn't look like anyone in
| the House is an independent, so maybe Bernie's the only
| one that does that.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Bernie Sanders isn't DSA, though generally the DSA likes
| him.
| eyko wrote:
| DSA isn't no-quotes-left. It has gone full steam into
| identity politics if you ask me (I'm not American, but this
| is just based on what I've been seeing from them, correct
| me if I'm wrong). I don't mean that in a negative way and
| I'm not making any judgements of morality or anything, but
| no-quotes-left has a class conscience, today's left has an
| identity conscience (gender, ethnicity, etc). Both fight
| for equality (new left also for equity) but the ideology
| has shifted from a class struggle to a new kind of struggle
| that has replaced the nobility and bourgeoisie for the
| white cis male, and the proletariat for BIPOC, women,
| gender non conforming, etc.
|
| Edit: equality+equity.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Agreed. I'm a far-left (libertarian) communist in
| America, and from what I've seen/read, the DSA is
| effectively the slightly-left wokish arm of the
| Democratic party. Think "public healthcare" with a big
| dose of "what are everyone's pronouns?!"
|
| They're more concerned about trigger words and identity
| politics than dismantling capitalism.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The DSA is a mix. It has grown in leaps and bounds, but
| before it did that it was this kind of small social
| democratic organization with a kind of unique politics
| that came from Michael Harrington, and was more
| interested in being a bit of a left wing lobby inside the
| Democrats.
|
| With the rise of Bernie Sanders and a new generation of
| people getting into socialist and left wing politics, it
| became quite a bit broader and larger and vibrant. And my
| impression is it became of a centre of gravity for other
| left tendencies in the US to coalesce.
|
| There's quite a few different groupings in there these
| days. I don't think you can make a broad generalization
| like you did here.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| IIRC up-thread I wrote complaining about "woke" leftists
| who are "three times as strict on culture-war issues as
| on economics", and I was referring precisely to today's
| DSA. As a supporter of the Harringtonite social-
| democratic class-struggle approach, what the org has
| become kind of disgusts me.
| dgellow wrote:
| Maybe because the country is blocked in a two-party systems?
| In other democratic countries, you do not have "the left"
| represented by one single entity. You instead have a
| multitude of political parties that can negotiate with each
| others to push for their political goals. That makes the
| political landscape dynamic, new parties are created,
| reorganized, disbanded all the time.
|
| In the US, if you are generally more aligned with the
| democratic party but see some changes you disagree
| fundamentally with, you either suck it up or give up your
| ideals and switch to the complete opposite (republican
| party).
| runarberg wrote:
| They are. For example Seattle has a council member from the
| Socialist Alternative party. There are a few Democratic
| congress representatives that are socialists (both in state
| and national level). Some socialist policies have
| successfully been pushed by socialist party members (e.g. the
| current medicare for all bill has around 100 democratic house
| members backing it up).
|
| However the confinement of the current democratic system in
| the USA today simply doesn't allow for third parties to gain
| national traction. There are mathematical models that proves
| this fact. For the real left to get socialist parties to the
| national assembly some democratic reforms needs to happen
| first.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| "left" indeed -- I have been a pretty radical socialist since I
| was 16. (Well, at least on paper, I haven't been done activist
| work for years) ... And I don't recognize myself in this "left"
| that people keep talking about. I think it's hilarious to call
| CNN "left" or think that anybody in GitHub leadership is "left"
| for relabeling git branches. Plz. It's just a proposterous
| strange (and uniquely American) partitioning of the world.
|
| If you define "left" as anything "not far right" then, yeah,
| ok, of course it's going to include a bunch of liberals who are
| not interested in any real structural change in the political-
| economic system and so are obsessed instead with changing how
| people speak.
|
| So I just don't use the word anymore if I can. I'm not "left
| wing", I'm a socialist... Unfortunately "socialist" also seems
| to mean something weird to many Americans, too. (That anybody
| could with a straight face call Obama or Biden socialist just
| boggles my mind...)
| majjgepolja wrote:
| I am not american, so can somebody explain why this comment
| is downvoted? So that I can avoid such mistakes in words
| usage when I come to america?
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| If you want to understand why Biden and Obama are called
| socialists, I suggest you do some reading of the Anarcho-
| Capitalist literature (Anatomy of the State is the most
| obvious) or maybe listen to someone like Peter Schiff.
|
| I don't agree with their philosophy as I believe it to be
| unrealistic but their criticisms and descriptions of what the
| state is and isn't is valid and why some call it socialist
| may make more sense to you. Hans Herman Hoppe (I am sure
| someone will quote mine him to smear him after I've mentioned
| him and haven't read any of this books) even called Democracy
| a soft form of communism.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Biden and Obama are called socialists because Americans
| were trained to fear communism and socialism during the
| Cold War. There is nothing about their political stance
| that is socialist. Conservatives have just learned that
| they can score easy points by calling anyone left of Ronald
| Reagan a marxist
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| > There is nothing about their political stance that is
| socialist.
|
| Yes there is. There is a tonne of stuff that is
| explicitly socialist. In the UK my boss (who is from the
| UK) has recently said that the Biden Administration is
| more socialist than the previous administration. The news
| here has said it.
|
| It got nothing to do with the cold-war. It is to do with
| their policies.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Biden is socialist because your boss said so?
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| I will spell it out for you.
|
| If there are quite a lot of people outside of the US that
| consider him to be much more socialist (and there are
| quite a few) than Trump, then it cannot just be "American
| conservatives" that are claiming this.
| [deleted]
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Your argument is based off a quote i didn't say. I never
| said "American conservatives" I said conservatives
| aspnet_dev wrote:
| You said:
|
| > Conservatives have just learned that they can score
| easy points by calling anyone left of Ronald Reagan a
| marxist
| ngokevin wrote:
| Reminds me of the Netflix film, White Tiger. A liberal Indian-
| American woman comes to India, pretends to care about how the
| lower castes of India are treated as slaves, but in the end, is
| just going through the motions and leaves a servant with pocket
| change. In the end, not treating them as people, but as objects
| to funnel their morality and values.
| f430 wrote:
| Malcom X said it the best. The White leftist liberal is the
| biggest oppressor in the room. By declaring they speak for
| the oppressed they've essentially silenced them.
|
| Take a minute to reflect back on what happened.
| ngokevin wrote:
| I think speaking for the oppressed is better than actively
| oppressing people though. While there is always more that
| could be done, hanging out a BLM banner is better
| than...supporting suppression of black voter rights. Though
| I understand some people use signaling -in place- of
| action, which is neutral at best, it's better than active
| oppression.
| f430 wrote:
| I don't think a corporate entity like Black Futures Lab
| can be expected to champion for societal problems.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like
| 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal') for
| something that does not really represent that political
| ideology, you are at risk of further polarizing such debates?
|
| This specific instance seems like an overreaction of some in
| both corporate and social media culture. One poster already
| pointed out that this is likely more about corporate fear of
| getting targetted by a vocal but ultimately small 'woke' crowd
| (there, another label, but at least a bit more specific than
| just generally someone who wishes to achieve basic goals like
| welfare, equality, and regulation of private industry). It does
| have all the looks of virtue signalling without any real
| justification.
|
| In debates like this sometimes a small number of loud, well-
| meaning but naive people get much more influence than they
| should for fear of the other being painted the bad guy, while a
| significant number of people who are actually affected by the
| underlying issues don't get heard at all.
| jswizzy wrote:
| Marxism isn't a political ideology?
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Cultural left, ie, "woke" and economic left are two very,
| very different things. Americans have this wonderful way of
| completely slaughtering their political terms.
| nivenkos wrote:
| What has renaming the master branch got to do with Marxism?
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Slavery as class struggle seems a popular method of
| argumentation, but it's hard to pin down that logic when
| any discussion of it generates anger instead of
| explanation.
| emteycz wrote:
| Who on the right is pushing this stuff?
| p_l wrote:
| Right makes such bad performative takes louder in order to
| raise outrage and discredit political enemies.
|
| There's also the part where conservatives are Masters of
| Canceling since forever, including things like Hays code.
|
| It's easy to make people who are angry at outgroup not
| notice they are fleeced.
| benrbray wrote:
| I believe the main point of the person you're replying to
| is that it's a relatively small, vocal minority of people
| on Twitter who care about this stuff, and the media
| snowballs it into a big ugly controversy for clicks. As far
| as I know, this is true also of the following examples of
| "the right" "cancelling" stuff:
|
| * Colin Kaepernick and kneelgate
|
| * calls to boycott Starbucks for celebrating an inclusive
| holiday season, rather than Christmas in particular
|
| * republican voters "cancelling" Mitt Romney and other
| republicans for being vocally anti-Trump, even though their
| political principles have not changed
|
| I can think of at least one more serious example that goes
| beyond just a vocal minority: The long, ongoing fight to
| teach children about LGBTQ issues in public schools.
| Teachers can be fired for simply revealing to their
| students that they have a same-sex partner.
|
| Not long ago, too, was it career-ending for a Hollywood
| actor to come out publicly as LGBTQ. Ellen comes to mind as
| an example.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| People on the right don't have the power to really cancel
| anything anymore. Some on the right may attempt to cancel
| stuff, but it is mostly not effective.
|
| >Colin Kaepernick and kneelgate
|
| Kaepernick wasn't canceled by the right. He just wasn't
| the best player out there and didn't get onto another
| team. He now is making millions from Nike and other deals
| all without playing the game. If this is what be canceled
| is like I would gladly sign up.
|
| >calls to boycott Starbucks for celebrating an inclusive
| holiday season, rather than Christmas in particular
|
| There was an attempt but nothing happened. As far as I
| know Starbucks' revenue didn't even drop (but I haven't
| really looked into it). Again a complete failure of a
| cancellation.
|
| >republican voters "cancelling" Mitt Romney and other
| republicans for being vocally anti-Trump, even though
| their political principles have not changed
|
| Romney still has his senate seat and is still on all of
| the committees he was original on. There is no cancelling
| here, unless you mean voting out a politician is
| canceling.
|
| >The long, ongoing fight to teach children about LGBTQ
| issues in public schools.
|
| This is a bit more complicated. Some people believe it is
| more than just an objective teaching that LGBTQ people
| exist and you should treat them as any other person but
| more of encouraging people to engaging in such behavior.
| Some people also accuse the schools of focusing on random
| LGBTQ people or assuming people's sexuality when they
| weren't married in history class instead of focusing on
| more important people or just the facts. I don't think I
| was in school when this was going on so I can't really
| comment on what it is like.
|
| > Teachers can be fired for simply revealing to their
| students that they have a same-sex partner.
|
| I have only seen this in private religious schools. In
| theses cases the teacher agreed to publicly follow the
| church's teachings and they failed to follow their
| employment contract. You shouldn't work for a church if
| you disagree with the church's teachings.
|
| >Ellen comes to mind as an example.
|
| Are you saying Ellen was canceled for being LGBTQ? I am
| pretty sure she is being attack for being abusive to
| people who work / worked for her.
| scdp wrote:
| They successfully got the NFL to ban kneeling, you might
| remember someone saying "Get that son of a bitch off the
| field".
|
| Liz Cheney, Murkowski, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy have
| successfully been censured by the GOP, and motions are in
| progress against the rest that defected from the Trump
| cult.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >They successfully got the NFL to ban kneeling
|
| The NFL would have almost certainly done it themself
| since the NFL was losing viewers massively. Just not
| watching a show is not canceling in my view. If that is
| the case then almost everybody is canceling almost
| everything else.
|
| >you might remember someone saying "Get that son of a
| bitch off the field".
|
| Last I checked Trump can't cancel any NFL player.
|
| >Liz Cheney, Murkowski, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy have
| successfully been censured by the GOP
|
| I agree these are [partial] cancellations, but members of
| the GOP being censured by the GOP is not really the same
| as organization you did not choose to be a part of
| cancelling you.
| waheoo wrote:
| You're misinformed if you think this is a minority.
| benrbray wrote:
| Am I? I personally haven't met a single left-leaning
| adult who doesn't think Twitter's "cancel culture" has
| gotten out of hand. However, I've never lived in the bay
| area, where I understand things may be different.
|
| Can you say anything to demonstrate to me that it really
| is more than just a vocal minority of people?
|
| Perhaps we have different definitions of "cancel
| culture"? I don't consider the fall of e.g. Louis C.K. to
| be an example of cancel culture, but rather a clear-cut
| case of someone in a position of authority abusing their
| power, and rightfully losing public support for it. I do
| think the master vs main issue is silly, though. I'm not
| sure where you draw draw the line between "cancel
| culture" and "social consequences for toxic / abusive
| behavior in public".
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| People on the right participate in cancel culture all the
| time. It is truly deafening to hear them complain about
| things they do from their pulpits at FOX, Congress, and
| Senate.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Anyone who watched TV in the late 90s and early 2000s
| should be very familiar with how right-wing[0] cancel
| culture works thanks to organizations like the AFA.
|
| [0] Religious-right, anyway
| throwaways885 wrote:
| The religious right barely exists anymore.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "cancel culture" isn't an actual thing, it's just the new
| term the Right has come up with for replace "political
| correctness" to make, almost word for word, the exact
| same complaints they've been making since the 1980s about
| the left doing...exactly the same thing the right has
| always done as much as it can get away with to everyone
| who publicly disagrees with them.
| tremon wrote:
| How many people since the 1980s have lost their jobs
| because a mob decided that they weren't politically
| correct enough?
| jessah wrote:
| Hi. I'm a single left-leaning adult who doesn't even
| think "cancel culture" exists. It's a right wing
| propaganda word. Please realize that "I haven't met a
| single..." is not a good assessor for anything. I for
| example haven't met a single person that doesn't think
| the vocal minority in this case is the twitter mob that
| tries to brainwash themself into the believe that there
| is a left wing mob with an united agenda. I am not
| convinced that I can conclude from that that I am in the
| majority.
| benrbray wrote:
| The argument "I haven't met a single..." is equally as
| strong as an unqualified "You are misinformed.", which I
| was responding to. Note that I asked for clarification :)
|
| Since I have you here, would you mind elaborating a bit
| more about your stance on "cancel culture"? I'll also
| elaborate a bit more on my stance.
|
| I think most people would agree that mobs by definition
| have no united agenda. It's a bunch of disorganized
| people with their own goals and motivations who all
| briefly get fired up about the same topic. Twitter mobs
| are a tornado of confirmation bias, where people in echo
| chambers spin up hot takes of current events to confirm
| their own worldview. The amount of meaningful debate that
| can be had in 280-character chunks is negligible.
|
| When people talk about "cancel culture", my impression is
| not that they think there is any sort of coordinated
| attack on right-leaning figures by prominent left-leaning
| figures -- only fringe conspiracy theorists believe that
| George Soros is sending out weekly lists of names that
| should be "cancelled" this week.
|
| It's that they believe Twitter is a place which has
| developed a culture of criticizing and ridiculing other
| users, public figures especially. I think it's undeniable
| that any time a public figure missteps, a vocal minority
| of people (e.g. angsty teenagers) on Twitter calls for
| the person to be fired or otherwise deplatformed, even
| before they have a chance to respond. Some people also
| receive death threats.
|
| So, I don't think it's unreasonable to label that sort of
| behavior as "cancel culture". To me, it clearly exists,
| but there is room for debate about how prevalent it is,
| as well as how good vs bad it is.
|
| I think we agree that "cancel culture" is not as
| prevalent as Fox / MSNBC would have their viewers
| believe. Twitter magnifies the opinions of their angry
| users to drive engagement, and then news organizations
| pick it up to serve one political narrative or the other.
|
| Personally, I have seen many positive examples of public
| figures being called out for toxic or abusive behavior,
| and I'm all in favor. Louis CK was "cancelled" for
| extremely-scummy-but-not-necessarily-illegal behavior.
| Heck, #metoo is all about cancelling rapists, and that's
| a good thing! I also think that the JK Rowling
| controversy was for good cause, and led to both
| productive [1,2] and unproductive public discussion.
|
| However, to me, the whole master vs main debate is silly.
| I don't see it as a driver of positive change.
|
| [1] Contrapoints, "JK Rowling"
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us) [2]
| Contrapoints, "Cancelling"
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8)
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| edit: I've re-read your comment, and I'm no longer sure
| which "side" of this you fall on, I think my point stands
| alone anyway, so I'll leave it:
|
| You've not met me, but I'm a left-leaning individual who
| thinks the drama about "cancel culture" is mostly
| invented.
|
| There's lots of people doing crappy thing on the internet
| generally and on twitter in particular.
|
| In a world where you can get anonymous death threats for
| pretty much any reason, I've not seen any evidence that
| "the left" or "cancel culture" is an actual problem in
| this regard beyond the baseline of people being nasty
| when anonymous.
|
| I have seen people, often on both sides of the same
| issue, point to unpleasant people on the other side and
| make some kind of argument that "those people" are all
| crazy. Some of the individual stories are horrifying but
| I've never found any of them convincing at the level of
| settling the argument (whichever argument it is invoke
| in). It's just used as a way to circle the wagons against
| the other side.
| waheoo wrote:
| Yes, large portions of the company I work for fall into
| this category. 4 out of 7 in our team fit the
| description.
|
| > I don't consider the fall of e.g. Louis C.K. to be an
| example of cancel culture, but rather a clear-cut case of
| someone in a position of authority abusing their power,
| and rightfully losing public support for it.
|
| That is cancel culture.. its just not an example of
| cancel culture run amuck which is what the problem has
| always been, not cancel culture itself which is widely
| accepted by most people for the most egregious behaviors.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Voters don't cancel their representative, they select the
| one they think will represent their wishes. Even removing
| someone from the office when the voters believe they no
| longer represent their interests is not cancellation, it
| is how democracy works. You don't cancel your lawyer if
| he misrepresent you, you fire him.
| croon wrote:
| The exact same thing can be said about what people refer
| to as "cancelling". It's not whether they're banned from
| Twitter, losing their contract or are voted out of office
| that constitutes the cancelling, but why they were.
|
| Mitt Romney was not attacked for not representing
| conservative/republican values, but for going against a
| mob/cult (of personality). That is as "cancelling" as it
| gets, regardless if it leads to him being voted out in
| Utah or not.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Criticizing a politician for not representing the values
| people believe he holds is not canceling. If that is the
| case 3/4 of congress has been canceled.
| scdp wrote:
| Romney is persona non grata in the national GOP now,
| which is exactly what being cancelled is: to be
| ostracized. His values haven't moved anywhere from eight
| years ago when he was good enough to be president, so
| something else must have changed.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >to be ostracized
|
| He is not ostracized in the way I would consider it. As
| far as I know Republicans still work with him, are
| willing to let him sponsor bills, etc. My understanding
| is he is still invited to Republican lunches as well.
|
| I think we are working with two different understandings
| of cancellation. He will almost certainly lose his next
| election though.
|
| >he was good enough to be president
|
| Well not good enough since he lost to Obama. Just because
| you win a primary doesn't mean the majority actually
| supports you.
|
| >so something else must have changed.
|
| I think people forgot what his views were. People have
| nostalgia and remembered they thought he was better than
| Obama which turned him into a more mainstream
| conservative in their mind. I think there are other
| things at play like Romney being a Morman and also having
| name recognition.
| benrbray wrote:
| To clarify, I think you're right, and that all the
| disagreement about cancel culture really boils down to
| semantic arguments about what the word "cancel" means and
| whether it is subjectively fair or unfair in a given
| situation. I would argue that voting someone out of
| office is a democratic way of literally cancelling them.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I think that the most widely accepted definition of
| "cancelling culture" is suppressing someone that has
| opinions different than yours. For example you can cancel
| a comic that has different political views. Opposing to
| that, when you have someone representing you, either a
| voted politician or hired attorney, it is not cancel
| culture if you disagree and want to be represented by
| someone else.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| The woke movement is extremely anti cultural-right and
| extremely pro economic-right.
|
| Which right are you talking about?
| 1337shadow wrote:
| > Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like
| 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal')
| for something that does not really represent that political
| ideology, you are at risk of further polarizing such debates?
|
| That's missing polsci 101, left/right exist, that's why they
| have names, not the opposite.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum
| clusterfish wrote:
| Assuming the US:
|
| Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on
| the left? I don't.
|
| Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak against
| the "woke" crowd? I know very few. Almost all of them who
| speak on the topic, speak in unequivocal support of "woke"
| ideas and talking points.
|
| If "the left" doesn't want to be equated with the woke
| culture, they should publicly and consistently disown it. You
| know, in the same manner as they demand that conservatives
| disown Trump and his crowd to not be counted as racists.
|
| It's in everyone's power to start extinguishing the extremes.
| Until then, I'll take silence on your nearest extreme as your
| tacit approval of it.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| What is this "the left"? Bernie Sanders, by far the most
| left leaning of the democratic presidential candidates was
| hugely against the narrative that Trump voters were
| racists. Noam Chomsky has an extremely long track record of
| being extremely consistent in his support of free speech
| and open debate in a way that the most obsessive first
| amendment types would rarely stick to.
|
| Amongst the more left leaning people I know there was a
| hugely negative attitude towards the CNN/MSNBC style
| coverage of the past 4 years that fixated on Trump and
| conspiracy theories and gotcha stories.
|
| Every side is gonna be smeared, it's much more important to
| look at what they're actually trying to offer people. And
| offering nothing but vague platitudes tends to be worse
| than offering lies, as Hillary's pretty vapid 2016 campaign
| showed. This move by github seemed to bring more attention
| to them working with ICE and the like than anything else
| that I could see.
|
| $15 min wage was super popular in Florida, Trump won
| Florida by a significant margin. Had the dems actually
| offered this obviously popular thing and stood by it that
| state could've turned out very differently as it'd force
| Trump to take a side on something that mattered to people.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Even this article that we are commenting on seems to me
| to be a _leftist_ critique of liberal/moderate virtual
| signalling, and is calling for them to actually do things
| that matter for anti-racism.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| And the majority of the comments implicitly conflate left
| and liberal (and thus seem to assume that Joe Biden and
| Bill Gates are leftists).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on
| the left?
|
| The best I've seen is sentiments along the lines of "yeah
| that's overkill" which is about equivalent to what fiscal
| conservatives and libertarians were saying about the
| moralizing christian right back when those clowns ran the
| show.
|
| People don't generally speak out against people who make
| their positions look like a reasonable middle ground. Woke
| crap makes basically every mainstream left position look
| reasonable by comparison so of course they don't want it to
| die. It makes them look good.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| >Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise on
| the left?
|
| Yes. The majority of them are performative liberals.
|
| >Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak
| against the "woke" crowd?
|
| Yes. There is infighting to an extent but it's really not
| hard to find leftist critiques of what you call woke
| culture.
|
| >If "the left" doesn't want to be equated with the woke
| culture, they should publicly and consistently disown it.
|
| I highly doubt bad faith actors would care about what
| people on the left are doing. Sure hasn't stopped you from
| mischaracterizing them all this while.
|
| >You know, in the same manner as they demand that
| conservatives disown Trump and his crowd.
|
| You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding as to who
| "the left" are. The majority of actual (not what passes for
| American left) leftists will agree that disowning "Trump
| and his crowd" is the same kind of performative wokeness
| that you accuse liberals of. Disowning and denouncing for
| appearances does nothing because it doesn't tackle the root
| cause that allowed a movement like Trump's or the larger
| right to come to power.
| clusterfish wrote:
| I didn't mean "disowning" as performative act but as an
| honest expression of preferences, including in-person and
| online discussions and voting choices.
|
| The general population publicly expressing their honest
| moderate views and opposing the extremes is not "for
| appearances". It's the core of what's missing in today's
| public debate, dominated by far left/right activists, bot
| farms, and personalities/celebs.
|
| My point is, the (American) left is justly associated
| with wokeness because they are its primary visible
| supporters. Maybe it's because those on the left who
| don't support it just don't speak up, in which case, my
| message is: please do. I'm not just going to assume your
| existence.
| orwin wrote:
| Associating the Democrat with "wokeness" is the same as
| assiociating Republicans with trump supporters and "Storm
| the Capitol" crowd.
|
| It's an easy way to discredit your political opponent.
|
| Also, i am sightly offended when people call the
| Democrats "left". I've talked to a real "leftist" (and by
| that i mean, sightly left on european political board),
| he felt forced to join the democrat to have a shot at a
| representative position, and some support for his flyers,
| but he agreed with my broth: the democrat would be barely
| center in europe.
|
| And honestly, the far right and the conventionnal right
| have only themselves to blame for the right of the
| woke/cancel culture. They are the one who started to open
| up the overton window, they can't start crying when their
| politicals opponent do the same.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| >as an honest expression of preferences, including in-
| person and online discussions and voting choices.
|
| As I mentioned, I've seen plenty of this, but with filter
| bubbles being what they are, it's hard to fault someone
| for not coming across them enough.
|
| What I'm saying is that it's not that they (we?) don't
| exist, more like you don't come across us because of xyz
| reasons that are getting harder and harder to pinpoint as
| discourse is manipulated each passing day.
|
| I also broadly agree that nuance is missing in the
| "modern debate", which causes bad faith interpretations
| like everyone on the left being either "woke police out
| to cancel everything you love" or "stalinists looking to
| establish USSRv2" and everyone in the right being
| "uneducated white people who don't know what's best for
| them" or outright Nazis. I wanted to push back against
| this kind of monolithic interpretation, hence my previous
| comment.
| justinclift wrote:
| > ... but as an honest expression of preferences,
| including in-person and online discussions and voting
| choices.
|
| Isn't that really dangerous though?
|
| eg if you're unlucky enough to become targeted by some of
| the more "out there" people, they can do career-and-
| effectively-life ending things by blowing it out of
| proportion, getting it in the media, etc.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak
| against the "woke" crowd?
|
| Yes. The "healthcare pls" meme springs to mind as a
| trivial, but very widespread, example https://www.google.co
| m/search?tbm=isch&q=healthcare%20pls%20...
| tremon wrote:
| _Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak
| against the "woke" crowd?_
|
| Yes, some big names here: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-
| justice-and-open-debate/
|
| (cue the no-true-scotsman argument how e.g. Noam Chomsky,
| Steven Pinker or Margaret Atwood aren't really "left").
|
| Many of them have gotten flak for signing it, too.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Well everything in the US currently is extremely polarized.
| Very few people on either side are going to criticize
| groups on their side, as they are spending all their energy
| fighting the other side.
| vmception wrote:
| and even pointing out even _that_ overlapping similarity
| will get you ostracized from ..... both sides
|
| (but neither side seems to know the other has even that
| little bit in common)
| viraptor wrote:
| > Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak
| against the "woke" crowd?
|
| There's a lot of them. But do you really expect them to do
| it all the time? Disavow every single misinformed but loud
| person? (Why don't you actively speak against Ted Bundy -
| are you supporting serial killers?)
|
| For example I can argue with my mom who says she's a
| feminist because women are better than men. Or I can spend
| that time preparing a lesson for the local programming club
| for kids. Why would I choose the first option? Who would
| benefit?
|
| Disavowing Trump is massively different - a single, elected
| person with power. Taking that position and bringing it to
| their local representatives would be worth the effort.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak
| against the "woke" crowd?
|
| Certainly. The majority really. That's in the Netherlands,
| but compared to the vocal internet crowd most people I know
| who vote on parties left of the political compass worry
| about climate, animal and human welfare, and inequality.
| Rarely will someone go all 'woke' and demand changes like
| this.
| blfr wrote:
| _That 's in the Netherlands_
|
| Haha, GP specifically assumed US in the first line of his
| comment and then got responses from the Netherlands and
| twice from UK. Yeah, it's largely an American phenomenon
| so far but I wouldn't be too happy about it because
| American culture exports these things all over the world
| and Hollywood is among the most woke.
|
| While you're protesting this notion on HN, plenty of your
| countrymen are learning English from some of the wokest
| trash on Netflix.
| pelasaco wrote:
| So I guess I don't even have to start with Germany,
| solving all issues changing the gender of all words to
| something more neutral, right?
| https://www.dw.com/en/gender-neutral-wording-is-making-
| germa...
| acheron wrote:
| Ha I saw that too. But there's nothing European HN users
| love more than commenting with their super well-informed
| takes about the US, so it should have been expected.
| Shacklz wrote:
| Yeah, the US is such an exceptional country that you can
| only have opinions about it when you're actually American
| - I hope you do see that this view is rather short
| sighted? Especially given that the US itself has no
| qualms with interfering in foreign politics all over the
| world.
| disgrunt wrote:
| I think you just proved the GP's sarcastic point.
| sremani wrote:
| The 800 pound gorilla at the edge of the world, you can
| have opinions.. but we are the motherfucking show!
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Shit show you mean
| sremani wrote:
| Doesn't matter as long as you are watching. The opposite
| of love is not hate, its indifference. Hate is just
| misconfigured love.
| yta21 wrote:
| The reason we chafe at this is because those opinions
| usually distill and treat us as a singular group. Like
| one of us saying "the British believe," for example,
| prefaced behind something the Welsh and English disagree
| on.
|
| Not your fault, though. Our internal borders are
| meaningful. We lie to ourselves that they aren't, and the
| rest of the world goes with that. Minnesota, Michigan,
| and Mississippi may as well be different countries for
| all they have in common.
| tremon wrote:
| _those opinions usually distill and treat us as a
| singular group_
|
| Whereas US' opinions on foreigners are always balanced,
| well-nuanced and fair?
| yta21 wrote:
| It's ironic that you did exactly what I mentioned is the
| problem while responding to a comment where I pointed out
| I'm aware of, and sensitive to, subtle cultural
| differences within Britain. I'm at least n=1 for giving a
| nuanced shit about people outside our borders, but that
| didn't fit your reductionist narrative. I get it, but I
| don't respect it.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Perhaps they chipped in because GPs phrase "Assuming the
| US" is not a very clear way of saying they want to talk
| specifically and exclusively about the US, or they
| thought it fair to broaden the discussion?
|
| I don't see how your sweeping generalisation in the last
| paragraph adds to the considered discussion here either.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Hmmm. You typed a whole comment without disavowing the
| extremists on the right. Should we take your silence as
| tacit approval?
|
| Of course we shouldn't. That's not how any of us should
| think about other people.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| stress is known to make systems less fragile.
|
| The way to improve things is to speak "truth to power",
| and the moral way to do it is to always "punch upwards".
|
| I've been riling against Trump, Bannon & Co for the past
| 4 years. Before that I've been vocal about Obama's reign
| of terror, his broken promises of closing gitmo, and his
| drone wars. No doubt in my next 4 years I'll be hurling
| insults against Biden.
|
| There is no need to add disclaimers or enumerating all
| things that a comment _doesn 't_ stand for. Doing so not
| only makes for "boring reading" but also looks like the
| person feels very insecure.
| Miner49er wrote:
| > Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak
| against the "woke" crowd? I know very few. Almost all of
| them who speak on the topic, speak in unequivocal support
| of "woke" ideas and talking points.
|
| This article we are commenting on is an example of this.
| bogomipz wrote:
| EDIT:
|
| >" Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak
| against the "woke" crowd?"
|
| Bill Maher is a fairly prominent liberal who has been
| vehemently anti-woke. This is regular fodder on his Friday
| night HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher as well in his
| regular standup comedy.
| bobthechef wrote:
| The question wasn't "Do you know any people on the left
| who aren't woke?" The question was "Do you know of anyone
| NOT on the left who is woke?" I.e., wokeness is a problem
| of the left.
| bogomipz wrote:
| I pasted the wrong quote from the OP, fixed.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Bill Maher would often be considered on the left based on
| the US paradigm.
| Jenk wrote:
| > Do you know a lot of "woke" people who aren't otherwise
| on the left? I don't.
|
| I'm in the UK so maybe it is different, but lately "woke"
| is _anyone_ that is seen as an enemy of the far right.
| Including those who are on the right of the spectrum, but
| just not as far as those throwing the "woke" label around.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _I 'm in the UK so maybe it is different, but lately
| "woke" is anyone that is seen as an enemy of the far
| right._
|
| I am also in the UK and there is lots of hand-wringing
| about "the extreme far right" but if you gently probe
| what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean
| "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn".
|
| I expect in a few months the term "ultra extreme far
| right" will enter the lexicon, and we'll keep adding
| superlatives as the term "right-wing" becomes more and
| more diluted and gradually encloses the entire population
| except for a few Momentum die-hards.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >I am also in the UK and there is lots of hand-wringing
| about "the extreme far right" but if you gently probe
| what people mean by "extreme far right" they mean
| "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn".
|
| Yeah, the funny thing about the UK is hearing from a
| country where the center-left party bombed an election
| _precisely_ because it couldn 't throw away its woke wing
| on two big "woke" issues (Brexit and antisemitism), and
| hearing that "anyone who's not far-right is woke". Well
| no. Keir Starmer won his place as head of Labour
| precisely by his willingness to reject further coalition
| with the "wokes", when Corbyn had been unwilling to
| really oppose them at all.
| Macha wrote:
| It feels odd to portray the 2019 election as lost on
| "wokeism", or that Corbyn let that policy take over. By
| the end, Corbyn was the target of that crowd, being
| branded as an anti-semite for what amounts to "being too
| critical of Israel", and "being leader while being seen
| as too soft on others accused of anti-semitism".
|
| Aside from that, the 2019 election was really a Brexit
| election. Labour failed to pick a side, and the
| Conservatives were promising to get Brexit done and were
| early enough in the negotiations that they could promise
| it would be a soft brexit or maximum brexit depending on
| which crowd they thought would hear their comments.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > if you gently probe what people mean by "extreme far
| right" they mean "Brexit" or "not electing Jeremy Corbyn"
|
| Bollocks. For starters, Brexit had support on the far-end
| of the left, who see the EU too liberal, e.g. https://www
| .ft.com/content/692f2578-fcbd-11e5-b5f5-070dca6d0... (RMT
| comes to mind since I work in that sector)
|
| I've certainly seen many outside the Momentum bubble
| being labelled 'Tory' (e.g. Lib Dems as 'yellow Tories',
| Blair/Starmer as 'red Tories', etc.), but you're speaking
| pure hyperbole.
|
| "Extreme far right" is reserved for the likes of National
| Front/BNP/UKIP/BritainFirst/BrexitParty/Reform/whatever
| they're calling themselves these days (plus their goons
| like EDL, DFLA, People's Front of Judea, Judean People's
| Front, etc.)
|
| It saddens me to see this sort of word-muddying
| (especially on HN), since it makes it easier to deflect
| this sort of crap:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_UK_Conservati
| ve_...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_the_UK_Cons
| erv...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Cons
| erv...
|
| (Not forgetting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitis
| m_in_the_UK_Labour_... to avoid the knee-jerks; although
| that's probably not dismissed as 'people call everything
| "extreme far right" these days')
| throwaway53453 wrote:
| Brexit party? Extreme far right?
| chriswarbo wrote:
| Yes, for a few years the Brexit Party was the
| I'mNotRacistBut Party. It looks like they've now been
| rumbled (hence becoming unelectable), so they're
| rebranding as Reform, which might last for another few
| years.
|
| The previous I'mNotRacistBut Party was UKIP (featuring
| Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as advisor for racially-charged
| issues, and denounced as racist 24 years ago by its own
| founder)
|
| Before that the BNP was scoring a few percent in general
| elections.
|
| And around and around it goes, all the way back to
| Mosley's blackshirts.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Nigel Farage left UKIP for that very reason. The Brexit
| party is fairly moderate and would be described as
| center-right, just shy of the conservatives.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| The Brexit Party was just a face-saving rebrand for UKIP.
| It didn't take long for the mask to start slipping, with
| the party's founder resigning after retweeting racist
| posts from far-right figures.
|
| Of course, Farage himself may denounce such things:
|
| > I set the party up, she was the administrator that got
| it set up.
|
| (
| https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/12/former-
| ukip... )
|
| Which is an interesting contrast to his remarks when the
| party was being formed:
|
| > This was Catherine's idea entirely - but she has done
| this with my full knowledge and my full support.
|
| ( https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/the-new-
| ukip-nige... )
|
| Friendly reminder that it's very easy, and very common,
| for racists to disavow their racism when it's expedient
| to do so (e.g. an extreme example
| https://youtu.be/zcoYKuoiUrY?t=1568 )
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _the likes of NationalFront /BNP/UKIP_
|
| By putting BNP and UKIP in the same list you have just
| proved my point.
|
| Is Rustie Lee "ultra extreme far right" in your opinion?
| https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/who-is-
| rustie-le...
| Jenk wrote:
| The distance between UKIP and Far Right is not a wide
| gap:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/03/new-ukip-
| membe...
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > Is Rustie Lee "ultra extreme far right" in your
| opinion?
|
| No. In my opinion, Rustie Lee is not "ultra extreme far
| right". I don't see why you're asking though, since I
| didn't call UKIP "ultra extreme far right" either; or any
| one or thing, for that matter. So I don't know what point
| you're trying to make; that racists will always fall back
| on the "I have a black friend" defence?
|
| In any case, I deliberately avoided referring to specific
| individuals, since that often devolves into he-said/she-
| said accusations, and metaphysical circle-jerking about
| the 'true intent' of this or that. Tangentially, it's
| useful to the far right when discussions around them or
| their tactics devolve into such petty bickering, since
| it's a useful distraction towards easily denounced
| anecdata (hence putting their audience more at ease with
| the bigotry, and hence nudging the overton window a
| little more). After all, it's no coincidence that white
| supremacists deny the existence of systemic racism
| (unless it's against "whites", of course).
|
| Whilst bringing up a person (or, to reduce circle-
| jerking, the outcomes of their actions), is fair game in
| a discussion about people's actions; I would recommend
| _against_ pivoting an existing discussion _towards_ some
| person or other, as you 've done, since that can help to
| entrench far right memes (e.g. that racism is only about
| individuals, etc.).
|
| With that in mind, I would point out that I am not the
| first to put UKIP in the same list as the BNP; UKIPs
| founder did the same (he cited the party's increasing
| racism and ties to the BNP as the reasons he left in the
| late 1990s).
| clusterfish wrote:
| Totally agree. Everyone who's not far right is woke and
| everyone who isn't far left is racist, if you listen to
| Twitter etc. That's intentional, gotta make moderates
| afraid to speak up, leaving the discussion to extremists,
| bot farms and professional opinion havers.
|
| But I was talking about a more agreeable definition of
| "woke". Many people on the left are very comfortable with
| this subculture, just like many people on the right are
| very comfortable with Trump. I very rarely hear people on
| the left saying anything against the woke culture, so in
| my mind it's very reasonable to equate or at least
| strongly affiliate the two.
| waheoo wrote:
| Many people are not ok with either. We just left social
| media a decade ago but still somehow have to put up with
| its bullshit leaking out all over the internet.
| why_Mr_Anderson wrote:
| What is "far right"? Is there "near right"? "middle-reach
| right"? 'Far right' is just a BS title used to 'adjust'
| the perception of people that anyone not left wing is
| crazy extremist nutjob.
| Veen wrote:
| > Do you know a lot of "left" people who actively speak
| against the "woke" crowd?
|
| I know of quite a few prominient anti-woke left-leaning
| people in the UK: Helen Pluckrose, Andrew Doyle, Nick
| Cohen, Kathleen Stock, and so on.
| Aunche wrote:
| There is this letter that criticizes cancel culture:
|
| https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
|
| Of course, the woke left views somehow views this as
| infighting, and somehow trying to primary away more
| conservative Democrats somehow is not.
| vmception wrote:
| > Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like
| 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal')
| for something that does not really represent that political
| ideology
|
| I don't have the experience of any other group doing this. I
| agree that it is not inherently a political ideology.
|
| The people involved proudly proclaim to be left and liberal.
| I think it is important to say that because I know people in
| other parts of the country that see these as insults and
| would be surprised to know that people commonly self-identify
| as these terms.
|
| I find that this group thinks their behavior is better and
| more helpful than apathy, "silence", and the _idea_ of
| rampant exclusionary hate from the right. When its really not
| better, its different, but its not more helpful. There is
| absolutely a constant threat from people afraid of bird
| watchers in a park, people that blend into their ranks and
| are willing to weaponize their understanding of race, two
| seconds after donating to the Democratic Party.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| The problem lies not in that you are wrong in concluding
| that these people are adherents of leftists ideologies
| (most are), but that you are falling for the _pars pro
| toto_ fallacy: people who think that 'master' is an
| offensive word to use in a source code repository are
| 'left/liberal', thus all or most of 'the left/liberals' are
| such people.
|
| You are saying 'this group thinks' as if all people who
| would identify as adhering to leftist ideologies (from the
| extremes to common social democracy) act like this. You are
| trying to stuff people into boxes: you are either team A or
| team B. That is polarization; something we can sorely do
| without.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Again, availability bias. The people screaming the
| loudest about this are also screaming the loudest about
| other Left/Liberal issues. The normal left-leaning folks
| don't get heard. It's pretty natural to conclude that
| this group represents the whole.
|
| I'm also convinced that the screamers aren't really
| interested in stopping black people from being offended
| (let alone actually harassed/murdered). I think they're
| much more interested in getting recognition for fighting
| the fight.
| kodah wrote:
| I think you're right. I'm an independent and I'm guilty
| of doing this to right _and_ left leaning folk, but I 've
| done it because I believe that the people screaming will
| only listen to people within their ideological interests.
| It was my way of making them accountable for their
| compatriots that are loud enough for me to notice. I've
| also stopped doing this because it's not really
| effective. People don't feel like they should be
| responsible for outliers and I somewhat agree, but don't
| know how to solve the problem of vocal trouble makers.
| vmception wrote:
| You are correct and I understand the logical flaw.
|
| Its just the 99% correlation with my life experience,
| observations of real impactful polarization, which leave
| me without another way to describe it.
|
| Be my guest in rewriting it more accurately.
| hayd wrote:
| The problem lies that there is not enough (any?) push
| back from this kind of garbage (and specifically in this
| case) from the 'left/liberals'.
|
| There needs to be push-back if they [those left/liberals
| not in this camp] want to disassociate. But where is it?
| I don't think there is appetite for this argument.
|
| I know many of left/liberal-types (in the Bay Area) all
| who either believe, or accept this as silly but somehow
| think it is meaningful to some people and so should be
| gone along with...
| seibelj wrote:
| The podcast Blocked and Reported is founded by liberals
| who are tired of this. Highly recommend.
| [deleted]
| pydry wrote:
| >The people involved proudly proclaim to be left and
| liberal.
|
| I don't think Microsoft do claim that, nor is that really
| why they did this.
|
| Microsoft is a profit seeking entity that is trying to
| maximize its profit and goodwill (an intangible asset) at
| the same time.
|
| Thus for them the best moves are those which:
|
| * Have minimal cost.
|
| * Distract people away from profitable dirty laundry which
| doesn't attract goodwill (e.g. concentration camp
| contracts).
|
| * Buy them some goodwill among some people - especially
| through the mechanism of "outrage marketing" (people who by
| dint of attacking "the right" when they attack this will
| naturally defend Microsoft - a bit like how Nike used colin
| Kaepernick).
|
| They did this because "change master to main" appeared in a
| local maxima that maximized these three conditions.
|
| This is being reflected all around the corporate sphere
| because what applies to Microsoft applies to a lot of other
| companies.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Just trying to avoid getting Twitter dogpiled
| hanklazard wrote:
| Yeah, that definitely seems to be a big part of it. And I
| don't understand. Okay so your company is the target of
| some activists on Twitter for a few days. End of the
| world? Maybe I just can't understand what it's like to
| lead a big company.
|
| Just abut the only company to handle one of these
| situations in a way that seems rational to me is Trader
| Joe's. Some people on Twitter decided that having a
| burrito labeled "Trader Jose" was a horrendous form of
| cultural appropriation and demanded the company change
| all products with this kind of word play in branding.
| TJ's considered it and just basically said "no, move
| along" and the whole woke twitterverse moved on to some
| other target.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/20
| 20/...
| ben509 wrote:
| I think when individuals or even companies roll over,
| it's because the mob's attack can be quite scary. It's
| easy to point at the people who stay their ground and
| say, "see, they didn't cave and did just fine."
|
| But that's an obervation we make in hindsight, and
| without knowing it was like for the targets. At the time,
| their phone is probably ringing off the hook, media are
| calling, etc., and they have no idea when the attack will
| end or if people are getting fired, advertisers
| withdrawing or any of that.
|
| I'll applaud anyone, left, right or other-vectored, who
| stands up to mobs, though. I'm not a fan of the phrase
| "cancel culture," but it gets one thing right: it is a
| cultural development, both the culture of outrage _and_
| the culture of appeasing the mob. The injustice of a,
| outraged mob declaring itself judge, jury and executioner
| only works if targets try to appease them. So while the
| culture of outrage is a hard problem because it 's
| diffuse, anyone who refuses to accept that injustice is
| has an outsized effect in pushing back against the
| appeasement side of it.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I've been on the sharp end of a minor version of this,
| and you're right, it's scary. I only coped by not paying
| attention to it all and buckling down to deal with the
| things that matter. And alcohol, which helped, though it
| cost me in other ways.
| nomdep wrote:
| Exactly like any bully. Which is what these people are.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Agree completely. But you have to understand the mindset
| of everyone involved.
|
| The marketing/PR people in any organisation care
| passionately about what other people think of the
| organisation - naturally, because it's their job to care
| about this.
|
| Journalists are insanely influenced by what other people
| are saying and love nothing better than a nice piece of
| juicy controversy to get those ads clicked.
|
| Stock markets are notoriously twitchy about rumours and
| "public perception".
|
| Most corporate CEO's got to that position by climbing a
| greasy pole where what other people think of you is
| literally the most important factor in your climb.
|
| So almost everybody involved in making these kinds of
| decision are exactly the people most vulnerable to being
| bullied like this.
|
| But if you can resist - there's only a few thousand
| Twitterati who will bother even trying to enforce any
| kind of boycott, and they're probably not your customers
| in the first place. It's completely ineffectual if you
| can just ignore it.
| hanklazard wrote:
| Yes great points. Another factor that I hadn't considered
| until recently (can't remember who pointed this out) is
| that most C-suite employees / executive editors at media
| co's / deans at universities are probably in their 50's
| and are in what is arguably the most financially critical
| parts of their life ... as in, they have a big mortgage
| (or two), need to be contributing significantly to their
| retirement, are likely staring at at least a few VERY
| expensive college tuitions, etc. They're levered up both
| literally and figuratively. The cost of losing a job in
| this situation is a serious threat that likely has many
| taking what they feel is the safest path to keeping their
| job, and many times that is whatever that really loud
| crowd is demanding.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| True. Also, office politics means that senior management
| at large organisations tend to be very risk-averse (the
| old "try not to be in the room when a decision is made"
| trope).
|
| Telling the geeks in the IT basement to change the name
| of the "master branch" on that "git" thing that the
| organisation apparently uses, so that thousands of angry
| people (some of them journalists at large media
| organisations) aren't shouting at you on Twitter seems
| like such an easy choice to make ;)
| deadbytes wrote:
| I think it's a combination of both:
|
| a) modern corporate culture trying to make employees take
| on the company they work for as part of their personal
| identity
|
| b) young, liberal people working in PR departments who
| would be horrified if anyone personally called them
| racist / sexist / homophobic etc
|
| These people go to work, see some random account on
| twitter saying "<your company> is racist" and a) and b)
| combined makes this feel like a personal attack on them
| that they have to defend and social signal against.
|
| This is the most likely explanation I have come up with,
| because as you said, none of this really makes sense from
| a logical business perspective.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Calling welfare or regulation "basic goals" is misleading:
| the first is not basic as there is no right to welfare, but
| forcing others to support welfare while regulation is not a
| purpose by itself, it is a means to achieve specific goals.
|
| Seeding wrong ideas in what seems to be a neutral context is
| not nice(tm).
| newswasboring wrote:
| > Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like
| 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal')
| for something that does not really represent that political
| ideology, you are at risk of further polarizing such debates?
|
| > It does have all the looks of virtue signalling without any
| real justification.
|
| If you combine both the statements, you are committing a no
| true Scotsman fallacy.
| runarberg wrote:
| When it comes to political ideology invoking a _no true
| Scotsman_ is not always invalid.
|
| As an example, as a leftist I can say: "A socialist
| revolution without social justice is not socialist". Yes,
| this is a no true Scotsman fallacy, but here I am merely
| disavowing a subgroup of people that might share my
| economic believes that workers ought to take over the means
| of production, but fail to see that the racial injustice in
| our economic system is part of the problem. In my view, if
| you don't see that, you are not a _real leftist_.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I don't think so. It's not that no true Scotsmen are
| idiots, it's just that the idiots are not representative.
| Maybe 10% of Scotsmen are idiots. The other 90% are fine.
|
| The idiots are just very loud on social media.
| newswasboring wrote:
| This is a soft form of the same argument. Whatever may be
| the proportion of those people, the community still has
| to own up to it if this portion exists.
| tremon wrote:
| _the community still has to own up to it_
|
| Why? For what purpose are you burdening 90% of True
| Scotsmen with an obligation of your choosing?
| newswasboring wrote:
| Because it's a part of their community and each community
| needs to take care of its own problems.
| make3 wrote:
| The actual (socialist) American left (think AOC, Bernie
| Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) calls this liberalism, and complains
| that it is more about posturing than actual change. So this is
| only a criticism of the left if you are very far to the right.
| OJFord wrote:
| Even when it's an overt master-controlling-slave analogy, what's
| the actual problem with that?
|
| It's not like there's any 'har-har silly slave' value judgement
| attached, why is it any different to 'teacher and pupil',
| 'controller and controlled', 'leader and follower'?
| Bellamy wrote:
| I think this is not about offending black people. It's about
| trying to forget what a white man did to black people.
|
| It should never be forgotten what Nazis did to jews or white to
| black. Naming a main branch is just... A joke?
| MockObject wrote:
| For context, I'm an African American, so many of my ancestors
| were slaves.
|
| I don't want more people thinking about my race. I also don't
| want my presence to constitute a burden on my coworkers. I want
| white people to be colorblind around me.
|
| Unfortunately, white people don't care what I want.
| scottydelta wrote:
| what sucks more is Github creating default main branch on repo
| creation. It's an unwarrented hassle to rename it and if you
| don't rename it, you will definitely try to push to master and
| then realize the mistake and push to main, every effing time.
| MrWiffles wrote:
| Just wanted to call out this excerpt from the article - the
| author makes an extremely good point:
|
| > I don't want this post to be about The Solutions(tm) but here's
| one for your noggin; there is this a significant intersection
| between career changers/developers coming from non traditional
| backgrounds (i.e. people with no CS degree) and minorities. Put
| your money where your fucking mouths are and hire these people.
| Every summer countless tech companies of all sizes run internship
| programs, would it be a stretch to run an apprenticeship program
| of the same length for non traditional applicants?
|
| People of color often don't have the cultural or economic
| incentive (or capability) to engage in STEM roles for many
| reasons (especially in the United States), so an emphasis on
| bringing in people from _non-traditional backgrounds_ can have a
| real, quantifiable impact on workplace diversity.
| timvisee wrote:
| > Either do some real shit or stay silent. Stay the fuck out of
| our way and don't pretend you care. Then we can all get on with
| our lives.
|
| Yes! Also, I think that if you see 'master' for a git branch as a
| problem, there is something seriously wrong with you.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.
|
| I've seen many Microsoft employees internally comment on how
| they don't like the term "master branch". I believe Microsoft's
| renaming (this is my personal belief) was somewhat influenced
| by that internal push.
|
| It may not mean much to you, but if it made some people feel
| more comfortable it's a good change and has very few downsides.
| timvisee wrote:
| Thanks for your comment. Though I don't agree with it, it
| does give a refreshing insight.
| ayo4yayo wrote:
| I don't like having meetings after lunch. Should the entire
| world change to suit my preferences?
| bredren wrote:
| In this time, software engineering is likely the most
| powerful professional skill in the entire world.
|
| As a result, the entire world is changing to suit the
| desires of software engineers. (such as throwing massive
| sums of money at them)
|
| So if your contributions are significant enough, your
| entire world will change to suit your preferences, whether
| the people in your world want to or not.
| pragmatic8 wrote:
| I'm not sure pandering to their comfort is the right thing to
| do here. Why are they associating "master branch" with
| slavery in the first place?
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| It's not pandering, it's taking an action that makes some
| people feel more comfortable at work. They aren't doing
| anything to provide pleasure to the people asking, they are
| doing it to help reduce their pain.
|
| I've spoken to multiple black Americans internally about
| this and they strongly associate "master" with slavery
| since members of their families where literally owned by
| people and had to call those people "master".
|
| Maybe it would matter to them less if the US had abolished
| slavery and made people of all color equal, but since we
| instead created racist policies that historically put non-
| whites at a disadvantage, I can see how they have a strong
| dislike for that word.
| bredren wrote:
| This is my sense as well. Much of change comes down to daily
| "inconvenience." In that way, Guggenheim's "An Inconvenient
| Truth" nailed this.
|
| Attacks on "main" as being ineffectual or indications that
| "the real problem to solve is this over here so don't do
| this" doesn't diminish the value of iterative changes.
|
| SCRUM focuses on learning by doing, and we may look back on
| main vs master as an experiment that had no effect. Or we may
| look back on branches with a master branch and feel
| differently about them. It is far too early to tell.
| alimbada wrote:
| 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.
| Ceezy wrote:
| 44% of London is black.
| petr_tik wrote:
| It was 13% according to the 2011 Census. https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London#Ethnic...
|
| We are still waiting for the results of the current census.
| Where did you get the 44% figure from?
| shoefindortz wrote:
| The 44% figure comes from the Greater London Authority, but
| should be clarified a bit. There is a BBC article[0] about
| this which states "... 44% of the city's people are now of
| black or ethnic minority origins".
|
| [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-31082941
| robocat wrote:
| Incorrect. 44% of Greater London is _minority ethnicity_ or
| black. Minority ethnicities included Chinese, Indian, Arab,
| Caribbean etcetera.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London#2011_C.
| ..
| rendang wrote:
| 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.
| wokwokwok wrote:
| sympathetic, but also, feel that:
|
| > I don't want this post to be about The Solutions(tm)...
|
| is lazy.
|
| yep, thats right, doing something meaningful is hard, and
| figuring out what to do is too.
|
| ...but like, raging for 3 pages and giving 3 lines to consider
| what solutions might look like is just a rant.
|
| I get it, maybe if more people were focused on finding solutions,
| we'd get better solutions... but come on, lead by example.
|
| "Im angry" doesn't fix things.
|
| "what youre doing doesnt help" doesnt fix things.
|
| Someone has to actually do the hard work of coming up with
| solutions that are compatible with the HR and budget demands of
| large companies, otherwise, you get lame ass outcomes like this
| from the people who (perhaps misguidedly) tried.
|
| Companies will go for minimal effort, minimal cost, minimal
| disruption unless you give them a compelling alternative
| narrative; its just daydreaming to expect anything else.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Now I know this post is going to be jumped on by a whole bunch of
| tech bro going "I TOLD YOU, ITS POINTLESS TO CHANGE THE NAME" and
| yes, yes it is, for the reasons described so clearly by OP.
|
| However what the tech bros then get upset by is increasing
| participation in IT in general. muttering things like "lowering
| standards" and "they'll get promotion before me". No darlings,
| they are doing a better job, because they are not snowflakes who
| throw their toys out of the pram for being asked to actually
| document their shit, or not replace good code with an entirely
| new language because they were bored.
|
| I work for a FAANG in london, and what pisses me off is that
| despite having >4,000 staff in london alone, we only had 10, yes
| fucking 10 apprentices in 2019.
|
| For those that don't know, its essentially a free pipeline of
| eager, cheap and clever teenagers. You get them for 3 days a week
| at below minimum wage, and they spend two days a week getting
| academic education. Whats more, because they are local to central
| london they are actually representative of the local
| demographics.
|
| And they have the brass bollocks to complain about how difficult
| it is to recruit.
|
| We had a juneteenth thing, where lots of our leadership took that
| as a sign to get a new headshot done so they could put the
| tiniest ring of text saying how they will work tirelessly to
| increase D&I.
|
| almost a year later, and with a huge glut of 18-25s out of work,
| have we increased the apprentice count? nope.
|
| fucking sort it out, and no, a butterfly rule is not going to fix
| it.
| ayo4yayo wrote:
| Have anything relevant to share?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Microsoft did the same with Edge. They forked Chrome but they did
| a big search/replace of certain configuration keys... Everything
| called Whitelist is now called Allowlist.
|
| This tripped me up in work, as the configuration variables I
| pushed for Kerberos authentication no longer worked.
| AuthNegotiateDelegateWhitelist became
| AuthNegotiateDelegateAllowlist and AuthServerWhitelist became
| AuthServerAllowlist. Sure, I understand why this is better. What
| I have a problem with is the way this is done. It wasn't very
| well documented or announced, they just did a big search replace,
| on internal configuration variables that no end user will ever
| see.
|
| I don't even mind the work, but at least make it known. This was
| not handled very well and had all the hallmarks of an emergency
| PR-fueled scramble. It feels more like window dressing than an
| actual desire to change things.
| smashah wrote:
| Cannot argue with any of the points brought up by the author at
| all. That being said, "main" is a better name for that branch,
| especially for people new to VCS. The change would've been
| worthwhile on its own without the expectation of a standing
| ovation.
| 3saryHg6LP2e wrote:
| It's fine to think "main" or "trunk" or whatever is a better
| name, it's very easy with git to use a branch with whatever
| name you like. The issue I and others have (and I appreciate
| you aren't saying this in your comment) is we don't agree that
| "master" is "problematic" at all.
| kmlx wrote:
| at an older company we used main. then we created master and
| development. and the master/main branch was set to development.
| good luck to anyone inspecting that repo!
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| The entertainment value of watching whining snowflake techbros
| get absolutely foaming mad about something they claim doesn't
| matter at all makes the tiny amount of work I had to do to
| support this in my build system completely worthwhile.
| rvnx wrote:
| Wasn't it GitLab actually ?
|
| Otherwise, about the article, it's unfair to say that we need to
| correct the AI/ML to a more "neutral" perspective.
|
| I'm always worried about artificial "neutrality", as neutrality
| often ends up just adding more weight to the perspective that you
| consider more socially and politically acceptable.
|
| In Australia for example, French people have a bad reputation
| because they tend to steal from shops ("french shopping":
| https://www.traveller.com.au/french-nickers-cause-a-stink-do...
| ).
|
| If tomorrow you build software for the shops to identify risks;
| well, whether you like it or not, it'll target French.
|
| Should we artificially add more examples of non-stealing French
| in the dataset just because it's socially more acceptable ?
|
| (I took French because it's socially and legally ok to blame
| French for mistakes of this planet, and I was born there, but
| replace with whatever suits you)
| skytreader wrote:
| The current problem surrounding using AI/ML in this area is
| that it can't distinguish between Jean Pierre and John Paul,
| Luc and Luke and authorities rely on it with no nuance or
| discernment.
|
| You worry about artificial neutrality creeping in to the
| algorithms, but the algorithms already reflect _human bias_. We
| can 't even reliably tell where someone is from yet we expect
| our AI to do it close to flawlessly.
|
| I'm from East Asia and I think I can distinguish an East
| Asian's country of origin maybe 70% of the time. But 70% is
| nowhere near good enough if a person's life literally depends
| on the decision. And I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find
| someone even in around 90% accuracy. Migration and shared
| culture, among other things, make this difficult.
| brmgb wrote:
| > Should we artificially add more examples of non-stealing
| French in the dataset just because it's socially more
| acceptable ?
|
| You are completely missing the point.
|
| This issue is simple. Take two groups A and B. Ceteris paribus
| if you control twice as much in group A than group B you will
| see twice as much positive events in group A. That's a sampling
| bias. Then you conclude group A is worth and should be
| controlled more leading to even more positive. It's all about
| sampling bias and feedback loops.
| Insanity wrote:
| It's GitHub. If you create a new repository it will
| automatically suggest you change the name to `main` on the
| 'setup page'.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Actually it's in git now. I just got this warning when doing
| git init . last night.
|
| Eh I realized the warning isn't in english but it basically
| says master will be changed to main and how I could set a
| global setting and how I could rename a newly created branch.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > it basically says master will be changed to main
|
| It doesn't do this. Here is the message:
| hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch.
| This default branch name hint: is subject to
| change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
| hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this
| warning, call: hint: hint: git config
| --global init.defaultBranch <name> hint:
| hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main',
| 'trunk' and hint: 'development'. The just-created
| branch can be renamed via this command: hint:
| hint: git branch -m <name>
| Freak_NL wrote:
| You beat me to it posting that output. Still, the 'This
| default branch name is subject to change' feels a bit
| awkward.
| [deleted]
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Otherwise, about the article, it's unfair to say that we need
| to correct the AI/ML to a more "neutral" perspective.
|
| I work in ML. its not neutrality, its representation.
|
| if you use your own staff to train a face detector, a detector
| to detect small faces in CCTV, it'll only work on your staff.
| It won't pick up children, anybody who is slightly brown,
| anyone with big hair, or people who wear hats.
|
| thats rubbish if you expect your models to work in the wider
| world.
|
| don't think of is as political, think of it as trying to
| release a word processor to the world that only support ANSII,
| and wondering why its not selling overseas.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| I think that measures like renaming stuff creates a bunch of
| problems that ultimately make things harder than they already
| are.
|
| Once people understand that there is a changing nomenclature that
| has to be used they will completely shut up about a topic in fear
| of repercussions from a hate mob. This in turn will eventually
| lead to the unconscious but very real behavior of distancing from
| minority groups. It worsens things. People need to understand
| that by forcing language change they will further divide people.
|
| Geroge Floyd isn't dead because Linus called the git branch
| master. He is dead because of police misconduct. And GitHub won't
| be able to change that, the government needs to send police
| officers to academy for longer and train them right. They also
| need to introduce an environment in which this behavior is not
| tolerated and officers will lose their jobs if they behave this
| way.
| Minor49er wrote:
| George Floyd is dead because of his own actions. This video by
| Vigilante Intelligence called "George Floyd Bodycam, Finally
| The Truth" covers it comprehensively:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=j1KMTa2eLXY
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > George Floyd is dead because of his own actions.
|
| The video doesn't mention or show suicide. If you think that
| death is an acceptable outcome for a simple arrest with
| multiple police officers on site you got an serious issue.
| This is neither okay nor acceptable. Those police officers
| were incredibly incompetent. Incapable of handling a man,
| supposedly on a drug that has sedative effects, with 3 man
| back-up.
| augustk wrote:
| This got me thinking about the Unix command "kill". As a non-
| American I would prefer a less violent name.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| EXACTLY THIS, thanks for writing it our clear and loud
| mfontani wrote:
| I've had to deal with projects where the "main" branch was named:
| master, main, blead.
|
| I almost never "name" that "main" branch, thanks to commands and
| aliases.
|
| When I want to pull (and rebase) to the "main" branch, I run "git
| prom". When I want to check out the "main" branch, I "git com".
| What actually happens depends on what the project's "main" branch
| is. If a project later moves to a "live" branch, I'll just update
| the "git-main" script to detect it ahead of the rest, and off I
| go.
|
| https://github.com/mfontani/los-opinionated-git-tools/blob/m...
| is less than ten lines of bash.
|
| git-com is really just: git checkout "$(git main)"
|
| git-prom is really just: git pull --rebase origin "$(git main)"
|
| I'm not particularly sold on "main" vs "master" being an
| important thing, but if it's important to some I at least want to
| ensure I don't get frustrated when interacting with a project
| which uses it. With the above aliases and functions and programs,
| I don't care anymore.
|
| main, master, blead... call it whatever.
| calibas wrote:
| 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, there's this idea
| that we just have to change the terminology around, ban a word,
| and suddenly racism will disappear. Both political parties, the
| mainstream media, and major corporations all love this, because
| they get to make superficial changes and then sweep racism under
| the rug.
|
| Now if GitHub wanted to do something truly radical to fight
| racism, they'd change the name of the "master" branch to the
| "black" branch. I understand most people will be resistant to
| this, simply because "black" has a negative connotation, but
| please be aware of your own personal reactions to the word, as
| that's my whole point. The word "black" also means darkness,
| evil, it's something dirty, while "white" means purity, goodness,
| and cleanliness. And I'm just pointing out the what's already in
| people's minds, don't shoot the messenger!
|
| 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.
|
| Instead of practicing censorship, which is reprehensible in a
| free society, and reminiscent of the same kind of
| authoritarianism that produces master/slave relationships among
| human beings, why not do something actually progressive? Have we
| forgotten what that looks like? Challenge society's entire
| perception of the word "black", rename the "master" branch
| "black", and begin to associate the word with something good for
| once. Start by changing the way people think. Turn black into
| something positive, and if you really want to see people's racism
| come out, use white in a negative sense.
| luckylion wrote:
| > 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 white" (schwarz auf weiss) refers
| to (usually black) ink on (usually white) paper and nobody has
| race on their mind when they say it. We're not wearing black at
| funerals "because it's wrong that somebody died". Black numbers
| are good ("schwarze Zahlen schreiben" = "writing black numbers"
| = earning money), red numbers usually aren't. Waving the white
| flag isn't great. Black/brown bread is delicious, and so is
| Schwarzbier if you're into stronger tastes in beer, and you can
| get black-out drunk with enough of it. There's really no
| association with Africans with that usage of "black".
|
| I have a feeling that a lot of people believe that first came
| racism and Europeans looking down on Africans and then came
| "black = bad" associations in language. There was no European
| colonialism back then, Northern African slave raiders regularly
| went on slave raids to (mostly Southern) Europe etc. The use of
| black in that sense is, at least in German, at least 1200 years
| old, long before significant contact between Central Europe and
| Africa.
| calibas wrote:
| I present the Dictionary.com definition from 5 years ago,
| back before it was whitewashed: https://web.archive.org/web/2
| 0160314100133/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.
| mikece wrote:
| I am reminded of the quote from Malcolm X: "The only way the
| problem can be solved -- first, the white man and the black man
| have to be able to sit down at the same table. The white man has
| to feel free to speak his mind without hurting the feelings of
| that Negro, and the so-called Negro has to feel free to speak his
| mind without hurting the feelings of the white man. Then they can
| bring the issues that are under the rug out on top of the table
| and take an intelligent approach to get the problem solved."
|
| This quote, in a more complete context, starts at 1:06 in this
| clip:
| https://www.facebook.com/Malcolmxvideos/videos/4725356262694...
| 3saryHg6LP2e wrote:
| 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).
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I think fighting against racism and sexism is a good fight, and
| absolutely worth fighting for.
|
| With that said - those are quite low-hanging fruits, if someone
| wants to engage in virtue signaling. And many companies do.
|
| I also think that classism is an equally big problem in certain
| "elite" sectors. The diversity there is good, but most of the
| people - diverse in race or gender - still hail from the same
| socio-economic groups.
| viraptor wrote:
| > those are quite low-hanging fruits, if someone wants to
| engage in virtue signaling
|
| That's basically what fueled a specific part of tumblr for a
| long time. People one-upping each other about what is unjust
| and what everyone should be outraged about. I'm not sure as a
| whole it had a positive impact on the world.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Yes, I wish classism was discussed more. That's a huge issue,
| especially in other countries.
| terse_malvolio wrote:
| 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.
| nicbou wrote:
| Although I agree, I think language does impact perception.
| I'm not sure if the master/slave, blacklist/whitelist terms
| play any role, but I'm happy that we generally stopped
| calling everything gay as an insult. That changed in my short
| lifetime.
|
| I also noticed that gender neutral nouns and pronouns are
| more common in writing (for French and German). Again, that's
| a good thing.
|
| The craziest example I have is the term "useless mouths" in
| Nazi Germany. Imagine if your group had that label. I'm
| certainly glad it's not in use anymore.
| terse_malvolio wrote:
| > imagine if _your group_ had that label
| playpause wrote:
| I agree those examples represent positive changes. But what
| is the direction of causation? Did people become less
| homophobic because "gay" stopped being used as an insult,
| or the other way round? Did nazism end because people
| stopped saying "useless mouths", or the other way round?
|
| I think the simple answer is: it's both. Changes in
| attitude cause language changes, and vice versa. But the
| balance of these forces isn't necessarily equal, and it may
| tip from one side to the other at different times in
| history. I would speculate that, in a society with a
| sustainable pattern of moral 'growth', more importance is
| placed on improving our ideas (through open discussion,
| taking in a wide range of perspectives, including those we
| find disagreeable) and allowing most language changes to
| flow organically from that. If the focus shifts too far
| towards trying to directly influence what people say (at
| the level of words/phrases), we risk stunting moral
| progress by encoding the status quo as dogma. Which, unless
| we are sure we already have the answers to all future moral
| questions, would be bad.
| munchbunny wrote:
| I think the discrepancy mostly comes down to context and
| judgement. It's too tempting to forget to apply context
| and judgement because doing so requires substantially
| more research and mental effort.
|
| Language and culture are intertwined like electricity and
| magnetism. Clear causality is only approximate because it
| always goes both ways, and solutions have to tackle both
| fronts.
| Spivak wrote:
| > Did people become less homophobic because "gay" stopped
| being used as an insult.
|
| I can only speak from my own personal experience but yes!
| Absolutely 1000% yes. That is exactly the point and the
| intended goal of reclaiming the term.
| ulisesrmzroche wrote:
| Wittgenstein would say language matters more. So changing
| language does change norms.
| Spivak wrote:
| Hell, language _defines_ a lot of norms. Whether or not
| something is "a thing" boils down to whether there's a
| word for it. The difference between homosexuality being
| seen as a mental disorder and part of everyday life is
| how we talk about it.
| learnstats2 wrote:
| If you believe, as I do, that racism is a systemic problem,
| then there is no individual action that can fix racism.
|
| Should we therefore take no individual actions? I think this
| doesn't logically follow.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 3saryHg6LP2e wrote:
| Well, certainly there is language that is completely
| inappropriate, imagine what the default branch name _could_
| be called if we really were attempting to be non-inclusive.
|
| It's very, very clear what language that applies to, however.
| Natfan wrote:
| 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
| desktopninja wrote:
| Why can't we move this fast and effectively to eliminate the
| nonsensical concept of race?
|
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/race-human/The-history-of-t...
|
| Its 2021 and we're thoroughly adamant on tribalism.
| markdog12 wrote:
| And check out how GitLab frames their change:
| https://twitter.com/gitlab/status/1369777337252904960
|
| > You spoke and we listened
|
| Some voices are more equal than others, I guess.
| agustif wrote:
| I just hope they don't come for Stromae.
|
| Which is Maestro (master) in Verlan.
|
| leave the guy alone!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHoT4N43jK8
| buttholesurfer wrote:
| As a black dude this is so true. I can't believe the extent other
| people go to "help" the black community. When will you realize it
| has to come from within and a little name change does nothing to
| help but make you feel better.
| atomashpolskiy wrote:
| In Russia we have a joke that would roughly translate to this:
|
| Lesson in the primary school. Teacher says: "Kids, today we will
| be learning letter 'A'. Who can tell me some words that start
| with this letter?" Kids: "Apple! Address! Adventure!" One boy,
| Vova, says quietly: "Ass." "How rude, Vova!", the teacher
| exclaims, "There is no such word in English!". Vova, quietly:
| "How strange... Ass is there, but the word is not?"
|
| Sums it up pretty well, I think.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Interesting that "netsenzurnaia leksika" translates as "obscene
| language", whereas the literal translation would be "censored
| lexical expressions"; Interesting that in Russia censorship is
| always something imposed from above, whereas now in the US it's
| more a thing of social norms (where it is a bit harder to argue
| about where these norms came from).
| mythz wrote:
| Well 'main' is a more intuitive & UX friendly name than 'master'
| which new devs are going to intuitively relate to as it's
| commonly used to refer to the 'main thing', e.g. main road, main
| course, etc. I can't recall the last time I used 'Master' as a
| synonym to 'main' outside of technology (as a Redis Client author
| I still deal with Master nomenclature a bit). Can only think of
| 'Masters degree' but that has to do with Mastery knowledge rather
| than 'Master copy'. The only other usages of 'Master' I can think
| of (from TV & Films) is basically what they're trying to move
| away from.
|
| As a library author I often deprecate & rename new APIs when I
| can think of (or have been proposed) a more appropriate and a
| descriptive name to replace a misleading name. I put a lot of
| weight into the name of symbols as it basically has the largest
| bearing in understanding its functionality & purpose. This is
| effectively what GitHub is doing, deprecating 'master' in favor
| of 'main' for new repos, which I don't see a problem with as it's
| looking pretty clear that all new technology is moving away from
| master/slave terminology - I don't see why Software needs to be
| forced to use their old legacy names forever if they're able to
| deprecate it and move to new more appropriate naming without
| immediate breaking changes.
|
| This change hasn't broken any of my 100+ existing repos, GitHub
| is only changing the default branch to 'main' for new repos &
| have implemented a bunch of work behind the scenes to reduce the
| friction for orgs & users who also wish to rename their existing
| mater branches [1]. I don't understand the hate this effort to
| more modern & inclusive naming is inciting, if you want to
| criticize GitHub for their lack of action in other areas,
| criticize that instead.
|
| [1] https://github.com/github/renaming#renaming-existing-
| branche...
| goblin89 wrote:
| There're two aspects to the "master" vs "main" debate: (A) the
| negative connotation that "master" acquired during slavery in
| parts of the English-speaking world; and (B) the fact that
| "main" is objectively clearer, benefitting newcomers and
| effectively reducing the barrier to entry.
|
| I'm not entirely on board with (A).
|
| The downside to fighting words is that the negative connotation
| in the word is actually _strengthened_ when a major
| organization decides to censor it on such grounds.
|
| Consider Winnie the Pooh and CCP: used to be a cute children's
| cartoon character, was compared to China's dictator and got
| banned--now any display of Winnie is effectively a statement.
| Previously you were free to take it at face value clear of any
| political agenda, but now the meaning is decided for you by a
| central authority.
|
| Furthermore, in the case of "master", it was replaced with
| another word--and words continuously acquire connotations. If
| some white supremacist community now adopts "main" as a slang
| for "white", what do we do? Keep on renaming branches? Doesn't
| strike me as a sustainable approach.
|
| I dream of a world where every single person is secure and no
| one takes terms personally, but I guess that can't happen in
| foreseeable future.
|
| However, I have to support (B). If we were starting with a
| blank slate, there's really no argument to be made for "master"
| as somehow better than "main" at denoting the, well, main
| branch. (It could be a tough choice between "default" and
| "main" though.)
|
| It's hard to say for sure, but I suspect a lot of the pushback
| is subconsciously of the "we had to learn obscure terminology,
| so why should newcomers be spared?" variety.
| themgt wrote:
| I disagree. "Master" is a pre-existing term closer to the
| actual meaning of that branch in a repository the way most
| developers work.
|
| Cambridge https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/englis
| h/maste...: _an original version of something from which copies
| can be made_
|
| Merriam Webster https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/master:
|
| _being a device or mechanism that controls the operation of
| another mechanism or that establishes a standard (such as a
| dimension or weight)_
|
| _being or relating to a master from which duplicates are made_
|
| In the realm of version control, the master branch tends to
| have special conceptual status as the branch you fork from and
| merge back to. It's not "main" like the main room of your house
| or main street in your city, it's the canonical branch which
| others are understood in relation to. It has nothing to do with
| slavery and renaming it to "main" obscures and confuses what
| was being communicated with the original name.
| mythz wrote:
| Yes "Master copy" was the terminology it was based on, but
| I'm more likely to hear and use "Original version" or
| "Original copy" today. I associate "Master copy" or to refer
| to old artifacts like Vinyl LPs, Film reel or document, with
| it's usage becoming more rare with the move to a digitized
| world. So I see its relevance & usage declining, esp. in
| Software where it's being proactively avoided in new
| technology.
|
| But I don't believe "Master" is more intuitive nomenclature
| for new devs learning version control either nor a better
| representation for the naming the main branch where
| terminology is around a tree with branches being created from
| and committed to the 'main' single branch (i.e. trunk). When
| visualizing branches in a commit history it's shown and
| referred to as branches off the main trunk that deviates from
| the main branch at different commit points that may or may
| not return to the main branch like small roads off a main
| highway. The emphasis of branches being they're deviations or
| snapshots of a main branch's commit timeline, not in their
| state in which they're old copies of a main branch. The
| "Master copy" by definition does not change, it's a completed
| artwork, which is the opposite in CVS where it's always
| growing & changing with a tree of commits and often it's the
| branches which are snapshots of the main branch in labelled,
| well-defined points in its history.
|
| Either way the terminology is definitely moving away usage of
| 'master' in new Software, so I don't fault their reasoning
| for deprecating existing naming and moving to more modern,
| intuitive & inclusive terminology.
| dboreham wrote:
| I've been surprised that there is a new generation of developers
| who never heard that master/slave is offensive/irritating to some
| people. I first ran into this in 1996 when I joined a team
| building a product that had replication. We changed all the uses
| of master/slave to supplier/consumer. I had just relocated from
| the UK, where (at least by my perceptions) race is less of a core
| societal issue. I remember asking what this was about, someone
| said there were people who didn't like the use of master and
| slave, I thought "ok that's interesting" and moved on to fixing
| bugs.
|
| Fast forward more than 20 years and I find people complaining
| about github branch names. This seems odd because it's like
| whoever came up with the default branch name (Linus?) didn't
| receive the memo I got in 1996.
|
| Anyway, I see this pattern every so often : something that
| offends group A, where group B is asking "what's the big deal?".
| I've seen it with dogs in the workplace, with "blackface" and
| with use of the "n-word", and on and on. To be honest it
| mystifies me (the "what's the big deal" part). Why not just take
| folks at their word? a) they say they're offended, b) whatever
| change they are asking for is minimal and low-cost, why not react
| with "I didn't know that, but ok no problem"?
| mmcwilliams wrote:
| It's interesting you bring up Linus Torvalds in this discussion
| because he, around the same time as the Github changes, signed
| off[0] on an update to the terminology used in the Linux
| kernel. To me it's not a decision I expected, but watching some
| older talks where it's been brought up to him he seems to be
| indifferent to the controversy and just wants to focus on the
| tech.
|
| [0]
| https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
| tester34 wrote:
| idk what's going on, it's lack of war or something
|
| that makes SF computer people want to "save the world"
|
| or some shit with those ridiculous things like this main branch?
| ffggvv wrote:
| >> "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". I guess mummy and daddy paying $20 mil for a new
| library to get me a seat at an 'elite' school is still
| meritocracy eh?
|
| yes everyone who gets into these schools donates a library. thats
| why harvard has 10,000 libraries. theres no jewish or asian
| students whose parents came here with a penny and worked menial
| jobs. its all rich white people.
|
| and im sure if they didnt change the name this person would write
| an article about how they didnt change it because they are
| racist. racist if you do. racist if you dont.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| There is a difference between "necessary" and "sufficient".
|
| I am (mildly) happy with the name change, but as the author of
| the piece makes clear, it it not enough in itself, not even
| close.
|
| Maybe you view it as a distraction from real change? However, I'm
| sure that many of the people publicly dunking on this change have
| even less interest in more substantial change.
|
| GitHub has issues hiring and retaining minorities (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26480024 ) perhaps they
| should look at those next.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _However, I 'm sure that many of the people publicly
| dunking on this change have even less interest in more
| substantial change._"
|
| I'm openly scornful of this change and would absolutely love to
| see these large companies put their money where their mouth is
| by putting up meaningful (i.e. large enough to sting them)
| amounts of cash to create educational and job opportunities for
| minorities.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| 100x this. Can you blame them though, they're scared shitless of
| being called racist on the Twitters, so they do dumb things.
|
| Apprenticeship programs are a great idea. I'm amazed at how
| credentialist software dev is becoming when all the best hardcore
| developers I know are largely self-educated.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| that whole thing was incredibly USA-centric for a global company
| like Github. Slavery is not a US thing and that drama stemmed
| pretty much from US Twitter segment
| jpxw wrote:
| >Every summer countless tech companies of all sizes run
| internship programs, would it be a stretch to run an
| apprenticeship program of the same length for non traditional
| applicants?
|
| Many of the most prestigious tech companies already run
| internships like this. They're desperate to hire minorities,
| frankly.
|
| Similar practices exist in elite universities. If you're from a
| minority background, you can expect a significantly higher chance
| of being admitted, and a significantly lower SAT requirement.
|
| I agree that the change from master to main is dumb, though.
| "master" has a specific meaning (as it does in "master record"),
| which "main" does not adequately convey.
| Siira wrote:
| This blasted PR stunt has already wasted hours of my time.
| lnsru wrote:
| Currently I am writing technical SoC documentation with few bus
| masters and many slaves on the same bus. Honestly I don't know
| how to avoid these bad words since these are everywhere in the
| bus vendor documentation. And these words perfectly describe the
| relationship between instances on the bus. I guess next word to
| ban will be "handshake" since this is shown in movies as a
| greeting between criminals ans that's what masters and slaves do
| in my system.
| dmje wrote:
| Wow, I nodded so much my neck hurts. Well said.
| GNU_James wrote:
| I would say, what I really think, but HN mods would also ban me
| for my words.
| [deleted]
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >This shit aint for us, it never was.
|
| Or, as another article I read this week put it,
|
| >It seems to me that progressive elites, despite their pieties,
| don't really want to live in a more equal society. They prefer
| the imperfect meritocracy we live under--the rule of the smart,
| the talented and the rich, most of whom traffic in the fiction
| that their status was earned.
|
| >Still, progressives see themselves as compassionate. What they
| needed was a way to explain the inequality found in the
| meritocratic system they hold dear, a way that made them feel
| they were still on the side of the good without having to disrupt
| what is good for them. Moral panic around race has been the
| answer, taking the uneasiness a meritocratic elite must at least
| unconsciously feel around their economic good fortune--something
| they could easily share with the less fortunate, should they care
| to--and displacing it onto "whiteness," an immutable
| characteristic that one can do nothing to change.
|
| >In other words, critical race theory is the perfect ideology for
| affluent progressive whites who want nothing to change--but who
| still want to feel like the heroes of a story about social
| justice.
|
| [0] https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-warped-vision-of-
| anti...
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| I still get very annoyed with the name change every time I
| encounter it. I have a bunch of poorly written scripts that
| occasionally break with repos that have a main branch, so I have
| to fix these scripts I've written like 8 years ago
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Is it easier to just switch providers to gitlab or bitbucket?
| turtlebits wrote:
| This is one of those unfortunate "damned if you do, damned if you
| don't" scenarios.
|
| Being PC is trying to appeal to the masses instead of addressing
| the real issue. Though you can't really blame Github in this
| instance.
| peterhadlaw wrote:
| The word slave comes from the enslavement of Slavic people. I
| don't care for GitHub's / SV culturally insensitive history
| revisionism one bit.
| secondcoming wrote:
| This is a SJW's worst nightmare... being told they aren't
| needed/helping by a PoC.
|
| There are PoC on my team and they were asked about the
| master/main thing. None had an issue with 'master'.
|
| They were also sent on the same Diversity 'education' course as
| everyone else. Again, they found it dumb and patronising. One
| even got into an argument with the WASP presenter. It was quite
| funny to witness.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > This is a SJW's worst nightmare.
|
| "SJW" here. This kind of stuff gets posted all the time. It's
| usually full of logical fallacies (and anecdotal evidence, like
| your comment) and slurped up by people who are looking to
| confirm their biases. Sometimes it's not even written truly by
| a PoC.
| secondcoming wrote:
| What's the difference between 'anecdotal evidence' and a
| 'lived experience'?
| golemiprague wrote:
| I don't understand why the whole world have to suffer because
| some blimp in American history. So there was slavery, big deal,
| there were much worst things around the world at those days and
| people from all races suffered. Black Americans are one of the
| most privileged people in the world these days just by being born
| in a rich and relatively free country, I am sick about hearing
| their grievances and whinging, in my eyes they are just spoiled
| brats who don't want or can't from some reason put the hard work
| everybody else is putting in order to better their life.
|
| This guy from London in the article did the right thing and good
| on him but he shouldn't complain that he is getting searched when
| many of the black community there is focused on gang banging and
| glorifying it in every second song possible. Fix your community
| instead of demanding other people to solve your issues.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| When my interviewer asked why I didn't pursue a Master's degree,
| I replied "You mean a SLAVE Master's degree?" and I reported him
| to HR. Needless to say I got the job.
| delaynomore wrote:
| I often wonder if these name change/inclusion initiatives are
| started for promotion purposes. At least from my observation at
| work, it seems none of them are led by under-represented groups.
| Instead, they are mostly led by white/over-represented PoCs.
|
| Of course I don't dare to raise these questions at work (or with
| my real identity). These days if you are not onboard with these
| changes you might get labeled as racists.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I've always seen this sad twitter-oriented political correctness
| dance as being upper middle class white people catering to the
| complaints of other upper middle class white people who think
| they know what a working class black person would want. It's a
| silly middle class status dance of displaying conspicuous virtue
| while not actually having to lift a finger, just like how
| Facebook used to be full of people posting cause petitions. Ie,
| the latest iteration of slacktivism.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| As a white person, the difference this change will make to my
| life is so negligible that if it makes one PoC feel more included
| then it's fine by me.
|
| I totally take on board the point that a lot of man hours have
| been consumed debating how and when to execute this change.
| Possibly to the exclusion of doing something potentially more
| meaningful.
|
| However, the glee with which the authors opinion is accepted as
| the opinion of an entire race of people by other comments here
| strikes me as an example of confirmation bias. Simply finding one
| PoC who agrees with you doesn't validate your view point.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| "if it makes one PoC feel more included"
|
| How about if it does make one PoC feel more included but it
| also makes three PoC feel more excluded at the same time?
|
| Is it then about numbers? Shouldn't you therefore look at and
| ask the community of PoC what they think as a whole?
|
| To me, the article was saying that this holistic consultation
| was not done. And this has lead to the waste of time, energy
| and feeling of exclusion. Other comments in this thread have
| said that this consultation (seems to be limited to employees
| in Microsoft, etc) has been done...
|
| Confirmation bias can be examined rationally. The arguments in
| favour of this change can be explained away in multiple ways
| which will override any data that is found.
| anatoly wrote:
| You're fine with the change because of one hypothetical PoC you
| imagine who likes it, but you resent that others are not fine
| with the change and feel supported by one real PoC who dislikes
| it.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Not you are presenting a false dichotomy. I'm not speaking
| for or against this change. I'm speaking against the people
| who are butt hurt by this change because it's not even master
| as in slave but master as in boot record, using this one data
| point to justify their position.
|
| It's the same as those people who find the one doctor or
| nurse who thinks that covid-19 is just a flu or that one
| engineer who concludes that the twin towers couldn't possibly
| have fallen because of fire alone.
| mFixman wrote:
| I was expecting the article to list some technical problems
| coming from switching `remote/master` to `remote/main`. There
| aren't any, and reading this article took more time than trying
| to remember which one to use for this project.
|
| Is there a name for anti-political correctness, where people go
| into long rants about how changes that have zero effect in
| their lives are a sign of the collapse of society? They are
| pretty popular in social media and specially on this site.
| bbarn wrote:
| > there is this a significant intersection between career
| changers/developers coming from non traditional backgrounds (i.e.
| people with no CS degree) and minorities. Put your money where
| your fucking mouths are and hire these people.
|
| I am white, and grew up in what would best be described as a mix
| between military housing and a trailer park. Crime was a part of
| daily life, upward mobility was "join the military", and access
| to educational resources was a joke. I made it to software
| because I was incredibly lucky and ahead of the curve in the
| industry. Pre-internet, programming was something I found because
| I was bored and the one library I had access to had a computer
| and a few books by Peter Norton. I was programming when adults
| around me couldn't figure out wordperfect to type a letter (not
| that that was an easy task). A kind person gave me an old clunker
| of a machine to take home and that was enough to spark a career.
| (after my mother yelled at me for using so much electricity, of
| course)
|
| I am now in a place where I can use my experience to speak for me
| instead of my educational credentials, but the first half of my
| career I worked some abysmal tech jobs because many companies
| gate kept positions behind college degrees, even with relevant
| work experience (and compared to most unskilled jobs, even a bad
| tech job is a good job). Even now, among my peers the phrase
| "Where did you go to school?" is one I hear often, and when I say
| "I didn't." it gets me some strange looks and often a feeling of
| instantly being devalued in this person's eyes. I've done what I
| can to remove these hiring practices in orgs I've been a part of
| in the last 20 years, and I have seen positive change in general,
| but the system is still fundamentally biased against those with
| the financial means to enter it.
| rcurry wrote:
| "I guess mummy and daddy paying $20 mil for a new library to get
| me a seat at an 'elite' school is still meritocracy eh?"
|
| As someone who never even finished college, I think this is a
| pretty cheap shot. My former boss on Wall Street went to MIT and
| only got there because his father was a migrant strawberry picker
| who worked his ass off to get his kid a good education. My last
| boss was African American, and went to Harvard _and_ MIT - also
| probably the best damned general manager I 've ever worked for.
| Everyone has their own story, and most of the people I've met who
| have Ivy degrees are no different from anyone else I've worked
| with except they were more driven (or guided) as kids and put the
| time in that it took to get where they wanted to go. I don't
| begrudge them that for a second.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| Here is an interesting article with some statistics
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritoc...
|
| http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/papers/coll_mrc_paper...
|
| Maybe not all of those people who are enrolled have donated and
| then got in, but wealth is directly correlated with getting
| into these schools, not pure skill. At this point getting into
| a university is just about memorization and going through the
| rehearsed motions. There are too many good applicants. The only
| differentiating factor is money at this point and wealth is
| required to learn how to do the motions to get in. Everything
| else is just a dice role.
|
| I also think its important to think about the age of the people
| you are talking about. If they were older, then it was
| generally easier to get into almost all universities assuming
| you had the money (which is a HUGE if). The acceptance rates at
| all these schools was significantly higher. Not to diminish
| their accomplishments (because they are tremendous
| accomplishments), but in the past it was in some ways more
| "fair" from a financial perspective (though probably unfair in
| all the other ways that things can be unfair).
| Zanneth wrote:
| You can't discount the idea that wealthy people generally
| have shared values that are more conducive to successful
| careers for their children. Therefore it shouldn't be
| surprising that wealthy students are more likely to get
| accepted into prestigious universities irrespective of how
| much money they have.
|
| Having said that, there is no reason why a poor family can't
| also impart the same values to their children. It's just more
| difficult because they have to learn those values on their
| own, rather than being taught from a young age.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| So, I was a part of a borderline poor family and somehow
| made it out into what is essentially an ivy but on the west
| coast (probably was a pity admission). Poor family's can
| have these values, however its simply the logistics and
| stressors. How do you take your kid(s) to a class outside
| of school hours to teach them how to memorize the answers
| to a test when you have multiple jobs, public transit sucks
| or non existent if you live in a place like florida (so
| your kid can't take themselves), and your kid is also
| probably ill equipped for that environment because your
| child's school is more of a day care and not a place to
| learn because we have given up on schools in the US. If you
| are a person of color, then its even worse because even
| getting into an OK school district can be extremely
| difficult due to Nimbyism which is a proxy for racism (and
| classism) basically.
|
| Its not values. Poor people and especially poor people of
| color are setup to fail and its shear force of will that
| gets you out. I also don't want to discount the effort that
| middle class+ kids put in. They put a lot too and I don't
| want to say they aren't deserving. But the playing field
| isn't level.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| My suggestion is to replace master/slave with
| burgeois/proletariat, if the goal is to keep up with the times.
| (/s)
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| We could always switch to pitcher/catcher. /wink wink
| nromiun wrote:
| > Black representation in tech is truly abysmal.
|
| I guess the author is talking about a Western country? There are
| plenty of countries where another color is dominant across all
| sectors (not just tech). For example, brown in Asian countries,
| black in African countries. I don't hear any complaints about
| that.
|
| If the OP is saying that people of minority race are
| discriminated, that is a different and valid point. But blindly
| saying that there should be more people of minority race (which
| would make them the majority, not the minority) in every sector,
| doesn't make any sense.
| greenwich26 wrote:
| He is in the UK. He says "Take the company I work for as an
| example, there are about 7 black people in the whole company, a
| company of 250+ people." The UK is 3% black. 7/250 is equal to
| 0.03. So you are totally correct. This is not "abysmal"
| representation, it is the expected representation. For now,
| Europe is inhabited by over 90% Native Europeans which are
| white.
| rglover wrote:
| Around and round' we go:
|
| 1. https://youtu.be/ruP-WVgfkMM?t=197
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hm8wXZmRD8
|
| And for those needing a qualifier: I'm mixed race, black/white--
| I've observed both sides of this my entire life. The answer isn't
| wordplay, it's directly investing in black communities.
| austinjp wrote:
| Personally, I think the underlying issue is polarisation of
| opinion.
|
| Polarisation produces frustration, fear, and anger. This in turn
| produces responses like GitHub's, intended to anticipate
| criticism, since the criticism trends inevitably towards fury.
| This is true on right and left and everywhere else. It's always
| been the case, just look at polemics aimed at Darwinians,
| suffragettes, Catholics, anti-slavers, whatever. The difference
| today is the sheer volume, the ease with which anyone can
| instantly reach a global audience. And of course the cash
| produced from all those comments and views and clicks.
|
| It's still all bread and circuses, it's just been made ruthlessly
| efficient.
|
| As has been pointed out by other comments, consensus is lacking.
| Who's asking the people who are actually affected? And who's
| doing that in a calm, productive, collaborative way? I'm sure
| it's happening somewhere but that content is hardly going to
| drive traffic.
|
| Perhaps there could be a concerted, deliberate effort at helping
| all of us disengage from polarising media, and instead engage in
| meaningful conversation.
| trevor-e wrote:
| While I agree with some of the points made, this article is
| mostly a rant filled with generalizations and untruths.
|
| >They forgot to talk to people who are actually members of the
| black community.
|
| >Regardless, did anyone try to reach out to black software
| engineers or developers
|
| >Yet at these same companies the majority of each grad scheme
| cohort tend to be from basically the same five
| colleges/universities.
|
| >I guess mummy and daddy paying $20 mil for a new library to get
| me a seat at an 'elite' school is still meritocracy eh?
|
| How does the author know any of this? From the original
| discussions around this topic ~9 months ago I remember several
| instances of companies asking their employees.
|
| >We're going to change the branch name to be more inclusive of
| minorities but we're going to carry on selling software to ICE.
| Get the fuck outta here.
|
| If this is referring to Microsoft, since they own Github, they
| explicitly banned law enforcement from using their facial
| recognition technology.
|
| >It signals to other privileged white boys, "hey, come work for
| us, we pretend to care more than all our competitors xoxo". This
| shit aint for us, it never was.
|
| This is a good point.
|
| >I'm pissed off because they pretended to be doing good and
| wanted me to congratulate them for it.
|
| I don't think Github asked for any pats on the back for their
| change, but I can see how it's implied. Also, master/slave can be
| offensive to a lot of communities, not just the black community.
|
| I do totally agree that major tech companies need to sponsor way
| more outreach within black communities. It's way too easy to
| blame diversity problems on the "pipeline" and then do nothing to
| improve why the pipeline is like that in the first place.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I've said before; I don't mind the master->main rename _in
| essence_ because I think "main" is a better fit if it were to be
| picked today. Is it worth the hassle? Probably not, but we're
| past that now.
|
| But Github went way too far by aggressively pushing devs to
| rename their own local master branches to main. This caught me by
| surprise and I almost accidentally renamed the branch of one of
| my previous clients.
|
| https://twitter.com/Adys/status/1354468440753508355
|
| Really, really gross.
| globular-toast wrote:
| What in the hell is wrong with them?! As a Github user of more
| than 10 years I never read those instructions any more so
| didn't notice this. It's still there! They are insidiously
| instructing inexperienced developers to modify their own
| repositories for no reason other than earning imaginary "not
| racist" bonus points. Horrible behaviour and a total abuse of
| power.
| tamrix wrote:
| Microsoft is a very left organisation. Change my mind.
| klunger wrote:
| It seems to me like companies have gotten away with virtue
| signaling without performing any meaningful change for a long
| time. So, the fact that this article (and others like it) is
| getting so much attention now feels like a sea change. Or maybe
| it's just me that is paying more attention, but I don't think so.
|
| This new level of accountability makes me hopeful that we can
| look forward to more meaningful, impactful changes on a systemic
| level.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| Github's head of HR resigned in January.
|
| Can anyone here comment on the culture at working at github?
| 0xdky wrote:
| Do we next change naming of RB Tree in all existing documents and
| software? IMHO, there is no end to this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red%E2%80%93black_tree
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I've never in my life met a single human being who was white or
| black. Why do we still use this terminology when yellow and red
| have gone out of style?
| devwastaken wrote:
| There is limited energy available for resolving important issues.
| By focusing energy upon name changes that have no benefit we now
| rightfully criticize it for doing so, which wastes more energy.
| It also convinces people that the very idea of name changing is
| bad, and that this is a bad culture of people. Which harms future
| real movements for actual good change.
|
| Therefore changes like these are far more harmful than good for
| everyone.
| ElectricMind wrote:
| Is there comprehensive list of all words that all races or
| genders or some other kind of group find offensive or get "hurt"?
| Thanks.
|
| By the way I find all articles offensive. Please don't use them.
| Thanks for understanding.
| megaseahorse wrote:
| How about the word class? Because of class hierarchy and struggle
| [deleted]
| etchalon wrote:
| The best of this comment section is that the OP's point was "you
| make barely-consequential changes like x instead of difficult
| ones like w, y, and z which would help more" and people are
| utilizing the post to argue why they should have to do even less.
|
| Neat.
| soheil wrote:
| Using a term other than master is technically annoying as most
| developers have that memorized and would disrupt their work to a
| small degree. Nevertheless this is a non-zero cost put on the
| entire tech community. There isn't much difference between
| forcing people to not user master branch than let's say not being
| able to use VSCode, Atom or Sublime, just because the name
| happens to fit the bill doesn't mean the cost isn't real.
|
| I still believe it makes sense for the tech community to incur
| this cost. Awareness of these issues is an important part of the
| solution, no matter how idiotic the change that is making us
| aware actually is.
|
| There will be people who will use this to their benefit like the
| example given where Github sells software to ICE and at the same
| time pretends to care about master branch? Even if a small
| portion of this change helps with a solution that's a win even if
| most of it is for publicity stunts or corporate America
| opportunistically jumping on a social cause bandwagon to sell
| more products or virtue signal to hire more talent, etc. (I'm
| looking at you Apple recent diversity/inclusive commercials.)
| sakopov wrote:
| > I don't want this post to be about The Solutions(tm) but here's
| one for your noggin; there is this a significant intersection
| between career changers/developers coming from non traditional
| backgrounds (i.e. people with no CS degree) and minorities. Put
| your money where your fucking mouths are and hire these people.
| Every summer countless tech companies of all sizes run internship
| programs, would it be a stretch to run an apprenticeship program
| of the same length for non traditional applicants? As someone
| with a psychology background I can't overstate what difference it
| makes to get a legit company to give you a chance, both in terms
| of your CV and your confidence.
|
| I would one-up this and say that tech companies should be opening
| offices in under-represented areas with large minority
| populations and start investing in public education there, if
| they really care about workplace diversity. However, this quickly
| turns into an argument about money, money, money and effectively
| would never be accomplished. And so what they're doing is just
| simply a virtue signaling clown show which gets enough done to
| not get picked on.
| derpthebert wrote:
| Github is woke AF. All hail master branch.
| justin66 wrote:
| It's interesting the way old problems come back around. The
| master/slave terminology was a controversial thing people argued
| about when I started with Usenet in the early nineties. It's a
| pity those old Usenet postings aren't easier to search and
| reference.
|
| More recently, the comments on this 2003 Slashdot story echo
| what's had been written here today pretty closely, just replace
| "woke" with "politically correct". [1] A quick scan makes it seem
| like there is a master/slave drinking game to be had, involving
| finding the same comment in that comment section and this one.
|
| I assume the argument about master/slave terminology dates back
| even further than my experience, but the question of _how_ a
| person would conduct a controversy without NNTP or at least, for
| the love of God, UUCP is a mystery. Magnetic tape transported via
| sailing ships? Signals transferred great distances by lighting
| fiery beacons atop mountains? Passenger pigeons? The way people
| are using this extremely old argument and their peers '
| engagement with it to draw conclusions about where their current
| popular culture is going is entertaining.
|
| [1] https://slashdot.org/story/03/11/25/0014257/la-county-
| bans-u...
| enriquto wrote:
| I'm a bit late to the game, but I don't understand what this fuss
| is all about, from a technical point of view. I just created a
| git repo this morning and the default branch was named "master"
| (using the git command line). Then I pushed it to github to make
| it visible, as I have done several times before. The command line
| instructions at the "new repository" interface on github suggest
| changing the branch name to main, but I did not do that (just for
| trying) and now I have a brand new github repository whose branch
| is named "master". Basically github allows to name your branches
| however you like. The example instructions suggest that you
| rename your master branch to "main", by running this code on your
| command line: git branch -M main
|
| But that is all. You can name it "trunk" if you want, for all
| that matter.
|
| Now, I think that the whole github renaming thing is a bit
| ridiculous and probably a faux pas on their part. But the people
| complaining about "the great rename" sound even more ridiculous:
| as far as I can see, there's no rename, just a stupid
| modification of the initialization instructions that suggest that
| users rename their branch. All that fuss for the damn "git branch
| -M" line?
| rvanlaar wrote:
| Haven't you thought about how trunk is offensive to people who
| have been kidnapped?
| [deleted]
| throwaheyy wrote:
| Sure, it's fine and easy if you're starting a project today.
| But if you have any build or deployment automation that
| interacts with git repos for existing projects it will be
| broken by the change.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| That doesn't really make sense? If you have existing git
| repos they will still have a branch called master.
|
| GitHub did not go into existing repositories and change the
| names of existing branches.
| enriquto wrote:
| But they did not rename any existing repositories (that would
| be in very bad taste!). Such an automatic renaming would
| possibly break a lot of scripts, but this is not what is
| happening. All old repositories still have their branch names
| intact. The new repositories can have whatever name you
| choose.
|
| What does "the change" actually do? Is it just in the "new
| repository" instructions or is there some automated process
| that may fail? Maybe I'm missing a way to create github
| repositories besides the "New" button on your user page?
| detaro wrote:
| Existing projects are impacted by a changed _default for new
| repositories_ how?
| Jenk wrote:
| A lot of places will have extra effort in their CI/CD
| pipelines, too. I know, I know, commands like the following
| exist: grep -rl master | sed -ie
| "s/master/main/g"
|
| but there's always going to be bugs or whatever come out of it,
| and also.. this misses the point of the article. It's a hollow
| virtue signal. It does literally nothing to help the cause it
| proclaims to help, yet it requires _some_ effort from well..
| everyone. It is the definitive example of a waste of time, al
| be it not much per instance, but some time is wasted.
| enriquto wrote:
| My point is that you do not need to follow github's
| suggestion and rename your branch to "main". It seems to me
| that github's "change" is only a suggestion in their
| instructions to create a new repository. They do not rename
| your branches nor force a name to you. You get to chose the
| name of your branches, and the default name for the git
| program is still "master".
| Jenk wrote:
| Which is still an empty gesture, that is still leading to
| wasted time.
|
| FYI github's repo creation tool now defaults to main. A lot
| of orgs use this tool because they will also use repo
| templates. I know git, the program, is still defaulting to
| master.
| enriquto wrote:
| > FYI github's repo creation tool
|
| What is this tool? I always used github by pushing my
| locally-created repos to it, and this procedure still
| creates a "master" branch. I was not aware that there are
| other ways to use github, thus my surprise at the
| exaltation. I guess people who still use "plain git" are
| unaffected by the renaming of the default branch in
| github (whatever that means).
| Jenk wrote:
| I mean this: https://github.com/new
| enriquto wrote:
| So, in that page, after you enter the repo name, three
| options appear.
|
| 1. Start the repository by creating new file: it opens a
| github text editor. I never used this option (what kind
| of savage uses github's text editor???), but to be fair
| it creates a default branch named "main"
|
| 2. Create a new repository from the command line: run git
| init, etc. You get to choose the branch name, then push
| it to github.
|
| 3. Push your existing local repository to github. It will
| get whateber branch name it already had, probably
| "master".
|
| So the only people affected by the change are those who
| use github's text editor and chose the first option. I
| guess not many people do that? For the most common
| options you get to chose the name of the branch, that by
| default is "master" (not that there's anything wrong with
| that).
| Jenk wrote:
| Not if you want to use a repository template.
|
| Also we can argue until the cows come home about how
| little effort is actually involved. It could literally be
| a single click and it's still all still by-the-by. This
| is an empty virtue signal doing nothing - repeat
| _nothing_ - to help the inclusion of minorities.
| enriquto wrote:
| Sure, the name change was a stupid move in the first
| place. But as stupid moves go, this one fortunately does
| not affect my life at all (and that of most github users
| I guess).
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| You can change it:
| https://github.com/settings/repositories.
| rendall wrote:
| The name change, which despite its being easy for you, will
| cause confusion and higher barriers-to-entry to new devs who
| will need to sort out older tutorials and manuals from new
| ones. This is but one foreseeable consequence among other
| potentially unintended and unforseen consequences.
|
| This because an exceedingly tiny group of people at the best,
| most charitable interpretation of their motives, wilfully
| misapprehend that 'master' refers to more than their narrow
| concerns.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Very well said! The systemic racism of law enforcement is just
| crazy in the UK but it is somewhat a taboo. It exists in
| statistics buried deep and never to be looked at. When I was out
| with some of my friends that happen to have darker skin they were
| stop and searched but I was told to just go, as if they thought
| they kidnapped me? Where are the stop and searched of the City
| coke heads? The tech industry really needs to pull their head out
| of their ar$$
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| It's disingenuous for an author to disparage racism while being
| racist in his or her own article.
|
| Rich/privileged White boys is racist. It's framing a race
| negatively. Gross.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| What I have read is that it is only changing the default setting
| for new repositories, and does not affect existing repositories,
| and that either way you can still change the default branch name.
| (I looked, and it also looks like you can now rename any branch
| easily in GitHub, so maybe that can also help with some things.)
|
| I think that the change is unnecessary, but is probably mostly
| harmless (although, I do not use git; someone who does might know
| better than I do).
|
| If you want to import from a different version control system, if
| it uses a different name such as "trunk", you can keep the same
| name in a mirror with a different version control system, if that
| is supported by the system that you are using.
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| I'm a white middle class American so I realize I don't have much
| of a voice here but I do want to say that this change is so
| minimal compared to all the other various BS I have to put up
| with in my job that that who cares if its virtue signaling or
| not.
|
| MSFT decided to make the change, we deal with it and move on.
| Things change, and things change that are out of your control.
| Complaining about it won't change anything. Be more accepting
| that there are things in this world that you cannot change.
| Especially as something as simple as this.
| hinkley wrote:
| Did Linus ever explain why he chose master in the first place? Is
| that a Bitkeeper thing?
|
| Master and branches made no goddamned sense at all. It's trunk,
| doofus. Trunk and branches. Like a tree?
| karpour wrote:
| I was indifferent about it at first. main is a good name, master
| as well. It was completely unnecessary for reasons pointed out in
| the article.
|
| Now, I can agree, f ck this change. I work with a lot of legacy
| repos, multiple devs, and I always have to check whether a repo
| uses master or main. Sometimes we end up with both master and
| main branches, then we have to deal with that too. It's nothing
| bad ever, maybe in total I wasted 1-2 hours. But if millions of
| other devs also wasted many minutes of work time on this
| unnecessary change, that adds up.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| As I've said when this was discussed a while ago, the problem is
| not with the word "master", it would be with the word "slave".
| "Master" has many uses that have nothing to do with slavery, as
| evidenced in words like "master's degree", "master" vs.
| "apprentice", "mastery", etc.
|
| Once "master" is used in combination with "slave", it refers back
| to slavery and leans on it, there is no doubt about it. That's
| the case for MIDI, for example. But in the Github case it is not
| related to that at all, and the change is wholly unnecessary.
| That doesn't make it wrong, as a sign, to change your master
| branch to "main" branch, of course. There is a lot of arguing in
| bad faith in this area. As if showing a bit of good will and
| following a simple name change guideline would seriously harm any
| of those complainers. But I agree that this change can is not
| really justified linguistically.
|
| My 2 cents, for what it's worth.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| Personally I don't even think master/slave is bad. Do black
| people look at the word "slave" and think "Oh, that's about
| me"? Does a white person see it and think "This must be about
| black people"? I just cannot see the value. It just feels like
| brainless censorship.
|
| And more importantly, like the post saliently points out, it
| gives the _illusion_ of affecting change while in reality doing
| _nothing_ for the people it's supposed to be done for.
|
| Hire more POC. Mentor and tutor POC in engineering. Don't
| police innocuous words.
| epmatsw wrote:
| In this case, master is derived from a master/slave concept in
| BitKeeper, so it falls into your second category.
|
| https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...
| swiley wrote:
| I'm not sure telling everyone to associate a race with
| "master/slave relationship" is the best idea. Black people
| aren't the only ones to have been enslaved.
| goodoldneon wrote:
| The association varies based on geography. American history
| is inextricably tied to the slavery of black people, so it's
| fair that the master/slave relationship is overwhelmingly
| associated with them in America
| jimbob45 wrote:
| What if I told you America wasn't the largest benefactor of
| the African slave trade?
| swiley wrote:
| Sure but is that an association you want to reinforce?
| goodoldneon wrote:
| I was only stating my understanding for why the
| association between slavery and black people is so strong
| in America. What I want is irrelevant.
| cjpearson wrote:
| What do you mean? Slavery in America was inextricably
| tied to racism just as the Holocaust was inextricably
| tied to Antisemitism or the Civil War was inextricably
| tied to slavery. None of those aspects should be ignored
| or downplayed. History can be ugly and uncomfortable, but
| we should try to learn from it rather than ignore it.
| atleta wrote:
| > Once "master" is used in combination with "slave", it refers
| back to slavery and leans on it, there is no doubt about it.
|
| This is not how language works. E.g. if you recall the debate
| about this, some people dug up an email from, I guess, Linus
| that mentioned master and slave repositories and some reasoning
| around that repositories are identical to branches yadda-yadda.
| (Or maybe the email was actually referring to the terminology
| used in another DVCS they were taking idea from.)
|
| So they have proven that say some 15 years ago the thing was
| originally named so because of the master/slave concept (the
| technical concept). However, nothing proves better than the
| need to dig this up that meanings indeed do change. Especially
| when you use a name that has multiple meanings, like master.
| They named it master because of master/slave but the majority
| probably never knew this (I've _never_ heard anyone talking
| about a _slave_ branch) so just assumed master is master as in
| master copy, source of truth, etc.
|
| This is how language works. After all, this is how the word
| master acquired the meaning of "owner of slaves" which it did
| not have originally. So yes, it was named master because it was
| related to the concept that we (used to?) describe with the
| expression that does refer to slavery but we definitely changed
| the context over time.
|
| Regarding the name change, you can see several ways how it does
| harm. One of them was described in the post: by diverting the
| discourse and using up the effort that could have been spent on
| handling the real issues. Whether we are talking about people
| who did want to do something positive and now they feel they
| did (this is what the post is about) as well as the people who
| could have been recruited for taking meaningful actions but got
| pissed off/tired of this stupidity.
|
| I honestly think that both this master branch thing and
| black/whitelist was 100% stupid because, as said in the blog
| post _context_ . I 'm not sure about the master/slave, but I'm
| 100% willing to accept that it can be offensive (and I'm
| treating it as such), though it would be interesting to hear
| the opinion of those affected, like the post author. (I just
| miss the nuisances here as I'm not from the US. Before hearing
| all the debate around this, I would have simply said that
| slavery was a wide-spread phenomenon during human history and
| it refers to that concept. That doesn't mean we don't think
| it's a terrible thing to do to a human being or that we don't
| empathise will all of those who had to endure it during their
| life.)
| dtmmax33 wrote:
| 1.5k comments so far. I think this was a great move and opened up
| a lot of discussion.
| imtringued wrote:
| Githubs actions are manufactured outrage/racism.
|
| By declaring a gray area word as forbidden it loses its
| legitimate meanings and only the undesireable meanings remain.
| The forbidden word becomes a slur because its potential to become
| a neutral or positive word has been removed.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| From David Foster Wallace's Authority and American English essay:
|
| > "My own humble opinion is that some of the cultural and
| political realities of American life are themselves racially
| insensitive and elitist and offensive and unfair, and that
| pussyfooting around these realities with euphemistic doublespeak
| is not only hypocritical but toxic to the project of ever
| actually changing them. Such pussyfooting has of course now
| achieved the status of a dialect [...] I refer here to
| Politically Correct English (PCE), under whose conventions
| failing students become "high-potential" students and poor people
| "economically disadvantaged" and people in wheelchairs
| "differently abled" [...] The same ideological principles that
| informed the original Descriptivist revolution - namely, the
| sixties-era rejections of traditional authority and traditional
| inequality - have now actually produced a far more inflexible
| Prescriptivism, one unencumbered by tradition or complexity and
| backed by the threat of real-world sanctions (termination,
| litigation) for those who fail to conform. This is sort of funny
| in a dark way, maybe, and most criticism of PCE seems to consist
| in making fun of its trendiness or vapidity. This reviewer's own
| opinion is that prescriptive PCE is not just silly but confused
| and dangerous. Usage is always political, of course, but it's
| complexly political. With respect, for instance, to political
| change, usage conventions can function in two ways: On the one
| hand they can be a reflection of political change, and on the
| other they can be an instrument of political change. These two
| functions are different and have to be kept straight. Confusing
| them - in particular, mistaking for political efficacy what is
| really just a language's political symbolism - enables the
| bizarre conviction that America ceases to be elitist or unfair
| simply because Americans stop using certain vocabulary that is
| historically associated with elitism and unfairness. This is
| PCE's central fallacy - that a society's mode of expression is
| productive of its attitudes rather than a product of those
| attitudes. [...] There's a grosser irony about Politically
| Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of
| progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution
| of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself -
| of vastly more help to conservatives and the U.S. status quo.
| Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed
| taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth, I would be
| delighted to watch PCE progressives spend their time and energy
| arguing over whether a poor person should be described as "low-
| income" or "economically disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous"
| rather than constructing effective public arguments for
| redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates on
| corporations. (Not to mention that strict codes of egalitarian
| euphemism serve to burke the sorts of painful, unpretty, and
| sometimes offensive discourse that in a pluralistic democracy
| leads to actual political change rather than symbolic political
| change. In other words, PCE functions as a form of censorship,
| and censorship always serves the status quo.) As a practical
| matter, I strongly doubt whether a guy who has four small kids
| and makes $12,000 a year feels more empowered or less ill-used by
| a society that carefully refers to him as "economically
| disadvantaged" rather than "poor." Were I he, in fact, I'd
| probably find the PCE term insulting - not just because it's
| patronizing but because it's hypocritical and self-serving. Like
| many forms of Vogue Usage, PCE functions primarily to signal and
| congratulate certain virtues in the speaker - scrupulous
| egalitarianism, concern for the dignity of all people,
| sophistication about the political implications of language - and
| so serves the selfish interests of the PC far more than it serves
| any of the persons or groups renamed."
| rayiner wrote:
| > Yet at these same companies the majority of each grad scheme
| cohort tend to be from basically the same five
| colleges/universities. Are HBCUs one of these colleges??
|
| The resistance of the software industry (and other elite
| professional industries) to recruit from HBCUs is an indictment
| of their DIE efforts. It's not that reasonable name changes don't
| matter, it's that they don't matter when you refuse to fix
| glaring pipeline problems like narrow recruiting strategy.
|
| Food for thought:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/hbcus-blac...
|
| > Yet more important than their famous alumni is the Black middle
| and upper-middle class, which HBCUs have almost single-handedly
| created. HBCUs have produced more than 80 percent of Black
| judges, 40 percent of Black Congress members, and roughly half of
| Black public-school teachers. More than 70 percent of Black
| doctors and dentists earn their bachelor's degree at HBCUs.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I'm offended by Git can they call it PersonIDisagreeWithHub
| lionkor wrote:
| This is not a GitHub issue - Git itself now asks you if you would
| like to use the more inclusive `main`.
|
| I personally don't care for these changes, I will likely keep
| using `master` because I "automatically" type it in my workflow,
| and I find master to be a lot more descriptive. `main` is the
| name of my main.c, main.go or main.cpp file, the name of the main
| function, etc. I dont need another "main" to mess up my
| autocomplete.
|
| If they (github/microsoft) want to make a difference, I'm there
| with them, if they decide they want to put a few more millions a
| year towards getting lower-class children a higher education, I'm
| happily going to buy some GitHub pro or whatever.
|
| Until then, they need to step down and just be the tool they are,
| nothing more.
| dgellow wrote:
| > This is not a GitHub issue - Git itself now asks you if you
| would like to use the more inclusive `main`.
|
| When does git asks this? From what I've seen, they just
| introduced a new config to change the name of the default
| branch, which is quite nice in itself (as of Git 2.28, released
| 27th July 2020). $ git config --global
| init.defaultBranch <NAME_OF_YOUR_DEFAULT_BRANCH>
| JimDabell wrote:
| > Git itself now asks you if you would like to use the more
| inclusive `main`.
|
| No it doesn't. It says this: hint: Using
| 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default
| branch name hint: is subject to change. To configure
| the initial branch name to use in all hint: of your new
| repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
| hint: hint: git config --global init.defaultBranch
| <name> hint: hint: Names commonly chosen
| instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and hint:
| 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this
| command: hint: hint: git branch -m <name>
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Microsoft doing what it does best .. ruining well established
| products. I still remember when they bought Skype and I thought
| they won't mess up this time.
| f430 wrote:
| yeah this virtue signaling by Github and many tech companies was
| cringe while ignoring shit like this:
|
| > Being a highly paid software engineer, like most of you reading
| this, did not stop a bully van flying up the curb I was walking
| on and 7 City of London police officers pinning me against a wall
| with guns in my face. They wouldn't believe it was possible for
| someone like me to work in central London till one of them
| searched me and found my work ID. All this because I fit a
| description. What was this description? I don't know, black male
| between 4'11 and 7'4 probably. What did I do after that? I
| carried on with the rest of my day like nothing had happened
| because I've fucking been there and done it all before. Out of
| curiosity I asked my manager, who is like 20 yrs older than me,
| if he had ever been stopped and searched, he said not once in his
| life.
|
| this is fucked.
|
| 2000 upvotes and this submission is already disappearing.
| nelox wrote:
| Yet another example of corporatist human resources feel good
| 'spin', which decontextualises the historical conditions that
| give rise to the need for anti-discrimination, equity and
| diversity issues in the first place.
| RexKramer77 wrote:
| The powers that be are quite happy to have us fighting with each
| other, rather than focusing on them.
| gspr wrote:
| There are parts of this article I agree with, and parts I
| disagree with, but this part just screaaaaams "I cannot possibly
| picture that any part of the world is in any way different from
| the US":
|
| > "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". I guess mummy and daddy paying $20 mil for a new
| library to get me a seat at an 'elite' school is still
| meritocracy eh?
|
| It also seems like a complete digression from racial justice.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Instead of meritocracy, he proposes black-only employment
| programs. What a joke.
|
| This is just the usual black supremacist posing as some kind of
| angry pragmatist.
| user-the-name wrote:
| The writer is not from the US.
| twic wrote:
| Then that is a really weird passage. HBCUs are a purely
| American thing. Legacy admissions are a purely American
| thing. Paying to get your kids into a university is a purely
| American thing.
|
| Also, the author uses the American spelling "curb". If they
| do live in London, they are presumably a migrant from the US.
| gspr wrote:
| Oh, interesting. Do you know where they're from? It sounds to
| me like it must be a place that's very Americanized, for
| sure.
|
| Edit: Nevermind, I misread the paragraph about London as
| being just a story about something happening in London,
| rather than abeing about something that happened to the
| author in London.
| roel_v wrote:
| UK. Uses the term 'bully van', linking to urban dictionary,
| which specifies that this is a UK term. Plus has some
| British colloquialisms.
| niceairport wrote:
| That's when the author has lost me as well. Pretty ironic to
| mock meritocracy in an article that quickly devolved into a
| full-on rant.
| petr_tik wrote:
| Also, it's surprising considering the author mentions having
| aggro with police in London. it's certainly unfortunate that
| the Metropolitan police decided to racially profile him.
| However, statistically, more people die in police custody in
| the land of the free than in Britain, so this terrible incident
| doesn't represent the quality of policing in the UK.
|
| Tertiary education in the U.K. can be expensive (unless you are
| Scottish), but university admissions are open to everyone
| without having to donate millions for a library
| pjc50 wrote:
| Basically I agree with tda's post: this does nothing to address
| the real problem, and allows people to feel they've done
| something when they haven't.
|
| On the other hand, it's not a big deal to do it and we've done
| it.
|
| If you're bothered by the demands for empty gestures, how about
| addressing the root cause: the rising tide of racism, especially
| official and policy racism, and the tragic outcomes it produces.
|
| (We're having another round of the policing discussion in the UK,
| since within the same week we've had a woman murdered by an off-
| duty police officer, a vigil for that woman broken up by the
| police on the pretext of COVID restrictions, and a law proposed
| that makes it illegal for protests to be "annoying".)
| xony wrote:
| go fk urself
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| Do you eschew mastery of skills, of topics? Does it make your
| fingers itch? Fooooooor fuuuuuuuuucks saaaaaaaaake! This is the
| lamest generation.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post like this.
|
| We detached this comment from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26490895.
| aphelion wrote:
| 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?
| JetAlone wrote:
| I have to agree with the writer's suggestion of hiring non-
| traditional job candidates. I'm teaching someone how to code pro
| bono to help him provide for his young family, and the anxiety
| that he experiences about not having the advantage I do with my
| degree is real.
|
| If companies really want to do social good, they will have to
| prove it by putting their money where your mouth is, taking some
| risks, maybe they'll benefit from some new blood and a fresh
| perspective.
| e79 wrote:
| I generally think of it as "cheap" inclusivity. Companies looking
| to cast the biggest virtual signal with the smallest amount of
| capital. On paper it looks nice enough, but dig a little deeper
| and you realize that it's everything under the sun _minus_ the
| most important part: training and hiring more women, people of
| color, and other minority groups in tech.
|
| I've worked for companies that do this with mental health too.
| Everyone is burned out and unhappy? We're bringing in a
| professional on workplace happiness! We're partnering with non-
| profits! We're doing everything! Except, you know, addressing the
| actual cause of the burn out and unhappiness. Because that
| requires a hard, sober look at our own behavior and wrongdoings.
| It's so much easier to look outward instead.
|
| I don't identify as a minority in tech, so I won't even pretend
| to understand exactly what that's like. But it seems like being
| gaslit constantly. It sounds so painful and invalidating and
| exhausting and outright maddening to be told to look at all of
| this progress when you know they know it's all the cheapest
| version of it and it's mostly just for show.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| This article is spot on with more white americans beliefs about
| the issues than many would publicly admit. I'm from the midwest
| and all I can hear are the same white people that wound racist
| according to today's left, but in reality, match this exact same
| thought process. But because they are white they can't say these
| things.
| [deleted]
| _def wrote:
| So I'm a european white guy and I know that Identity Politics
| covers topics which make it extremely hard to find a consesus,
| but here are my two cents. Please share your thoughts with me.
|
| Tackling huge problems in society (and in general) takes time.
| It's good do discuss the direction society should move as whole,
| and act accordingly in the future. But it's also important to act
| _right now_ as best as we can to put the fire out.
|
| Will adjusting our language get rid of social problems? No. Will
| it help getting rid of social problems: in the longterm, maybe? I
| don't know. But I know that it doesn't hurt you to act
| considerate towards other people. So why not just do it?
|
| The thing is, it shouldn't stop there. Inclusive language is just
| a small step towards a more peaceful society. We'll need many of
| those.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I just wish that all the weirdness of US politics didn't just
| spill out on the rest of the world like that.
|
| We live in an age of profound cultural exchange between
| civilizations, and as with anything of this magnitude it has
| great benefits and major drawbacks
| oji0hub wrote:
| I don't care what the branch is called, but people should never
| give way to harassment. That only emboldens the people who do it.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I work for a major tech corp that employs thousands of people,
| went to an internal tech conference a few years back. They're
| based near a major US city with a big black population. I met a
| ton of Asian and Indian Asian people there. The only black people
| I met were hotel staff. Wtf America?
| wiremine wrote:
| 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.
|
| 2. What is the most important thing? Authentic relationships. As
| I've gotten to know more people of color over the last decade,
| relationships are what grounds my perspectives and shapes my
| thinking. Truly understanding someone, and having yourself
| understood, is critical to overcoming the long-term race problems
| in America (and beyond).
|
| 3. Alongside relationships, doing the hard work of educating
| yourself is critical. White people in America tend to only see
| the dominate white culture as the _only_ culture. You need to
| educate yourself to understand this isn't true. But this is where
| relationships come in: "Black" culture (or Asian culture, or
| Latinx culture) is not monolithic, so the relationships create
| the commentary to understand the broader trends. Both the right
| and left in America tend to not do this part well.
|
| A final thought: it starts in the schools. Those of us with
| authority and decision making power need to be investing in
| spending time mentoring the next generation of engineers.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| 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. Just the desire to remove the word master
| (which also means principle) from use will not help a single
| black person or ethnic minority and is simply designed to look
| good without any real progress being made.
| wiremine wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I think he's right that it was probably white people who came
| up with it.
|
| My first point is that words do matter. We can debate how
| much the specific word "master" matters, but my point was
| that words do matter.
|
| My other point about investing also supports his main thesis.
| xtracto wrote:
| 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.
| darknavi wrote:
| Not to crap on Germany but I bet Turkish people would feel
| the same way when swapped around.
| mssundaram wrote:
| > 1. Words matter.
|
| Uhm, yeah? And water is wet. What about the context which they
| matter in? Otherwise you just have an empty excuse.
| [deleted]
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Why isn't the discussion that it's also quite racist to
| associate the word "slave" with Blacks/Africans? People don't
| seem to know any history when they say that. It's not only
| Africans that got enslaved, peoples of all ethnicities did.
|
| It's just virtue signaling at the end of the day. It's
| ridiculous watch everyone fight over this while missing the
| root cause.
| offby37years wrote:
| "It takes no more research than a trip to almost any public
| library or college to show the incredibly lopsided coverage
| of slavery in the United States or in the Western Hemisphere,
| as compared to the meager writings on even larger number of
| Africans enslaved in the Islamic countries of the Middle East
| and North Africa, not to mention the vast numbers of
| Europeans also enslaved in centuries past in the Islamic
| world and within Europe itself. At least a million Europeans
| were enslaved by North African pirates alone from 1500 to
| 1800, and some Europeans slaves were still being sold on the
| auction blocks in Egypt, years after the Emancipation
| Proclamation freed blacks in the United States." -- Thomas
| Sowell
| cjpearson wrote:
| I'm sorry, but you've got it completely backwards. If you're
| doing a word association and the first thing you think of for
| 'black' or 'African American' is 'slave', then yeah that's
| racist. But slavery in America (and we are talking about
| America here, Github is based in the US, not ancient Rome)
| was 100% connected with and built on top of notions of racial
| superiority. Addressing issues of racism today does require
| us to ignore or downplay racism in history.
| jtdev wrote:
| That seems like a completely valid point: Can we still use
| the terms master/slave when actually discussing the atrocious
| history of slavery in America? Why are these words considered
| hateful? They are useful words that describe a concept very
| clearly.
| wiremine wrote:
| It's a valid point, two thoughts:
|
| 1. There's the state of slavery today, which is actually
| pretty horrible worldwide.
|
| 2. There's the issue of race relations in the USA, and the
| historical context of those relations. In the American
| context, I think it's fair to focus on that context. At
| least, I think it's counterproductive to try and redefine the
| term because it deemphasizes that context.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| "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).
| kazinator wrote:
| If any of these intellectually-challenged persons have main's
| degrees, they should have them revoked back down unmarried male
| person's degrees.
| [deleted]
| yamal4321 wrote:
| 1473 comments, 2656 upvotes in 10 hours.
|
| Well, seems ycombinator is poisoned now. It was a good time. Time
| to go further.
| desktopninja wrote:
| Our hyper sensationalized (social) media coverage is also casting
| The Florida Effect wide.
| elihu wrote:
| I doubt there are very many people seriously offended by
| "master", "whitelist", and so on. However, I think we should
| probably stop using them anyways. The reason is that many people
| who are introduced to these terms for the first time are likely
| to have a negative reaction of some sort. Like "is it okay to say
| that?" or "eww" or "that's not aging well" or whatever. Maybe I
| reacted that way, or maybe not. The point is, it was long enough
| ago for me to forget and my tendency is to use them without
| thinking about their possible connotations to someone (often
| children) who encounter them for the first time. Until recently
| when people pointed out that maybe we should use other terms.
|
| This is a small change, but a good one. There are bigger things
| that need to be changed as well, and we shouldn't use this one
| thing to pat ourselves on the back for being especially
| enlightened.
|
| (Regarding those other things: at my employer, some guidance came
| down to transition away from these terms in our code and
| documentation, and there was the kind of debate you'd expect in
| any tech company. I made a comment something along the lines of:
| "not using master/slave in our technical documents isn't
| silencing speech. It doesn't mean we can't use the word 'slave'
| when talking about the real issues of forced labor, it just means
| we should stop using it in a case where that language is
| unhelpful and confusing." Fast forward a month or two and we had
| an opportunity to share questions we had for our CEO during his
| quarterly business update. I submitted a question about our
| manufacturing facilities in China and whether we should continue
| doing business there given the bad things the government is doing
| to Uighurs. This was removed by a moderator and I got a sternly-
| worded email about not trolling and complying with (internal)
| social media guidelines and so on. So, I guess it turns out you
| can't talk about slavery after all. I don't think there's any
| correlation between avoiding master/slave in technical
| communication and corporate hesitancy to allow internal
| communication about doing business in a country that's causing a
| major humanitarian crisis. But still, it seems like even
| companies that are in some ways committed to doing the right
| thing still behave erratically when it comes to some moral
| questions.)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is amazing and true.
| [deleted]
| cuddlecake wrote:
| > They forgot to talk to people who are actually members of the
| black community.
|
| Afaik, modern slaves are mostly Asian (women).
|
| Whatever, I prefer the name "main" over "master", and moreso I
| prefer "trunk". Often, branch names like "develop" are used as
| well.
|
| What this change helped produce was mostly that tools do not rely
| on `master` being the default branch, which is very helpful in
| some regards.
| idownvoted wrote:
| Yet another sad attempt to impose your narrow focused view of the
| world on it.
|
| The author seems to have forgotten: There are people outside of
| the US who work in tech.
|
| As shocking as it might be to him, they don't wake up in the
| morning thinking "O gosh, I'm white, I need to repent". They
| actually read and write things like "master-slave" and not for a
| second think about what went wrong 150 yrs ago in some far away
| land. An no: Not thinking that isn't racism.
|
| Yet we all have to endure your petty fights and identity
| politics.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >Yet another sad attempt to impose your narrow focused view of
| the world on it.
|
| >The author seems to have forgotten: There are people outside
| of the US who work in tech.
|
| >As shocking as it might be to him, they don't wake up in the
| morning thinking "O gosh, I'm white, I need to repent". They
| actually read and write things like "master-slave" and not for
| a second think about what went wrong 150 yrs ago in some far
| away land. An no: Not thinking that isn't racism.
|
| >Yet we all have to endure your petty fights and identity
| politics.
|
| Clearly you didn't finishing reading the article.
| m12k wrote:
| I think the point about involving the people that you're
| supposedly helping before forging ahead is really important. An
| ally that picks the wrong fight on your behalf is almost worse
| than an enemy.
| HerbsMan wrote:
| I'm waiting for the moment when they change all "black" to "dark"
| or something equally stupid.
|
| BTW. "Black Lives Matter" is totally wrong - It should be "All
| Lives Matter", otherwise it is kinda racist, no? ;- )
|
| BTW2. By avoiding terminology "Master", "Slave" etc, what we
| trying to achieve? hide the truth that White managed to catch and
| enslave Black and roll on like that for years? cmon.
|
| We are living in times of hypocrisy.
| unixhero wrote:
| In world history dating back several thousand years or more,
| slaves have existed. It is nobody today's fault this happened. I
| do not see how using a medieval historical reality to be
| offensive. Master slave hardrive settings on IDE drives for
| instance, who were offended by that?
|
| What is next? What about the byzantine generals problem? The
| byzantines, I am sure someone will dig up some dirt in them and
| label them off limits.
|
| Is it now offensive to say "Slaving around?"
| kizer wrote:
| I was on Reddit saying "let's ask the black devs"! What do a
| bunch of non-black nerds really know about race in America. I'm
| white btw. That's a lesson you have to experience; you won't find
| it in a textbook or solve it with an algorithm.
|
| Go to the (obvious) reference for this, and ask them (almost
| entirely) what should be done. It's all about black people in the
| first place, just ask them. That's not politically incorrect, not
| even "uncomfortable" if brought up appropriately in a formal
| context.
| beshrkayali wrote:
| The issue is way bigger than a stupid meaningless branch-rename.
|
| I'm very happy to see this post. This whole stupidity is so
| extremely frustrating to me. It's a perfect example of how little
| thinking the mainstream wants to put into important issues, how
| toxic American-liberalism is, and how easy it is for the masses
| to follow any seemingly-positive action just to avoid seeming
| negative.
| pron wrote:
| Saying that the left spends too much effort on rhetoric might be
| valid criticism, but focusing on it as reasons to "walk away from
| the left" (which not too many black Americans are doing, BTW) is
| disingenuous. Sure, the left talks about rhetoric, but it also
| fights for higher wages, civil liberties, healthcare, affirmative
| action, investment in education, workers' rights, and voting
| rights. It's fine not to like everything a certain political camp
| does, but presenting things as if that's where _all_ or even most
| of the effort is is just factually wrong. Of course, knowing that
| this aspect is less popular, media organisations like Fox News
| have chosen to focus on Dr. Seuss for the past couple of weeks
| rather than the debate on minimum wage, so really this aspect is
| more of the right 's focus than the left's. "Wokeism" (and the
| even more made-up "cancel culture") is the new War on Christmas.
| Sure, there are enough instances to turn into hysteria if that's
| in your interest, but the actual work is elsewhere.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| " s. Sure, the left talks about rhetoric, but it also fights
| for higher wages, civil liberties, healthcare, affirmative
| action, investment in education, workers' rights, and voting
| rights."
|
| I don't think the person you are replying to would agree with
| you about affirmative actions being a good thing. Other than
| that, the left is super repressive of free speech which is the
| only civil right left to win , detrimental to wage growth and
| worker rights by supporting unlimited immigration, bad for
| education by siding with teachers unions, manipulative when it
| comes to voting to the point when half of the country does not
| believe in elections. The right simply does not exist in the
| institutional level at this point, all they can do is whine
| about excesses of the left
| cafard wrote:
| Free speech is the only civil right left to win? Fear not,
| then, when the state legislatures get around to the Equal
| Rights Amendment maybe they can spare a thought for ratifying
| the First Amendment. It has waited long enough.
|
| The right does not exist in the institutional level? Has
| anyone told Mitch McConnell about this, or Justice Thomas?
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| The last "right-wing" move I have seen in recent history
| was Trump's nerfed-ban of critical race theories. I do not
| remember any culturally significant initiatives produced by
| McConnell or Justice Thomas or anyone else on the right.
| The only true "right-wing" issue they still talk about is
| abortions.
| k4c9x wrote:
| They're extremely active on the voting "issue", in a very
| "right-wing" way.
| Theory5 wrote:
| You're blaming "the left" for distrust in voting? I don't
| know where to begin...
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I don 't know where to begin..._
|
| From the sounds of it, you think the beginning was 2020.
| There's a long history of implying the "other side's" win
| is questionable, across the globe and including the US.
| panzagl wrote:
| If you believe only officially identified US citizens
| should vote, the left started attacking decades ago. Also,
| there was a strong 'Trump stole the vote' campaign 4 years
| ago, similar to the current narrative pushed by Trump
| supporters.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I agree with you that it's not strictly a "left" issue -
| and certainly the recent election in the US had the "right"
| bringing up voter fraud.
|
| But it's important to remember the "left" raising flags
| about fraud in the 2016 election, and primary. Everything
| from harping on the legitimacy of a candidate that lost the
| popular vote, "not my president" protests, accusations of
| voting machine fraud, primary delegate issues, conflating
| gerrymandering with federal elections, etc...
|
| In general, it seems whichever side loses is increasingly
| blaming "unfairness" to generate more outrage to de-
| legitimize winners of the election. ...rather than trying
| to appeal to more voters.
|
| We're all losers in this situation because it is the voting
| system that keeps us from killing each other.
| baseballdork wrote:
| My only issue with this comment is that it seems to
| discount the idea of "unfairness" in our elections. Yes,
| in a federal election the districts don't matter.
| However, as we can see right now, the state legislatures
| that are elected via those districts can drastically
| change the landscape of a federal election within their
| state. The republican legislatures are moving en masse to
| "prevent fraud" in a way that seems to be directly aimed
| at making it more difficult to vote[1]. Appealing to more
| voters is hard when fewer people are able to vote.
|
| [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/voti...
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > the left is... manipulative when it comes to voting to the
| point when half of the country does not believe in elections
|
| I disagree with essentially everything you're saying, but how
| on Earth can you write that with a straight face? I mean,
| five seconds on Google gives me:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veracity_of_statements_by_Dona.
| ..
|
| Many elected Republicans are still lying about the election
| results. How is that 'the left' being 'manipulative when it
| comes to voting'? Not to mention the slew of
| disenfranchisement policies being drawn up by Republicans at
| the moment.
|
| > The right simply does not exist in the institutional level
| at this point, all they can do is whine about excesses of the
| left
|
| Erm, what "left" are you referring to? US politics is a
| battle between Pepsi vs Coke
| https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
| tekknik wrote:
| > Many elected Republicans are still lying about the
| election results.
|
| So we have voter IDs and secure voting? Did you miss the
| part about lack of confidence in voting? If we don't have
| voter IDs how is the right lying? Or are you just trying to
| reaffirm the narrative?
| EGreg wrote:
| Because having voter IDs is not the only or even the main
| thing that the right -- a very vocal minority of the
| right, by the way -- had an issue with. There were a lot
| of conflated FUD about voting machines
| doctored videos shipments of empty votes
| observers turned away disappearing ink
|
| The funny thing is that Trump's own appointed people,
| including Krebs who we cite here a lot, but also Barr and
| others admitted that there was not nearly enough evidence
| of fraud to overturn any election result in any state.
|
| And even funnier is how FOX and NewsMax debunked
| themselves and now chase the My Pillow CEO and others off
| their show for suggesting there was voting machine fraud
| -- because they got cease and desist letters and
| warnings.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/02/03/newsmax-
| mike-...
|
| After all, this is really easy to check.
|
| The irony for me was Texas suing the other states and
| then West floating a trial baloon to secede from the
| union (great form, West!) because they accused the other
| states of vote manipulation... this from a state that
| works hard to close HUNDREDS of poll places in Democratic
| areas ahead of the election to keep the state voting
| Republican, in blatant violation of the Voting Rights Act
| (neutered by the supreme court). And no one sues Texas in
| federal court for that.
|
| For Republicans, mail-in ballots were the end-run around
| their extensive efforts to close polling places and
| require voting IDs and other ways to tip the balance in
| their party's favor. If people can just vote from home
| then all that effort to drive an hour and stand in a long
| line will be unnecessary! So they aren't being totally
| honest about their FUD being nonpartisan either.
| [deleted]
| tzs wrote:
| > So we have voter IDs and secure voting?
|
| We don't have voter ID checks at the actual polling place
| for casting your vote, but we have signature checks and
| comparisons of who purported to vote with who is actually
| registered to vote at that polling place, and there are
| checks and verification involved in getting to that
| point.
|
| This is sufficient to catch any double voting or voting
| as someone else that occurs at sufficient scale to be
| above the normal error rate.
|
| The allegations still being made about election fraud by
| some Republicans have nothing to do with people double
| voting or voting as someone else. They are that election
| workers slipped in extra pre-filled ballots, or that they
| ran Biden ballots through the tabulating machines
| multiple times, or that the machines were programmed to
| switch votes, or that there are statistical anomalies in
| the vote totals or counting that could only be there due
| to fraud.
|
| Every one of these is based on one or more of the
| following kinds of things:
|
| 1. There is simply no way, they say, Trump could possible
| have gotten less votes than Biden. There must have been
| fraud. (Variation: Trump got more votes in 2020 than
| Obama got in 2008 or Clinton got in 2016, so how could he
| lose? Completely ignoring that voter turnout was a lot
| higher in 2020)
|
| 2. Someone seeing something and misunderstanding it.
| E.g., one of the prominent claims of running ballots
| through the tabulating machine multiple times was
| actually an election worker before the count started
| running a test ballot through multiple times.
|
| That's part of the standard pre-election test and setup
| procedure that the manufacturer's instruction call for
| before each election. The person who saw it happening was
| a volunteer who had skipped the training session where
| they covered that.
|
| 3. Taking things out of context. E.g., surveillance video
| purporting to show extra ballots being sneaked in to a
| counting area overnight, where we see someone pull boxes
| out from under a table and remove a bunch of ballots and
| start counting them.
|
| We do indeed see that. But if you obtain the whole video
| instead of that short clip, you see that those boxes
| contain the ballots that were being counted when it was
| time for the counters to take a break. They put the
| uncounted ballots in their standard ballot storage lock
| boxes, put the boxes under the table, took their break,
| came back, retrieved the ballots from the boxes, and
| resumed counting. All completely normal.
|
| 4. Ignoring the recounts. The machines alleged to have
| switched Trump votes leave a paper trail. The hand
| recounts from the places where this switching is alleged
| to have occurred match the machine count.
|
| 5. Misunderstanding statistics. E.g., claims that first
| digit distributions of candidate totals across districts
| or counties not following Benford's law is proof of
| fraud. The mistake here is that Benford's law only
| applies to certain kinds of samplings of certain kinds of
| distributions. The distribution of population and of
| votes across districts or counties in most areas is not
| the right kind for this.
|
| 6. Ignoring that in-person election day votes are counted
| in many areas before mail-in ballots are counted.
| (Indeed, in some Republican controlled states, they have
| passed laws preventing election officials from starting
| to count mail-in ballots until the polls close).
|
| Combine this with COVID in many "rural red, urban blue"
| states, where in-person urban voting often means long
| crowded lines at polling places, and you had a much
| higher percentage of urban voters going to mail-in voting
| than is usual. On top of that, Democrats on average were
| more likely to take COVID seriously, further shifting
| mail-in votes to be more likely to be from Democrats.
|
| Result: in effect those states ended up counting
| Republican ballots first, then Democrat ballots. And so
| of course Trump was ahead in the evening, and then Biden
| got most of the later counted mail-in ballots, which
| mostly came from the large urban areas.
|
| None of that has anything whatsoever to do with voter ID.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Do you recall in 2016 when the mainstream left told
| Americans (without any factual basis) that Russians had
| hacked and stolen the election? That Trump was "Not Our
| President" and never will be?
|
| The only difference between that lie and the one peddled by
| Trump and the ilk is that the GOP was confident
| (delusional?) enough that they brought it to the Supreme
| Court.
| acdha wrote:
| No, because that didn't happen. If you were following the
| news the claim actually made is what the intelligence
| agencies of multiple countries concluded: Russia spent a
| considerable amount of money _influencing_ the elections
| with fake news and social media and they supported
| targeted attacks on Democrats.
|
| There were concerns over attempts to compromise election
| systems, which again were confirmed by subsequent
| investigations, but that was reported by the mainstream
| media in the context of the federal government warning
| states to be prepared and noting that most attacks had
| failed and there was no reason to believe the elections
| would not be reliable.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Here's an example of the type of article that was coming
| out during this time.
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/russia-stole-the-
| presiden_b_1...
|
| You're absolutely right, Russia very likely did spent
| time and money attempting to influence the 2016 election,
| very few would doubt that. What I have issue with is the
| erasure of the fact that media outlets and mainstream
| Democrats were absolutely and without a doubt pushing the
| narrative that Russia "stole" or "hacked" the election,
| which is very different from attempting to influence.
|
| That piece I posted, of which there are hundreds of
| similar ones easily perusable quotes:
|
| "[Donald Trump] it turns out, is no more the duly elected
| president of the United States than I am the world's most
| decorated ballerina."
|
| Do you see the issue there? It was a mainstream opinion
| at the time to believe that despite misguided Americans
| legally voting him into power, the election was
| fraudulent and Donald Trump was not the legal president.
|
| I truly believe if the Democrats had exercised more tact
| in their accusations 4 years prior, we wouldn't have seen
| the horrific events at the capital by domestic terrorists
| peddling essentially the same conspiracy theory which had
| been forced down their throats by centre-left media.
| jeromegv wrote:
| There's a big difference between partisans doing that,
| and an actual president claiming the election is stolen
| for months, asking his supporters to march on the Capitol
| to deny the rights of voters to have their vote
| confirmed, calling state officials to ask them to "find
| votes", etc.
|
| You said it, they brought all of that to courts, which
| means it was entirely supported by the full establishment
| of the party, not just a fringe part of it.
|
| The fact you can't even see the major difference makes me
| think you are clearly looking at just one side.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| But it wasn't a fringe part of it, that's the precise
| problem.
|
| On May 16, 2017, Nancy Pelosi tweeted "Our election was
| hijacked. There is no question."
|
| Is Pelosi considered a fringe part of the Democratic
| Party now?
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| The left didn't storm the capital
| chriswarbo wrote:
| I think that's an apples-to-oranges comparison (no pun
| intended).
|
| It would be fairer to compare the Democrats' allegations
| about Russia to the Republicans' allegations about China,
| i.e. accusations that Biden is anywhere between a useful-
| idiot-for to an outright-puppet-of the CCP.
|
| AFAIK the Democrat position has been that, for both
| elections, the _voting /counting mechanisms_ have
| withstood targetted attacks by state actors, and in both
| cases gave overall tallies which correspond to the
| electorate's choices, within an acceptable margin of
| error (I'm stopping at the tallies, to avoid the separate
| debate regarding the electoral college versus the popular
| vote).
|
| Some Democrats _also_ allege foreign interference _with
| the electorate 's choices_, through widespread
| misinformation and propaganda. As an extreme example,
| fewer people may have voted for Trump if Russian troll
| farms weren't claiming that Clinton harvests child organs
| (or whatever Q-adjacent bullshit was spreading around
| Facebook at the time). It's perfectly consistent to make
| that claim, whilst also claiming that those lie-induced
| Trump votes were subsequently collated and counted
| correctly towards the totals.
|
| AFAIK the Republican-led investigation found the
| Democrats' position to be essentially correct, that there
| were targetted attacks on infrastructure, and
| misinformation/propaganda attacks nudging the electorate
| towards Trump. No evidence of _collusion_ was found, i.e.
| that Trump was working for foreign adversaries, or
| foreign adversaries were working for Trump, or they were
| coordinating ahead of time. That would (of course) have
| been even worse, but the lack of (evidence of) such
| collusion doesn 't make the idea of foreign adversaries
| weaponising US voters for their own ends any more
| palatable.
|
| In short, choosing positions/policies/rhetoric that is
| useful to adversaries is not itself criminal; it could
| simply be naivety or coincidence. Yet knowing that a
| candidate's positions/policies/rhetoric is useful to
| adversaries would be pertinent information for voters.
| Veelox wrote:
| >calling state officials to ask them to "find votes"
|
| Fyi, the Washington Post offered an official retraction
| of that quote recently stating it wasn't based in
| reality.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I agree with you, but you have to recognize that one is
| just an escalation of the other. Both are terrible, even
| if Trump being worse. Trump would not have been possible
| if discourse had not already broken down.
|
| We created a culture where this devolution of discourse
| was acceptable, and so fewer voters found Trump's
| rhetoric unacceptable - partially because they heard more
| and more extreme rhetoric coming from the other side -
| whether on social media, MSM, or even some far left wing
| political leaders.
|
| Incidents like when the Bernie Sanders campaign worker
| SHOT a US GOP senator. ...the reporting on that was
| extremely asymmetric between GOP and Dem news media.
|
| These sorts of escalations, and the MSM pandering to
| _their_ base, creates a cycle of hyperbole and
| misinformation.
|
| We really need to think about how we can get out of this
| mess and bring the rational majority back to a central
| forum of discourse.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| The (Republican) Senate committee found that there were
| in fact extensive ties between Russian intelligence and
| the Trump campaign, and that Russia actively attacked
| state election infrastructure. And the (Republican)
| special counsel found that they actively propagandized
| over social media, and hacked into Democratic campaign
| and candidate emails, which ended up being _the_ anti-
| Clinton story leading up to the election.
|
| It's tired and disingenuous at this point to claim that
| "the left" made this up.
| Akronymus wrote:
| And the supreme court dismissed it, not on merit, but on
| procedural grounds from what I know.
| zzbzq wrote:
| Heritage Foundation? Rand Corporation? Cato Institute?
| American Enterprise Institute? The institutional right is
| unimaginably huge and well-funded. Half of them even have
| "institute" in the name.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| what were the policies/results produced by these money
| sinks within last few years?
| neon_electro wrote:
| Preservation of the status quo?
| BeefySwain wrote:
| Massive corporate tax cuts? The end of Net Neutrality?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Heritage Foundation: starting with Reagan and encouraging
| the right's obsession with smaller government, was a
| large advocate for us going into and staying in Iraq, and
| was a major influence on Trump - at least 66 foundation
| employees worked in the administration and advised Trump
| who should be in his administration, including advocating
| for Mick Mulvaney when other Republicans were pushing
| against him. After his loss, they hired three of Trump's
| immigration team. They have also promoted the voter fraud
| claims about 2016 and 2020 elections, saying that it was
| "rampant", and also are heavy deniers of climate change,
| the Clean Energy act and Kyoto Agreement.
|
| AEI has been a little less controversial, although
| they've also leaned heavily on politicians about climate
| change, and their biggest funders are/were the Koch
| brothers. Notably, they were one of the earliest
| predictors of the 2008 housing crisis, though their focus
| (while not entirely incorrect) was about the causing
| effects of government banking, rather than private sector
| greed.
|
| The Cato Institute is another organization founded and
| funded by one of the Kochs. The Cato Institute has
| lobbied hard for the deconstruction, outsourcing and
| privatization of the USPS (to recent great success),
| NASA, TSA. They have lobbied for the abolishment of
| minimum wage and in the absence thereof have fervently
| pushed for not increasing it (which hasn't happened since
| 2007 - legislation-wise, though the last increase went
| into effect in early 2009). It opposes overtime
| regulation and of all things, child labor prohibition
| (thankfully this hasn't gained much traction). It is one
| of the biggest opponents of universal health care, and of
| campaign finance reform.
|
| In 2006 it helped Republicans propose a Balanced Budget
| Veto Amendment. It also strongly criticized the tobacco
| settlements.
|
| Interestingly enough, the Cato Institute also supported
| striking down state laws against homosexuality, and the
| Federal Marriage Act (which would have prohibited same-
| sex marriage).
| tzs wrote:
| The Heritage Foundation's solution to climate change (if
| it turns out to be real), is more fossil fuels: "How
| Fossil Fuels Will Help Us Confront Climate Change" [1].
|
| That article describes how in Dubai they handle an
| average temperature of over 100 with no problems by
| having air conditioned homes, offices, cars, buses,
| trains, and shopping malls. It's abundant oil and a
| government that promotes economic freedom that allows
| this, it says.
|
| It then ties it to dealing with climate change:
|
| > The current average world temperature is about 58
| degrees. The true believers in climate change are
| predicting global catastrophe if that temperature rises
| by a worst-case estimate of 7 degrees Fahrenheit. That
| would bring the world average temperature to about 65
| degrees.
|
| > Dubai, today, is doing quite well at an average
| temperature 35 degrees higher.
|
| > Obviously, Dubai is on the cutting edge of technology
| and prosperity as a result of its oil endowment and
| government policies that promote economic freedom and
| growth.
|
| > Not every country has oil, but in a globalized market,
| cheap fossil fuels are available everywhere to spur rapid
| growth and technological change.
|
| Wow.
|
| [1] https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/how-
| fossil-f...
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| How is affirmative action a bad thing?
| kempbellt wrote:
| Affirmative action biasedly lifts up minorities over
| others. It looks noble on the surface, but realistically
| creates more of the same problem.
|
| When I applied to college, I (and all of my friends), knew
| that ticking any non-white ethnicity box on the application
| made you more likely to get accepted. I don't know that any
| of us did, but it was very well known that you could game
| the system this way.
|
| It made acceptance into college less about your academic
| merit and more about your ethnicity (or ability to use
| ethnic bias to cheat the system) - aka, more racism.
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| Affirmative action is here for a reason. If there wasn't
| systemic racism in hiring, there would be no need for it.
|
| What affirmative action is supposed to do is to ensure
| that your race _isn 't_ a determining factor in _not_
| getting hired for a job that you are qualified for.
|
| The Rooney Rule in the NFL wouldn't need to be a thing if
| being a black coach in the NFL meant statistically you
| had a greater chance of getting fired or not being hired
| at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule
| tremon wrote:
| _What affirmative action is supposed to do is to ensure
| that your race isn 't a determining factor in not getting
| hired for a job that you are qualified for._
|
| No, that's wrong. If that were the goal, it would simply
| be made illegal to ask about race (or race-proxy) on
| college application forms.
|
| Affirmative action is meant to _artifically boost_ the
| number of college graduates from a selected set of
| underrepresented backgrounds. If it weren 't the goal,
| this blind recruitment trial wouldn't have been
| immediately canceled:
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-
| tri...
| headhuntermdk wrote:
| I'm talking about job applications here.. not all job
| applicants have college degrees. And your link is to an
| Australian gender study. We are talking about similar but
| different issues
| EGreg wrote:
| Both the left and the right engage in suppression of free
| speech in different ways.
|
| I mean when McCarthyism, Hoover's FBI and COINTELPRO were
| repressing leftists left and right, sabotaging political
| campaigns and careers, this was considered a national
| security issue.
|
| I mean, until Bernie Sanders, no politician openly called
| themselves a socialist. This is recent.
|
| Are there any open atheists in US politics? Just curious
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/07/.
| ..
| RobAtticus wrote:
| >I mean, until Bernie Sanders, no politician openly called
| themselves a socialist. This is recent.
|
| Eugene Debs?
| EGreg wrote:
| Dude was in office in the 19th century... wonder why the
| large gap lmao
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Look at you, you can't even respond to a black American who
| disagrees with you without telling him how to think, you are
| the American left.
| Falling3 wrote:
| At what point did the parent comment say how anyone should
| think? They presented counterarguments. Is that not allowed?
| kyleblarson wrote:
| Biden: 'If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for
| me or Trump, then you ain't black'
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/politics/biden-charlamagne-
| th...
| blacktriangle wrote:
| HN: where inconvenient evidence gets downvoted.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Note that the grandparent post did not talk about the Left, but
| rather, the "Left". Not the same thing.
| rayiner wrote:
| > "Wokeism" (and the even more made-up "cancel culture") is the
| new War on Christmas.
|
| Saying that woke excess is "made-up" and "hysteria" is
| gaslighting. Coca Cola ran a diversity training encouraging
| employees to "be less white":
| https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-why-
| co.... The Smithsonian has a whole page on "whiteness" treating
| it like it's a bad thing. If you work a college degree-required
| job, you've probably had an employer recommend you read
| something by Robin Di Angelo, who claims she "tries to be a
| little less white every day."
|
| I've never met anyone who got offended when I said "Merry
| Christmas." I've repeatedly run into instances of woke excess
| over the past year. The faculty at my law school declared
| themselves "gatekeepers of white supremacy" on a Zoom call:
| https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-
| administrator.... (The interim dean, who declared himself a
| "racist," is a friend of mine, and I was shocked to read about
| his behavior.) Even the whole Dr. Seuss thing--"Mulberry
| Street," which was cancelled, is one of my daughter's favorite
| books. I bought it for her a couple of years ago new at a
| Barnes and Noble in Annapolis. It's not some obscure relic of
| history.
|
| I think it's tremendously disingenuous to deny that this
| phenomenon has crossed the line from "manufactured outrage"
| into "real concern."
| skavi wrote:
| How is Coca Cola in any way representative of "the left"?
| breakfastduck wrote:
| He was talking about woke excess. Wokeness being primarily
| driven by the left.
| pron wrote:
| And I think it is tremendously disingenuous to claim the
| opposite. The very same attacks on the "excesses" of
| progressivism, and "if only you'd focus on this instead of
| that you wouldn't antagonize people" were beat-up cliches at
| the time of the women's suffrage movement if not abolition.
| In fact, calling the claim that there is some widespread
| suppression of speech and reduction in freedom at a time when
| clearly more people can say more things to wider audiences
| than ever before, and with the least interference from
| anyone, mere "disingenuous" is an understatement. It is
| hysterically delusional.
| slibhb wrote:
| Whenever you criticize "progressive excess," some
| progressive says "well you would have said the same thing
| about slavery/women's sufferage/integration/etc".
|
| This highlights the disagreement perfectly. Progressives
| view history as "the long march of progress". To
| progressives, ceasing to publish certain Dr. Seuss books,
| saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Chistmas," using
| terms like "latinx" and "BIPOC," announcing your pronouns,
| denouncing "whiteness," etc are part of the same historical
| process that ended slavery and passed the Civil Rights Act.
|
| I just don't view history that way. I view historical
| causation and direction as fundamentally mysterious. There
| are a very large number of plausible interpretations of
| history and they all seem pretty convincing while being
| completely contradictory. We should argue over these
| interpretations, because some of them are better than
| others, but we shouldn't take any of them as gospel.
| rayiner wrote:
| I think you accurately describe the misconception many
| progressives labor under. In reality, however, there is
| not a single ideology connecting all those things. White
| abolitionists were evangelical Christians. The
| confederates attacked them as religious zealots, clinging
| to morality that was at odds with the emerging "science"
| regarding the races:
| https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-
| sources/cornersto.... Woman's suffrage was also a highly
| religious movement.
|
| There's also lots of progressive ideas that turn out to
| be ideological dead ends. Prohibition was heavily
| supported by women's suffragists, and was seen as a
| progressive social reform. Building highways through the
| middle of cities was seen as a progressive and futuristic
| approach. Eugenics was, of course, the nadir in terms of
| progressive ideological dead ends in the 20th century.
|
| Take the example of same-sex marriage. Academics like
| Judith Butler have consistently opposed same-sex marriage
| because they believe it does not go far enough to
| dismantle, and indeed entrenches, what they see as a
| repressive, patriarchal institution:
| https://theconversation.com/why-same-sex-marriage-is-not-
| the... ("But there is actually a large amount of anti-
| homophobic academic and everyday writing from thinkers
| and activists that probes the numerous problems
| associated with same-sex marriage."). Andrew Sullivan
| recognized this back in 1989, arguing that same-sex
| marriage was the conservative option to accommodating
| gays and lesbians, compared to the radical dismantling of
| traditional norms that people like Judith Butler
| espoused: https://slate.com/news-and-
| politics/2015/06/gay-marriage-vot....
|
| That same Judith Butler is a leading academic in the
| field where "whiteness" is used as a pejorative and
| "objectivity" is attacked as "white culture." Maybe that,
| too, is an intellectual dead end, not real progress?
| pron wrote:
| > In reality, however, there is not a single ideology
| connecting all those things.
|
| I don't claim there was a single ideology underpinning
| the reasons for the calls for social change. I'm saying
| that there are usually people (radicals, progressives)
| calling for social change, and others (conservatives)
| warning against it, and the rhetoric employed is similar
| throughout history (e.g. "if you only asked for a little
| less", or "the previous demands were reasonable, but the
| new ones are excessive"). That's understandable, as
| conservatives throughout history sometimes don't like to
| appear -- possibly even to themselves -- as the enemies
| of progress so they claim to be in favour of "reasonable
| progress," but whatever it is that the progressives
| currently call for is unreasonable; of course, a
| generation later, the story repeats. Ideas like women's
| suffrage were deemed outright preposterous, risible, and
| too silly to seriously consider; in fact, it took actual
| acts of terror by feminist activists and a world war to
| get them the vote.
|
| So if you want to compare current demands to previous
| ones in order to explain the reaction to them, I'm saying
| that you should also compare current reactions to
| previous ones. "Previous demands were reasonable, but
| _now_ they 've really crossed a line," has been pretty
| much the conservative refrain going back millenia to the
| patricians and plebeians of ancient Rome. All of this is
| why I reject talk of "excess." It's just how
| conservatives speak of social change for millenia. You
| can say that you agree or disagree with some policy, but
| the "this is too much" line is just a cliche.
| rayiner wrote:
| At any given instant in time, progressives and radicals
| are calling for lots of different things. Some of those
| are good ideas, and some of those are bad ideas. It's the
| job of conservatives to filter out those bad ideas. The
| fact that they oppose the good ideas too doesn't mean
| they're wrong when they push back on the bad ones. It's
| like the old trope: they laughed at Einstein, but they
| also laughed at Bozo the Clown:
| https://wiki.c2.com/?TheyLaughedAtEinstein.
|
| Criticizing "defund the police" (as in, actually
| defunding the police) or normalizing the use of
| "whiteness" as a pejorative is not a bad thing just
| because conservatives do it. In fact, conservatives are
| doing society a valuable service by pushing back on those
| things. I'm quite sure in the retrospect of history,
| those will be proven to be "bad ideas progressives tried
| at one point" rather than examples of real advancement.
| [deleted]
| pron wrote:
| I'm not saying that everything conservatives say is wrong
| nor that everything progressives want is a good idea,
| just that speaking of "excesses" does not actually make
| them so, because that's how conservatives have always
| talked about demands for change.
|
| Having said that, I'm fairly certain that in the
| retrospect of history, conservative pushback on the
| change in our understanding of race would look like
| another incarnation of white supremacy, and would appear
| as horrendously wrong to the people in the future as
| segregation appears to us to day, so much so that the
| conservatives of the future will use them as an example
| of something that is obviously right, unlike whatever
| social change people call for then.
| bhupy wrote:
| I find myself agreeing with this comment a lot, but I
| wonder if "mysterious" is the right word to describe it.
| "Circumstantial" maybe?
| pron wrote:
| Perhaps the difference is that I spent a few years
| studying history in grad school... I'm not saying that
| "latinx" is analogous to abolition, but that during
| abolition there were also behaviours analogous to
| "latinx" that conservatives used to ridicule
| abolitionists with.
| bhupy wrote:
| Do you have any examples?
| disgrunt wrote:
| Between 2016 and 2020 Trump gained six percentage points among
| black men, and five percentage points among Hispanic women. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54972389
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > Sure, the left talks about rhetoric, but it also fights for
| higher wages, civil liberties, healthcare
|
| problem with this line is that those in power now in America
| aren't solving any of these issues. they engage in window
| dressing and have been doing so since at least Clinton. they
| are left-INO. What US considers center left actually is right.
| Unless a new progressive party is formed (AOC, Sanders etc) and
| this party manages then to become a serious contender and
| accepted in mainstream, US politics will remain what it is: a
| farce.
|
| edit: _Right Marcuseanism_ - Herbert Marcuse's "Repressive
| Tolerance" is often cited as the progenitor of the censorious
| left, but its real ideological heirs are now on the right:
| https://outsidertheory.com/right-marcuseanism/ (I shared this
| yesterday and it's a shame it hasn't gotten more traction
| considering it goes much deeper into the problem than any
| (justified) rant on master/slave branches and Tech/github's
| hypocrisy)
| bobthechef wrote:
| Well, the Left is largely a globalist, neoliberal caste at
| this point. They had their revolution, kicked the Old Guard
| to the ground, assumed power, and put in place their own
| regime. All revolutions are about power, not improvement. And
| usually, the "cure" is worse than the disease.
|
| > What US considers center left actually is right
|
| The problem here is that the entire political spectrum has
| shifted leftward. So perhaps in a relative sense what you
| wrote is true, but in the historical sense, everyone is
| further left than they were, say, 70 years ago. (It's also
| true that 70 years ago, people still believed in modernity,
| and that's no longer the case. 30 years ago, people believed
| in the End of History, which, despite Western triumphalism,
| is also no longer the case.)
| is-ought wrote:
| If we'd believe the slanted tone of the post you're
| responding to I suppose we should at least take solace in
| only one of Americas two parties having all the right
| answers.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| The ACA is window dressing? Dodd-Frank and the CPA? DADT
| Repeal? The Paris Agreement?
| Miraste wrote:
| Dodd-Frank has been fairly successful, but the rest of
| those are emblematic of the window dressing approach.
|
| The ACA is incredibly complex, widely variable in
| implementation, and didn't actually help healthcare costs.
| Repealing Don't Ask was a symbolic step. Actual change in
| LGBT rights came from the Supreme Court. The Paris
| Agreement is the ultimate window dressing; it allows every
| country involved to point to it and say they're taking
| action on climate change, without requiring literally any
| changes.
|
| These are all classic Democratic Party moves. They take on
| the appearance of doing something while kicking the issue
| down the road a few years for someone else to deal with.
| easton wrote:
| The ACA isn't single-payer healthcare (and didn't really
| bring down the cost of healthcare much if at all[0]), so I
| think by the standards of the left in other countries, it
| is window dressing.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act#Insura
| nce_...
| oblio wrote:
| Does the US even have a chance of people passing single
| payer? I imagine we'll see people lighting themselves on
| fire in front of Congress before that happens.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| We're not talking about the left in other countries,
| we're talking about the left in the United States. Within
| that context, the ACA is a progressive piece of
| legislation. You can just agree to the point rather than
| move the goalposts.
| darksaints wrote:
| Its only component that is even slightly progressive are
| the subsidies for some lower income people to get
| insured. From a conceptual and philosophical level, it is
| quite conservative and has its origins from moderate
| conservative state government administrations. The only
| reason people think they can call it progressive with a
| straight face is because the republican party, in their
| quest to oppose anything and everything that comes from
| the left, decided it was a bad idea the moment the
| democratic party used it as a compromise to get a few
| blue dog democrats on board.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| The ACA was considered a Republican-friendly approach to
| health care prior to it becoming a partisan issue (More
| or less the same approach was introduced by Romney in
| Utah). It's not particularly progressive, either in
| comparison to other countries or past attempts in the
| U.S., and is only really considered such because it
| turned into a blue team vs. red team issue.
| wl wrote:
| Something like the ACA as a state-run program had none of
| the Constitutional problems the ACA has as a federal
| program. Then again, pretty much every elected American
| politician only believes in federalism when it suits
| their agenda.
| cestith wrote:
| I think you may also find that what's considered a
| Republican-friendly compromise in Massachusetts in 2006 -
| where Romney was actually governor - may be different
| from where the party of Trump and McConnell find policy
| to be Republican friendly.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Sorry, I was wrong on the location. I don't think that
| opposition to the ACA began with Trump though (witness
| the resistance getting it through in the first place).
| Republicans opinion of it did a nearly complete 180
| almost immediately after Obama started advocating for it
| - far too short a time for the Republican party ideology
| to change.
| danaliv wrote:
| I was a vocal supporter of the ACA when it passed. Then I
| had to actually use it. It's garbage. I still couldn't
| afford health care, and then at the end of each year I
| got punished for it. The ACA is a failure.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Glad you mentioned the Paris Agreement. How about we ratify
| the agreement so it becomes a treaty otherwise post 2024,
| it may go out the window again.
|
| As far as window dressing goes, we see this from both
| parties. They talk and vote radical when they are out of
| power. When they are in power, everything is status quo.
| mcherm wrote:
| Ratifying it requires 2/3 agreement in the Senate. That
| is impossible to achieve in the current political
| climate.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| Without exception, all of the most talented individuals I've
| met wanted to be seen and interacted with as individuals. It's
| Sally the engineer, not a nameless member of women-in-
| technology. Or Clinton the engineer, not a recent SWE graduate
| of an HBCU.
|
| Protectionist thinking is off-putting to many when it strays
| over some imaginary line to where I act as if I must be the
| champion for an underrepresented group _because they think I
| think_ they are less capable. When I join with them to help,
| it's generally welcome; when an influential person speaks as if
| that help is charitable (rather than equitable), it puts off
| some people.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > but focusing on it as reasons to "walk away from the left"
| (which not too many black Americans are doing, BTW)
|
| Wasn't it black moderates that powered centrist Biden to the
| nomination? Bernie and Warren's failure to gain any significant
| traction with the black electorate sunk their progressive
| candidacies.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Biden won because many of us blacks, especially in South
| Carolina voted for the candidate that we thought would most
| likely win over whites. Warren and Bernie were seen as too
| progressive and the reward for that would be 4 more years of
| Trump.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| I don't think it was specifically because of Trump - Bernie
| didn't poll well with Blacks in 2016 either, even before
| Trump was the presumptive nominee and was considered a joke
| candidate.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Bernie when compared with other dems in the primary will
| always lose out on the "white electability" test. Doesn't
| matter whether it's 2016 or 2020. My top comment was
| explaining one of the reasons Bernie was never going to
| do well, and the abyss that the black community was
| staring into.
| erezsh wrote:
| Funny, the way I remember it, they forced Sanders out without
| any voting (and for the second time in a row!)
| TFrancis wrote:
| Why can't you remember any voting during the primaries?
| SamBam wrote:
| Voting for Biden is now "walking away from the Left?"
|
| The man has been pursuing the most progressive agenda since
| FDR.
| pron wrote:
| But that's because many Democrats aren't all that
| progressive. Being progressive doesn't mean focusing on
| rhetoric. It mostly means certain views on the economy that
| many black Democrats disagree with at this time. Sanders in
| particular isn't considered all that "woke", and still
| primary voters shifted to Biden.
| matwood wrote:
| > But that's because many Democrats aren't all that
| progressive.
|
| The _people_ in the US aren 't all that progressive.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| I'm not sure any data regarding Biden specifically is worth
| much in terms of future assessment because such a huge amount
| of it would be tied to Obama's enduring massive popularity
| amongst all democrat demographics along with being the
| nostalgic "return to normal" option. There really isn't
| anywhere to go with that beyond Biden (unless they convince
| Michelle Obama to run?). Iirc a substantial number of Biden
| voters had Sanders as their 2nd preference too?
|
| The new options they presented flopped pretty badly. It's
| hard to look at Harris on the basis of her performance in the
| 2020 primary as being an especially strong frontrunner but
| it's even harder to think up of any alternatives who will be
| in strong enough of a position to displace her.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Sure, the left talks about rhetoric, but it also fights for
| higher wages, civil liberties, healthcare, affirmative action,
| investment in education, workers' rights, and voting rights.
|
| And the right pursues many of these things as well, albeit in
| very different and sometimes polarizing ways. But we should not
| pretend that leftist policies are not just as polarizing.
| nnvvhh wrote:
| The word "pursue" is doing a hell of a lot of work in your
| idea of the American right "pursuing voting rights." They're
| pursuing them like a hunting dog pursues a kill.
| SamBam wrote:
| What are some examples of the right (and I mean more than a
| single lonely senator) fighting _for_ higher wages,
| healthcare, affirmative action, workers ' rights, and voting
| rights?
| DenisM wrote:
| Trump's China tariffs were supposed to increase wages.
| Trump also pushed down prescription prices, and I believe
| some sort of price transparency in healthcare. Not sure how
| well it worked tho.
|
| As to worker rights - both sides are equally happy to throw
| them under the bus.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| There was a notable increase in Black / Latino votes for Trump
| in 2020 vs 2016. He actually lost the most ground among white
| voters.
| is-ought wrote:
| I find this post defensive in tone.
|
| At some point America's popular culture will internalize that
| the wage gap was a myth and etc and appreciate that the left
| has been peddling pseudoscience for ages in the name of
| intellectual vanity.
|
| Too many generations lost being the lefts rosemary kennedy.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| In what way is the wage gap a myth? You can argue that the
| wage gap isn't primarily due to absolute discrimination, but
| that the wage gap exists is an objective fact.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The 'myth' of the wage gap is that it's an aggregate
| number. It is sometimes/often presented as women make 73%
| of the wages of men for doing the same work. It isn't true
| for the same work though. When you do apples to apples
| comparisons of equivalent positions the gap frequently
| closes to almost nothing.
|
| The wage gap is better phrased as 'women, on average, do
| jobs that pay only 73% as much as men'. Which, in my
| opinion, is actually a far worse and harder to solve
| problem. Paying women the same as their male counterparts
| is easy. That's why there isn't really much of a gap in
| same profession comparisons. Getting women into more
| lucrative careers or getting Society to pay more for
| traditionally women dominated industries is much much
| harder.
|
| To your question: The wage gap 'myth' is the
| misinterpretation of the statistic to say that women are
| paid much less for the same work.
| throwaway53453 wrote:
| The observed differences is due to choices like having
| babies and choosing different career paths, but for the
| same job it's objectively illegal to pay female workers
| less.
|
| The feminists argue by taking the average of all wages, and
| of course women produce less economic value overall when
| they're still the primary caregiver in most societies.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| The real crime is because the value generated by primary
| caregivers is not in dollars changing hands, and thus not
| taxable, no government has any interest in honestly
| measuring that value. The value of a primary caregiver is
| massive and it's criminal that we as a civlization have
| demonized women and men who choose to fill that role.
| throwaway53453 wrote:
| Yup, I totally agree. There's also a good chance this
| total breakdown in culture is partly a symptom of
| parenting being demonized.
| majjgepolja wrote:
| Are they same left though?
| nailer wrote:
| > "walk away from the left" (which not too many black Americans
| are doing, BTW)
|
| Here's the BBC, a center left news website:
|
| > The group that saw the biggest increase in support for Trump
| compared to 2016, however, was black men.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54972389
|
| Here's Forbes - check the last 4 elections:
|
| https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5fa99cf43b8...
|
| from
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/11/09/no-tru...
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26488090.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >Saying that the left spends too much effort on rhetoric might
| be valid criticism, but focusing on it as reasons to "walk away
| from the left" (which not too many black Americans are doing,
| BTW) is disingenuous.
|
| That depends whether you distinguish between the Left and the
| Democratic Party. Most minority voters remain firm Democrats,
| although fewer than in 2016. Many/most minorities I've met,
| including myself, are _completely_ disenchanted with "the
| Left" as an activist bloc that tries to take over or derail the
| Party. That bloc is simply two or three times as strict about
| "culture war" issues - which I agree with you are ultimately
| nigh-meaningless, but alas - as about the "kitchen table"
| issues where most people actually agree with them.
|
| In short, you can be a racial or ethnic minority who wants
| universal healthcare, a new voting rights bill, and to
| strengthen workers' unions, but then you dissent from the
| "Left" agenda on one culture-war issue, one that theoretically
| applies to your group but which you were never consulted about,
| and bam, the Left hates you and wants you gone.
|
| "Everyone get in line, we have to stop Trump" only worked while
| Trump was in office. It's hard to tell people we all need to
| get behind whichever street protest is marching downtown _now_
| , with Biden in office willingly signing surprisingly
| progressive bills like the stimulus.
| pron wrote:
| > I agree with you are ultimately nigh-meaningless
|
| I didn't say they're meaningless. Sadly, I'm one of those
| noisy, crazy woke, anti-free-speech neo-Marxists, but that
| doesn't mean I don't care _more_ about minimum wage and
| healthcare. The culture war is very important to me, but
| other things are even more important /urgent.
|
| > and bam, the Left hates you and wants you gone.
|
| Nope. When such large groups are concerned, of course you'll
| find people who'd want to ostracize you one way or the other,
| so the choice of what the "Left" is to you is ultimately on
| you. If that's what you focus on, an aspect of the left that
| you don't like but which has been a part of it for a hundred
| years, then you're just looking for excuses.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >Nope. When such large groups are concerned, of course
| you'll find people who'd want to ostracize you one way or
| the other, so the choice of what the "Left" is to you is
| ultimately on you. If that's what you focus on, an aspect
| of the left that you don't like but which has been a part
| of it for a hundred years, then you're just looking for
| excuses.
|
| Funny thing: you're dismissing my case here without even
| bothering to find out what the object-level example was
| going to be! You skipped the part where I explicitly
| specified that I'm talking about a culture-war issue that
| applies specifically and in depth to _my_ minority group,
| too, not some opportunity to pontificate on other people 's
| problems.
| pron wrote:
| I don't think I was dismissing your case, and I'm
| guessing we're in the same minority group.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Then maybe you understand why "shut up and get in line so
| we can purge another bunch of you like we did with the
| Doctor's Plot and the Polish cadre in 1968" is an
| unpersuasive case. Address my issues and listen to my
| demands, or you don't get my support. Simple as that. I
| have other options.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I believe how the parent post self-described will lend an
| explanation as to why.
| throwaway53453 wrote:
| Why would you admit you're anti free speech?
| prepend wrote:
| > which not too many black Americans are doing, BTW
|
| It's pretty hard to measure such a statement, but I noticed
| that Trump won 8% of the black vote in 2020 and 6% in 2016. [0]
| And it seems Romney won 6% in 2012. [1]
|
| It's not smart to extrapolate some trend from these three data
| points, but I don't think its accurate to dismiss claims that
| this isn't happening. Comically, dismissing the claims of a
| literal black person walking away from the left speaking of
| others in vis community is sort of like what the author is
| saying happens with people patronizing black persons and making
| decisions for them (eg, "it's not happening" and "master
| offends you").
|
| [0] https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/21537966/trump-black-voters-
| ex... [1] http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2012
| pron wrote:
| I am not dismissing any claims, but having a >90% party
| allegiance based on ethnicity is such an extreme situation,
| that ascribing reversions to one aspect of the left (which,
| true enough, the right wants to focus on), is just projection
| and also an exaggeration. I saw a recent interview with David
| Shor [1], who said that the conservative/progressive split in
| the US (based on self-identification, IIRC) is about 60/40
| across all ethnicities, but that many vote based on reasons
| other than ideology. But now we're seeing a trend across the
| board, where people's votes increasingly align more with
| ideology. So many conservative blacks vote Democrat, and
| might be shifting away because of a general emphasis on
| ideology.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ8UDzUvMg0
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| That actually makes perfect sense of the "walking away"
| talk, though. It was extreme and unusual in the first place
| that ardent conservatives would vote for the same political
| party as socialist activists based solely on race or
| identity. That was _really weird_ , actually, and an end to
| that kind of thing is just "reversion to the mean" of
| people voting for what they actually believe in.
| pron wrote:
| Sure, but they were attributing it to a very specific
| cause rather than general ideological disagreement, not
| to mention that the number of black people walking away
| from the Democratic party is not large, certainly
| compared to the level of support.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Surely the point is that if you cite _one_ person, you can
| claim anything? Whether that 's of the left or the right. You
| have to look a little closer to see whether that's a common
| or a fringe view and among what group of people.
| hannofcart wrote:
| I don't consider myself informed enough about this subject to
| detract from your assertions, but confining myself to the
| stats you presented, the trend of 6(2012), 6(2016) and
| 8(2020) seems to bolster the 'status quo' claim, that Black
| Americans are NOT leaving the left (Dems), rather than
| undermine it, does it not?
|
| I could be missing something here for sure. Like I mentioned
| am not well versed in American race politics nor in
| statistics.
| vmception wrote:
| It does suggest that
|
| Also add this to your data collection efforts:
|
| 1) A lot of black people don't identify as black on
| government forms. Whether it is for the census, some voter
| form I might not be aware of, a vaccine enrollment, or on a
| standardized test in the private sector. Out of previously
| substantiated fear of worse treatment or discrimination,
| but an inability to tell which contexts and future
| contexts. There won't be data on this.
|
| 2) A lot (maybe most?) of black people don't live in states
| where their vote really matters for the Presidency or the
| Senate. Population centers, California, New York. While
| there is also a cultural pride in leveraging the earned
| ability to vote (and sustained ability at the individual
| level, as felons have their rights removed in many states).
| So there are additional deterrents in wasting it on non-
| consensus views of that state.
|
| 3) The way I saw the data collected about % of black people
| voting seemed to be based surveys, and not really cross
| referencing all voter data with the census. Feel free to
| correct my understanding and I would like to read more
| about that.
| tikiman163 wrote:
| These numbers require more context to be meaningful. First,
| this was for his second term, which typically sees an
| increase in support. Second, Biden was instrumental in quite
| a few policies over the years that were generally bad for
| black Americans, and he was extremely critical of the BLM and
| police reform (de-fund) movements. Third, the percentage of
| black Americans which don't live in poverty has increased,
| and middle class black Americans are more likely to be
| fiscally conservative for the same reasons that all middle
| class Americans are more likely to be fiscal conservatives
| than those who live below the poverty line.
| ta988 wrote:
| The right was also extremely critical of BLM (calling them
| terrorists) and de-fund. But not all black people defend
| those anyway. The wealth argument seems much more plausible
| to me.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I overall agree with the broad message here. If GitHub,
| Microsoft, other tech companies cared so much about diversity
| they'd have an entire recruitment arm for women-only bootcamps
| and HBSUs.
| throw7 wrote:
| Stuff like diversity training and wokeness and virtue signaling
| is all counter productive. What you've done is planted the seed
| of discrimination where there was none to begin with.
| Congratulations.
| gvv wrote:
| We did it Patrick! We solved racism!
| samkone wrote:
| I am black, and I honestly find this change ridiculous. Born in
| Africa and lives in the US. And honestly this is ridiculous. At
| some point this becomes painful it spare the real discussions
| that need to have about slavery and history.
| stunt wrote:
| These ideas about inclusion and language aren't actually new.
| They just got more attention recently.
|
| While I agree that we should start fixing bigger and more
| perceptible issues about racism (e.g., hiring biases), but let's
| not mix these things together. I assume people that pushed these
| changes don't have influence on hiring. So let's celebrate their
| small but impactful success.
|
| I was personally a bit skeptical about the whole idea of not
| using "master" or "whitelist & blacklist" because my brain never
| associated them to race and racism and I assume it's just the
| same for everyone. So it seemed like a pointless change at first
| glance.
|
| But, maybe we should change it. Maybe the whole notion of "black"
| being used in "bad" and "negative" context has an influence on
| our perception about other things that we are not aware of.
|
| For comparison, the notion of associating Pink to girls and Blue
| to boys isn't something very old at all. It's a 20th century
| change and yet it comes so naturally to us that you would be
| surprised when you learn about its history. Perhaps "black" being
| the label for unfavorable things has an influence on our
| subconscious and how we see other things around us.
|
| There are many studies about how language has influence on our
| culture and the way we think. Actually you can even see it with
| programming languages. A Scala programmer solves a problem very
| different than a Python programmer would. Their mental model is
| very different.
|
| So I personally don't mind changing them anymore. Why resist the
| change and insist on something so cheap to change? Let's try it
| and perhaps it will take a few generations until it becomes the
| new normal. Every small progress is still good especially if it
| has deep cultural impact.
|
| I welcome changes and I admire forward thinking. Don't fall into
| the trap of false but appealing and convincing arguments against
| this and also don't mix it with other issues that we have.
|
| At some companies diversity & inclusion initiatives are just
| about language and nothing more and we know that's very wrong.
| But, progress even in a company like that is still a progress.
| Let's try to fix other things too while we take some other small
| steps.
|
| After a few times hearing it, I think I quite like "main" for
| branch name. I think it even makes more sense to say this is the
| main branch.
| major505 wrote:
| Because somewhere in my company pipeline there was a hardcoded
| "master" branch. So no new projects where building. The old guy
| have quited, so they asked me to review scripts, and only after a
| few hours It ocurred to me that was because new projects where
| being created with the main branch.
|
| So... fuck you github. You changed nothing, and annoyed a lot of
| people. And being all honest, if that is a thing that annoys you
| because when you hear master you thing of slavery and stuff like
| that, you probably get too much free time on your mind.
|
| I for example hear naster and immediately thing immediately about
| kung fu and stuff like that.
| huntercross wrote:
| The words we use matter. If they didn't you wouldn't feel the
| need to use fuck in your title. If you think it is inclusive to
| use old terminology the. why don't you use old technology?
| Because it is worth it communally for us to update and get better
| at cooperating. Running around tellkng Github to fuck themselves
| is just more toxic masculinity wrapped up in a need to stay at
| the center of every conversation at work and at home. I am happy
| I don't have to work on your team.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| The biggest thing that annoys me is now I have multiple repos
| with different branches that are main/master.
| selectnull wrote:
| You can setup whatever name you want as default branch, both in
| git and github.
| Bumkatio wrote:
| I got used to using main quickly and have to say, its much
| shorter than master and writes nicer.
|
| Was the time and effort worth it?
|
| Honestly, i have an opinion but i don't want to take a stance; My
| company paid me for changing it so who am i to complain?
| shirro wrote:
| I have never strongly associated the word master with slavery. I
| think of a master copy or a ships master first in this context.
| Master/slave specifically seems problematic. It does express the
| relationship between the software components better than most
| alternatives but I am happy to defer to people who know more than
| me on the social costs of keeping that terminology.
|
| There was indentured labour (effectively slavery though it was
| technically outlawed) practised in my country but many people
| aren't even aware of it and it hasn't created huge racial
| divides, civil war and political division that persists to today.
| I don't feel qualified to have an opinion either way. I find
| 'main' totally acceptable for the default git branch.
|
| I think change should be real and pragmatic and improve peoples
| lives, not just symbolic change to appease peoples guilt, but the
| truth is symbolic changes can have an impact. I am totally fine
| with saying sorry to my countries indigenous people. It isn't an
| admission I have personally done anything horrible myself to
| them. It is just saying sorry. It is what a decent person would
| do when they saw an injustice done. But I guess seeing that takes
| a certain level of emotional maturity and I guess that is often
| missing from these debates.
| nathias wrote:
| I don't believe anyone was ever offended by this, if they were,
| that would be their problem and corporate language policing or
| any other institutionalized efforts like that are evil
| mesozoic wrote:
| Whatever dude we solved racism by not using master branches
| anymore.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > Out of curiosity I asked my manager, who is like 20 yrs older
| than me, if he had ever been stopped and searched, he said not
| once in his life.
|
| I had a similar conversation when a black colleague was late for
| work, having been stopped and searched by the police in London.
|
| The other 10 (white) developers were all shocked, but he said it
| as casually as someone might report they'd missed the train, or
| had a puncture on a bicycle. He was stopped regularly, nothing to
| be done about it.
|
| No one else had ever been stopped.
|
| (A few months later, one of these white developers and I were
| walking away from the office when the other guy was stopped by
| the police. They searched his backpack on suspicion of theft.
| They told us the description was "white youth, short black hair,
| red football shirt, riding a blue mountain bike with a black
| backpack", which exactly matched my colleague.)
|
| The government figures say, from April 2019 to March 2020:
|
| > there were 6 stop and searches for every 1,000 White people,
| compared with 54 for every 1,000 Black people
|
| and this is an improvement!
|
| https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-jus...
| spiralx wrote:
| I'm 43 and white and have been stopped and searched once - late
| at night when it was raining and I had my hood up and was
| walking fast to get back to my friend's place - apparently I
| was "acting suspicious". I'm pretty sure that if my hood had
| been down it would never have happened..
| jlokier wrote:
| I've seen similar happen in London - black people stopped and
| seeming to be harassed by police for no obvious reason.
|
| But the main anecdote for me is when I was crossing the Swiss-
| French border near Geneva in a car with my girlfriend.
|
| She is black; I am white.
|
| She was told to get out of the car and required to present
| various paperwork, then they checked up on the paperwork,
| holding her for maybe 10-20 minutes, making phone calls.
|
| A man with an impressively large gun stood nearby.
|
| She had a decent job at the UN in Geneva nearby, a perfectly
| good identity card, and it's not at all unusual for black
| people to cross that border in a car.
|
| I thought they might check my paperwork too, but they were not
| interested and didn't ask me for anything, not even to get out
| of the car. It seems I was free to pass, except of course I
| waited for my temporarily detained girlfriend.
| [deleted]
| simiones wrote:
| I've also heard a similar style of tale from Switzerland,
| from a friend who has lived there for 30 years.
|
| She went to report her son's bicycle being stolen. She is
| white, but when the police heard her name (it is an Eastern
| European name), they instantly became less polite, making
| remarks such as "it's probably one of your country mates that
| did this, you know?". She got a little bit of comeuppance
| when she handed them her ID - her Canadian passport - and
| they suddenly became very polite again.
|
| While the color of your skin makes you a much bigger target
| for harassment, xenophobia even for people who's skin is
| white is a pretty similar thought process for those who
| perpetrate it, and extremely widespread.
| h3daz wrote:
| For what it's worth, I'm white and this happened to me
| countless times because I had a french licence plate that
| wasn't from around the border.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| This. 99% of policing is just fishing with a pretext. Even
| when they're out to run a speed trap and collect revenue
| they still err toward stopping the outlier cars.
|
| If you don't blend in you get a ton more attention. That
| can mean an out of state plate, a skin tone that doesn't
| match the area, a vehicle that doesn't match the area or
| you're checking stereotype boxes for criminal activity.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I mean, an interesting question that gets underreported is:
| what is the rate at which searches of black people find
| evidence, vs white people, per search? Police just want crimes
| (ironically); if one visually identifiable population group
| gives them more crimes, they'll preferentially search that one.
| Hell, it's even worse - if you see a crowd, and you know that,
| for instance, to pull numbers out of my ass, black people are
| 10% more likely to be carrying drugs than white people, it's in
| your rational (if racist) interest as a police officer to
| always preferentially search black people over white people -
| just like how if a coin comes up heads 60% of the time, you
| guess heads every time, not 60%.
|
| The solution is drug law reform and changing the incentives of
| the police away from maximizing case count.
| Camas wrote:
| >Positive outcome rates are similar whatever people's
| ethnicity is. Around 25% of searches result in some action
| being taken.
|
| https://fullfact.org/crime/stop-and-search-england-and-
| wales...
|
| That's for London
| maweki wrote:
| That doesn't add up though. If you guess that black people
| are more likely to have guns and you search them far more
| often, more evidence will turn up, even if they are/were as
| likely to have a gun than any other group.
|
| If you never search white people for drugs, guess what? You
| never find drugs on white people.
|
| It's a self-fulfilling racist prophecy.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Yes that's correct. However, in that case, while your total
| number of black drug crimes will be high, your "drug crimes
| _per interaction_ " rate will still tell the true story.
|
| (Assuming no straight up fraud/planting drugs on the part
| of the police, which is also very possible.)
| greenwich26 wrote:
| In my town, the police stop and search old white ladies. So
| far they have not found any guns or drugs.
| [deleted]
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Well to answer your question just look at crime statistics by
| race.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Well that's not quite the same, since it's biased by rate
| of search. The interesting question is crime statistics
| _corrected for encounter rate_.
|
| Which tbf I also don't have links for on hand.
| eyko wrote:
| As a black guy in London, I've not been stopped and searched in
| over a decade, so I do think that profiling tends to happen
| more the younger you are (and fit a particular profile).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Yup. Police have the high crime demographics memorized. If
| you check more boxes you get more attention.
|
| (I shouldn't have to say this but obviously I'm describing
| things are they are, not endorsing them).
| mrits wrote:
| A counter example is that we have gotten in trouble in the
| US for NOT sending the police into high crime areas as
| well.
| mrits wrote:
| A less cynical and perhaps naive explanation would be that it
| makes sense statistically for minorities to be stopped when
| there is a description.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| At the university where I worked, a colleague mentioned that he
| had been stopped by the campus police four times in his time
| there (which was longer than my time). He was surprised to
| learn that I had been stopped thrice over a shorter period, and
| I am so white I can be seen from great distances. We regularly
| had to come in at night for patches and upgrades then and it
| was just a fact of life.
|
| Even in my neighborhood, if I go out walking at night, I get
| stopped by the police, approximately once every two years. This
| is with a grey sweatpants, a white T-shirt, and a long white
| shirt, hardly burglary attire.
|
| I wonder how much of it is a function of being male and, if
| large, apparently threatening-looking.
| psychlops wrote:
| You may be astonished to learn that men are stopped and frisked
| 10x more than women.
|
| https://www.met.police.uk/sd/stats-and-data/met/stop-and-sea...
| joseluisq wrote:
| Copied and pasted from the article:
|
| > So what would our tech bro saviors have found out if they had
| actually bothered to talk to anyone black? Well, at least this
| black person would have told them that calling the branch master
| is not offensive. Furthermore, black people as a collective are
| not triggered by words like master wherever they appear in the
| wild. Context people, context. Banning a word because you think
| it's offensive is basically telling us what we should and should
| not be offended by. There are bigger problems around inclusivity
| that deserve our time, let us put this drive for change into
| those.
|
| It speaks by itself. I agree.
|
| --
|
| Honestly trying to connect vaguely the calamity of racism or the
| master/slave human abuse and then bringing them forcibly into the
| context of a software term "master" used as a naming convention
| to describe the root (default) repository's branch is just stupid
| and insane.
|
| Simply because both contexts are completely different. So try to
| mix them is big mistake and confusion-prone. Even it can fracture
| your community (if maybe it's already).
|
| It's sad see how devs/companies are supporting this stupid idea
| of the change or even worse they encourage you to do it so.
|
| Fortunately there are humans (devs) who really understand the
| matter and don't buy this nonsense.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| This topic has been done to death. If you're offended by the name
| change from master to main then you really need to be asking
| yourself why you're so upset about it.
|
| And you need to be answering that question honestly.
| albertopv wrote:
| Because it's utterly useless, stupid, out of context. Why Git,
| github, Azure DevOps, everyone have to change that and possibly
| broke backward compatibility with scripts, pipelines or who
| know what(yes, I can branch master from main, but why I have
| to?)? Why? Should we completely stop to use master word
| altogether?
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| The level of anger it seems to generate in people is
| completely out of proportion to the actual change. It's
| interesting.
| albertopv wrote:
| Because it's utterly useless, stupid. Sorry if you don't
| get that.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Seems there's been daily ragebait articles on this issue.
| And what an incredibly minor issue it is too.
| MongooseMan wrote:
| People aren't offended by the change; they're irritated.
|
| I'm irritated because it was an unnecessary change based on
| unsound reasoning, made by people who claim to represent a
| minority while not belonging to the minority or understanding
| its members.
|
| I'm irritated because I can't give instructions to junior
| developers as easily: no longer can I rely on all of my
| instructions working, and documentation now requires
| clarifications and caveats which used to be unnecessary.
|
| I'm irritated because it appears that GitHub has made it
| intentionally difficult to change the main branch in the "new
| repository" page; while it shows an option to change the
| default branch name, this requires refreshing the page and
| losing the repository name and description which you've already
| written.
| Karsteski wrote:
| It's because I detest virtue signalling. I especially detest
| companies virtue signalling solely for the sake of appeasing
| the woke mob, a minority of people, in a transparent attempt to
| show how "anti-racist" they are.
| evgeniysharapov wrote:
| Ha, I am surprised no one yet cried about "black hat" being bad
| hackers and "white hat" being noble ones. When is that change
| coming to DEF CON? Most surprising is how hypocritical this
| charade is and likely everyone understands it, but follows the
| proverbial "school of fish".
| saint_angels wrote:
| Usually companies try to hire more minorities out of guilt, or
| because "it's the right thing to do", but I think it's a wrong
| motivator. If the industry is not hiring part of society for some
| reason, then it's missing huge amount of unused talent. We should
| be doing diversity and inclusion out of greed rather than guilt
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| Why is this empty vapid rant so upvoted? Who cares?
|
| Writing so many words about this change that doesn't really
| affect anyone unless they want it to... I wonder why he was so
| upset?
|
| (I don't actually wonder. Enjoy your lovely community of
| wonderful like-minded wholesome people, Dang.)
| idm wrote:
| I'm quite comfortable saying that master/slave is an unsavory
| metaphor to use in your distributed architecture.
| ankurpatel wrote:
| As a South Asian/Indian and an immigrant to USA coming from a
| lower middle class background, I would argue that just like
| Blacks we are also disadvantaged but unlike the African Americans
| South Asians/Indians have taken over the STEM programs. I do not
| think acts like these make a change but rather change in
| mentality of the African American community is what matters for
| their youth to choose careers and opportunities that help them
| prosper.
| Number157 wrote:
| He had a masters degree. We were impressed by her mastery of the
| subject. They were master archers. The zen master suggested they
| should meditate.
|
| Etc etc etc...
|
| I realize the word can be used in a negative context but that's
| the case with any word and in none of the cases is it the word
| itself that is the problem, but peoples actions.
|
| I don't care if we call master 'main' or whatever. They both
| work. The discussion around the name change does annoy me. This
| isn't D-day, it's a name change for the sake of PR.
| pulse7 wrote:
| Word "master" has many meanings, not just "a man who has people
| working for him, especially servants or slaves"...
| rvz wrote:
| Told you how useless this branch change was to bring this
| 'inclusivity' in. Nothing but woke virtue-signalling as a whole.
| They want real change not solidarity stunts like this. GitHub and
| everyone else might as well have done nothing instead of bringing
| this attention to themselves.
|
| This fallacious logic of _' If you are silent, you are against
| us'_ or _' Your silence is violence'_ means that when we are
| still waiting for Mastercard to change their name, at the same
| time they are also virtue signalling for 'inclusivity' as well.
| One can just say: _' Why haven't you changed your offensive name
| yet?'_ _' Since they are still silent about this demand, they are
| probably still against us and what we believe in.'._
|
| It is better to ignore them in the first place rather than give
| in to their ridiculous demands and copy their virtue signalling
| stunts which achieve absolutely nothing.
| phasnox wrote:
| > "I'm pissed off because they pretended to be doing good > and
| wanted me to congratulate them for it. Either do some real shit
| or stay silent. Stay the fuck out of our way and don't pretend
| you care. Then we can all get on with our lives."
|
| This
| cblconfederate wrote:
| yeah it sounds like github went overboard on fake 2020
| sensitivism and forgot to turn off the machine after biden was
| elected
| paracyst wrote:
| A lot of people in this industry are not going to like it, but
| this post needed to be written and is 100% spot on. Wake me up
| when I can go to an "about our team" page for any of the
| companies posted on here and not see virtually the same exact
| team picture, from a diversity perspective, for nearly every
| company.
| kludgeon wrote:
| if you scroll past the left v. right and recycling sideshows,
| there is half-decent discussion that is relevant to the article
| below.
| ggggtez wrote:
| This is bikeshedding to the extreme. Who cares if Github changes
| what words they use (from "master" to "main").
|
| The poster claims that _they personally were not asked about the
| change_. Who cares what that person thinks? Seriously, this is
| just one voice (an "anon" user, so they won't even put their
| reputation behind their words).
|
| This poster is clearly uninformed which doesn't help their case.
| This conversation has a _long history_ in the computer world, and
| many companies _for years_ have been removing the Master /Slave
| terminology (including Master/Slave disks). Don't believe me? Go
| look at Wikipedia, which has a page devoted to this topic! This
| is hardly new ground!
|
| There may be problems of race in tech, but fighting against the
| "good" in order to hold out for the "perfect" is a stupid
| approach. There is no reason to argue against this change.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| Slave Branch Matter!
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Companies do whatever they can in order to avoid being
| criticized. Nobody really cares about the root cause of things.
| The thought process is simple: "Company A did this, so we'll do
| the same, because otherwise they'll blame us for NOT doing that,
| so we may lose partners and that will affect our revenue".
|
| A great example is advertisement. A lot of tech companies
| suddenly started to work with black/asian fashion models. This
| change is obviously driven by movements, similar to BLM. It's not
| a natural change, not an honest idea coming from a production
| team. They do it purely from the perspective to shut everyones
| mouth, so to speak.
|
| These days, everyone expects diversity, except that if you are
| thinking differently or having a different opinion, then you'll
| be taunted, banished and then canceled from everywhere. This is
| not good and goes against principles of innovation. People are
| scared of being different.
|
| My personal take on master branch thing is that GitHub had to
| either stay quiet and do nothing OR, if asked to change master to
| main, say "f*ck you, go build your own company and name things
| however you want, we are not going to change foundational things
| just because YOU think master word is offending". Because, what
| if in 5 years someone is offended by branches being named `main`?
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Malcolm X said it quite well:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdc-q3biLm8
| mikaeluman wrote:
| I agree that the intense focus on changing names and appearances
| in general is at best a waste of time. It's a very US/UK-centric
| discussion.
|
| "Master/slave" has no relevance at all in many countries like
| Sweden where serfdom (traldom) was forbidden or else ended in the
| 13th century and never involved foreign peoples.
|
| "Whitelisting" and "blacklisting" have never been associated with
| skin pigmentation. This seems like a paranoid interpretation.
|
| Meanwhile, the real problems still remain. I will say that I
| think even the author makes a serious mistake in framing the
| discussion around skin color.
|
| These ideas about race that prevail in the discussion are not
| helpful and stem from poor scientific work in the 18th to 20th
| century.
|
| The genetic diversity of Africa is more diverse than the rest of
| the world (https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/study-
| africans-mo...).
|
| To refer to all as "black" (or worse, "Black" with a capital B)
| is a simplification that has no relevance today.
| kajaktum wrote:
| This name change only gives the satisfaction/feeling of doing
| something but actually not having any impact (and possibly
| negative) on the world.
|
| As a person of color, the LAST thing I want is attention. Granted
| I am SEA in Canada, but when someone talks about minorities i
| just cringe. In my country, my race is the majority and I myself
| feel bad/awful about my own ra
|
| Honestly, if your company is such a moral pillar that you oh care
| so much about minorities and the poor people then why the *ck do
| you have billions of dollar stashed in some foreign company? Fix
| that first you dipshit.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| In sociology, the term "majority" doesn't refer to proportions
| of a population, rather it refers to classes of people
| (economic, racial, religious, among others) that hold power in
| a community. Likewise a minority isn't the smallest demographic
| in the population, but anyone who doesn't belong to the social
| majority under discussion. In sociology, these terms have
| nothing whatsoever to do with the size of the respective
| populations (which is super annoying and confusing, to be
| sure). A social minority can actually make up most of the
| population, while a social majority can be only a few
| individuals.
|
| For example, Bahrain is 75% Shia Muslim, but the royal family
| which controls the government and military are Sunni Muslims.
| Despite making up the majority of the population, Shia Muslims
| are religious minorities there since they are regularly subject
| to various forms of discrimination and repression on the basis
| of their religious beliefs.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/minority
| impeplague wrote:
| The american left is lagging behind in therms of political theory
| and this "identitarian ideology" is a symptom of that. The fact
| that this ideology now is being imported by leftists in other
| countries creates a really bad image of the whole political
| movement.
|
| It is interesting that this innocuous terminological justice is
| now a thing in a lot of english speaking social environments (and
| internet), as far as I can tell, but is a joke for the majority
| of population (included left organizations and political parties)
| where I live. This is, for me, a clear sign of the elitist agenda
| that has minimal impact in the real life, but delight the middle-
| class left of american universities.
|
| I consider myself a left minded person, and being from a third
| world country, I first was amused by this when this started since
| I do a general research of leftists movements around the world.
| But now that this evolved on a entire "ideology" (quoted because
| it has really poor political substance) and is now present,
| albeit not as much as in the USA and Europe, in my country, my
| take is that this is a dissuasive factor in the political
| development of the masses.
|
| Sorry for my english.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| I guess OP didn't realize the default branch name is configurable
| in repo settings, and that organizations can set it at an account
| level (which is an easy fix to not have to retool all the ci/cd
| pipelines). Much more effective then a blog post that nobody is
| going to see. Have we learned nothing from Rick and Morty?
| s9w wrote:
| This will be flagged and [dead]ed in 3, 2, 1, ...
| 0xdeadfeed wrote:
| Anyone who thinks that the word "master" should be removed from
| English dictionary is just plain stupid.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Crux of it:
|
| > We're going to change the branch name because it could be seen
| as offensive but we're still going to sell police facial
| recognition software that is biased against black people and
| women.
|
| Some parts of tech are populated and led by 29-35 y/os who were
| sold a bill of goods in their early 20's about how virtuous and
| pro-social their tech was. "Making a better place through....",
| well it turned out to be to through surveillance-y adtech and
| working with China but not the DoD because "war is bad."
|
| So much of tech's labor challenges right now seem driven by the
| above.
| maverwa wrote:
| > I just don't appreciate the idea that we as software engineers
| can now sit back and believe we've made some kind of positive
| change, coz we haven't.
|
| I might have missed the GitHub communication there, but thats not
| at all what I think when thinking about changing the _default_
| branch name for _new repos_ to a name thats, in my perception, at
| least as good as the old one, maybe better.
|
| If there is window dressing involved around this change, then
| thats bs and need to be called out, but I nonetheless think that
| this change _itself_ is not bad. Like many of these terminology
| changes discussed and implemented in the past, I actually think
| `main` is a better term for the (default) main branch. Personally
| I would opt for a branch name that better fits the projects
| needs, like 'stable' or 'production' or 'less-broken' or
| whatever you want. But we are talkin about a default here.
|
| > I'm not pissed off because I expected tech companies to do
| more, no, I didn't expect them to do anything. I'm pissed off
| because they pretended to be doing good and wanted me to
| congratulate them for it.
|
| Yes, I agree with this.
|
| [edit] only syntax fixes, my markdown is lacking
| anatoly wrote:
| 'master' is better than 'main' because it successfully conveys
| the mental picture of the branch from which others are
| typically cloned. 'main' doesn't carry that connotation.
|
| You could of course have branches that evolve in parallel, even
| without common code if you want. But what people almost always
| do is have one primary branch from which exact copies are made,
| given other names, then continue to evolve either more slowly
| (stable releases) or faster (speculative work). You could call
| that primary branch "primary" or "main" or "premier" or "trunk"
| and they all work, but "master" conveys that expectation very
| successfully, and that's why people tend to like that name.
| maverwa wrote:
| This may be because english is not my first language, or just
| "wrong", but for me it does not convey the that information.
|
| Good point, how language is perceived is very subjective and
| personal. I can see how people like the term "master" here
| more than "main" because it carries more information for
| them. Thanks!
| sneak wrote:
| Why are you censoring your own title in a post complaining about
| GitHub censoring themselves?
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Malcolm X said it quite well:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdc-q3biLm8
| mbeex wrote:
| Where are the other 700 comments?
| worik wrote:
| I propose "mistress"
| sunaurus wrote:
| I feel like this topic has been discussed a lot already, but I
| think it's important to keep pushing back against useless wasted
| man-hours like this effort is.
|
| I live in a country that was almost entirely enslaved by
| foreigners for ~700 years. I've discussed this rename with dozens
| of engineers in my country. Without exception, every single one
| of them thinks it's completely ridiculous. We need to keep
| voicing these thoughts so that decision-makers in large companies
| have a chance to hear us and realize that they should focus on
| more useful issues instead.
| mhm776 wrote:
| The logic according to one Microsoft PM is that if one [white
| virtue signalling person on behalf of some person involuntary
| labelled as non privileged] person is offended it's one person
| too much... It didn't sound well thought out then or now...
| tsss wrote:
| What if one black person feels discriminated? What if all
| black people feel discriminated? I think it's clear that the
| term blacklist is not discriminatory in origin nor is it used
| in a discriminating way. If, hypothetically, all black people
| would feel discriminated then there would be a real gain from
| changing these words, even if they were never discriminatory
| to begin with. Still, even in that case, I'm not sure if it's
| a good idea to give in to "feelings". Feeling discriminated
| is decidedly not the same as being discriminated and it's a
| slippery slope when hurting other people's feelings becomes a
| punishable offence.
| Siira wrote:
| So what? There are lots of people of "color" in this world,
| and most of us don't need our time wasted because some
| emotionally challenged persons have nothing more productive
| to do than obsess over how some APIs can conform better to
| their desires.
|
| The funny thing is that this whole tradeoff of breaking an
| API to make it better is nothing new; The woke is just
| bullying everyone by asking the tradeoff to be ignored
| completely in their favor.
| ianleeclark wrote:
| We've had a few months to turn off an option in Github to
| change this behavior. I believe there was even an email that
| went out and a thread on HN concerning this change. Any
| conversation at this point is just whinging to the void to farm
| engagement.
| tsbinz wrote:
| So you say spending time on this topic is wasted time, and your
| solution is to spend more time on pushing back?
| rgoulter wrote:
| I think this is kindof an important question. "If it's so
| insignificant, why do you care?".
|
| I don't think it's so hard to understand why some people
| might be irritated, though. The social attitude that
| motivates the change to switch away from the term 'master' is
| not widely held outside of a subset of Americans who are
| apparently vastly over represented in making these kinds of
| decisions. It's a bit grating to be saying "consider how
| others feel" while ignoring how most people feel about it,
| and making the change made you want anyway.
|
| It's a zeitgeist which results in things like someone
| complaining that VSCode including a candy cane icon is more
| offensive than the swastika, and the VSCode repository
| acceeding this complaint. - I feel if that's where you end up
| from wanting everyone to feel welcome and included, that
| you've gotten lost along the way.
| [deleted]
| akvadrako wrote:
| This is how the world works. If you don't fight back
| sometimes these things will continue to happen.
|
| Of course there is a balance - too much fighting back and the
| cure becomes worse than the initial problem.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Allowing this _faux_ diversity change will only lead to more
| calls for other _faux_ diversity changes, so the time spent
| pointing out its vacuousness is well worth it.
|
| Just as security theater isn't real security, diversity
| theater isn't real diversity. We must stand up and denounce
| diversity theater and those who profit from it so that we can
| get focus on diversity efforts that have substance behind
| them.
| mimikatz wrote:
| I am reminded of Catch-22 about how strong Italy is by not
| fighting these things, just go with it. Another side will come
| up and push some other agenda, then just go with that.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeVWupFBkA8 ""But of course I
| do," exclaimed the old man cheerfully. "The Germans are being
| driven out, and we are still here. In a few years you will be
| gone, too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really
| a very poor and weak country, and that's what makes us so
| strong. Italian soldiers are not dying anymore. But American
| and German officers are. I call that doing extremely well. Yes,
| I am certain that Italy will survive this war and still be in
| existence long after your own country has been destroyed.""
| Grustaf wrote:
| In many cases it's more than ridiculous, it s completely non-
| sensical. What is the logic behind removing the word "master"
| even supposed to be?
|
| The problem with slavery is not that there is a word for it,
| it's that it exists, and used to be very common. By using the
| word "master" we are not condoning slavery, nobody can believe
| that. Just like we are not condoning domestic violence by using
| the word "hit" in "hit song".
|
| For the word blacklist I can see how misguided people could
| make a case, since the word black is used for something
| negative. Still ridiculous of course.
|
| Another absurd example: In my project they decided to change
| the name of a "blackout tool". There is nothing negative about
| this tool, it doesn't make things worse, it just colours them
| black.
| cabite wrote:
| Unfortunately I think it is more of a cultural problem than a
| matter of leadership. The widely used FactoryGirl Ruby gem (the
| vast majority of Rails setups embed it) was renamed FactoryBot
| a couple years ago. It's not like my team had a say in this
| change but overall I was the only one against it but ended up
| implemented the change, which took about an hour (all our repos
| + the PRs). Note: technically I was in a situation of
| harassment.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Without exception, every single one of them thinks it 's
| completely ridiculous. We need to keep voicing these thoughts
| so that decision-makers in large companies have a chance to
| hear us and realize that they should focus on more useful
| issues instead._
|
| So do we know where that decision actually came from?
| meiraleal wrote:
| We need to become the the decision-makers. And stop listening
| to the current ones.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| It does rather smack of presentism, SV companies might be
| better doing a proper transparent pay / promotion survay to
| identify discrimination amongst their employees - Based on my
| direct experience in the UK there will be Discrimination.
|
| Additionally properly identifying the impact of race on ai/ml
| derived algorithms would be a better use of time.
|
| But of course these would have cost and other implications that
| companies would not want to do.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| You had 700 years to get over it. Harboring bad emotions is
| negative for all involved.
| jansan wrote:
| Not only is your post unnecessarily offensive, you also did
| not read the OP's post correctly. He did not write that the
| occupation ended 700 years ago, it lasted 700 years. If my
| guess for OP's country is correct, it actually ended just 150
| years ago.
| gvido wrote:
| I think OP is from Estonia, in which case it ended around
| 30 years ago.
| veeti wrote:
| Where is the cutoff for getting over it? 100, 200, 300 years?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Slavery which didn't happen in America doesn't count.
| cies wrote:
| I agree that master->main is pretty pointless.
|
| But what about getting rid of "slave", "blacklist" and
| "whitelist".
|
| The last two kind of opened my eyes to connotation of black and
| white, that may be problematic to some. Also I find
| "allow/denylist" more descriptive, maybe that helps.
| Karsteski wrote:
| None of this helps. All this worthless virtue signalling does
| is irk people, and make them start ignoring actual societal
| issues.
|
| Absolutely no one is using words like blacklist in
| association with black people, in the same way that (almost)
| no one uses lame in reference to a crippled person anymore.
|
| Do you even know any black people that give a damn about
| changing words just to appease American black people? Most of
| my family is black and so are most of my close friends. They
| would all find this absurd.
|
| Mind you, these are Trinidadian black people, and so we are
| all the descendents of slaves as well. This is all so
| condescending and borderline demeaning that white people
| think that we are so inept that we think such changes would
| affect literally anything in life.
|
| Stop it. Please.
| LandR wrote:
| The soft bigotry of low expectations.
| gambiting wrote:
| My own country has been occupied by foreign forces so hard
| that it stopped existing for 100 years. It nearly erased our
| culture and lots of people died. Should I now start telling
| people that using the word "occupied" in places like
| "occupied toilet" or "occupation" to mean employment is
| somehow offensive to me?
|
| Or maybe should I realize that as a literate adult, I have
| the ability to understand context around the words that are
| used?
| 4140tm wrote:
| Do you think there's any relation between the naming of
| whitelist/blacklist and skin color? I certainly don't. Colors
| and their associations exist beyond racial identity.
|
| Also, what is the problem in calling the relationship between
| two processes (one fully controlling the other) master-slave?
| It's a perfectly suitable analogy and does not have anything
| to do with any one person's ethnicity or history. I'll go a
| step further and say that looking at this whole thing
| entirely in the context of the mistreatment of african
| americans is unfair to people all over the world who have a
| history of slavery - as other posters have noted, there are
| plenty examples of that for people of all races. This is not
| exclusive to one group of people and no one can claim
| ownership of the word.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I'm generally not in favor of these changes.
| Blacklist/whitelist I can kind of see, but then again, why
| make it about skin color? It's natural that we'd have a
| connotation of bright things being good and dark things being
| bad (as in, our surroundings), because we like being able to
| see.
|
| Any resemblance to words used to describe skin color is
| coincidental, I think.
| ccmcarey wrote:
| The issue with that is that those words (blacklist/whitelist
| specifically) have no connotation to race.
|
| It's not an issue. The etymology of the words have nothing to
| do with race.
|
| Trying to get people to change them _creates_ that link.
|
| There are real issues that could be focused on to bring about
| effective change. Not this.
| callmeal wrote:
| >The issue with that is that those words
| (blacklist/whitelist specifically) have no connotation to
| race.
|
| Not directly no. But they enforce the unconscious belief
| that "black == bad" and "white == good". Read up a bit on
| unconscious/implicit bias [0]. There was an online test
| floating around that measured your response rate to a white
| face or a black face and those results were eye-opening.
|
| Also consider how other industries have approached this
| problem[1] and how things have changed there.
|
| [0] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/meet-
| psychologist-ex...
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-
| leadership/2013/oct/14/...
| bildung wrote:
| _> But they enforce the unconscious belief that "black
| == bad" and "white == good"._
|
| No, they don't. What your sources did was bring to light
| the _current stereotypes_ in people 's head, not how they
| were created. What you want to do is _change those
| stereotypes_ , not mingling with the words that only
| _communicate_ the stereotypes. It 's about the concepts
| in the heads, not the words.
|
| If you want to change the stereotypes (which you can't
| remove, just change), you have to provide different
| pictures: Showcase black business men/women, talk about
| the performance of Obama, have high achievers with
| diverse background do talks in schools, or sports stars
| do shows with kids, do shows with female arab DJs and so
| on. In short: Give the brains of people input that forces
| them to adapt their stereotypes.
|
| This differentiation of signified and signifier often is
| hard to get right if your own moral system already
| conforms to the social goal, because in that case the
| _word_ seems to be equal to the _concept /meaning_. So we
| just have to transport to word to transport the meaning,
| right? But this isn't how language works. Words can only
| trigger the frame they belong to _if the other person
| already has the concept in her mind_.
| callmeal wrote:
| >Words can only trigger the frame they belong to if the
| other person already has the concept in her mind.
|
| Words can also be used to put those concepts in people's
| minds.
| bildung wrote:
| Just to be clear we talk about the same thing: Words have
| _zero_ meaning by themselves (and this is not my personal
| opinion, but consensus in cognitive linguistics).
|
| So you can use words to describe things (like we do right
| now), and thus hope to invoke mutual understanding, but
| you can't put a new concept into another person's head by
| inventing a word. You can trigger a concept _already
| there_ if the other person already associates a specific
| meaning with a specific word, though.
|
| So if you want to better the situation for e.g. African
| Americans in the US, replacing "master branch" with "main
| branch" has no effect, because a) this master is not the
| master/slave master - the words may have had identical
| meaning (I don't know, perhaps both meanings have a
| common ancestor), but today the word "master" in the
| context (=frame) of source code respositories means
| something completely different than master/slave. Just as
| "slave" in the US doesn't mean "person of slavic origin"
| anymore.
|
| But more importantly you _don 't change the stereotype of
| African Americans_ this way. That you'll only achieve by
| constantly pushing different images of African Americans
| _in the relevant contexts_ , like, off the top of my
| head, a collective day where every github user with
| darker skin starts to use a real profile picture on
| github.
| Nursie wrote:
| Unconscious bias may well exist and have a meaningful
| impact on life.
|
| But unconscious bias testing has been shown not to test
| anything in a consistent manner, being largely
| unreproducible, and unconscious bias training has been
| shown not to impact anything much or even consistently
| impact test results.
|
| Such things appear to be pseudoscience and bordering on a
| scam.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _But they enforce the unconscious belief that..._
|
| You can justify pretty much anything with that reasoning.
| If you follow through with that, you'd have to ban the
| words "black" and "white" from the language completely,
| except in a racial context.
|
| > _There was an online test floating around that measured
| your response rate to a white face or a black face and
| those results were eye-opening._
|
| This investigation was about seeing faces, not hearing
| words though.
| callmeal wrote:
| >If you follow through with that, you'd have to ban the
| words "black" and "white" from the language completely,
| except in a racial context.
|
| Why would you do that? I can wear a black shirt without
| "badness" being implied.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| The 1997 version of the IAT (the test you're talking
| about) actually used names associated with Black and
| White American people.
|
| Interestingly enough, there was one paper that concluded
| that some of the responses to the test was driven by the
| prior associations between the colours themselves, rather
| than the racial part.
| simiones wrote:
| Should we also stop dressing in black for funerals?
| Should we stop referring to Black Friday (in
| Christianity, a day of mourning)? Should we start
| protesting when Death is represented as dressed in black?
|
| Also, what do blind auditions/interviews (a real change
| that would make sense in the Software industry as well)
| have to do with language policing?
| mrob wrote:
| Black tie. In the black. Black gold. Black belt.
| Whiteout. White as a sheet. White rider. White-livered.
| White elephant.
| simiones wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're adding to what I was saying or
| contradicting me, but either way, I believe we should be
| in agreement. Colors have positive and negative
| connotations way outside of race, they are contextually
| dependent (your accounting example is very nice, as black
| is positive while red is negative), and trying to police
| that is absurd and counter-productive.
|
| I should also mention that I am aware that in Japanese
| culture (and I believe others in that area, but don't
| know for sure), the traditional color for mourning is
| white, not black.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Black Friday is actually an economic thing (day after
| Thanksgiving in US) the day the companies _go into the
| black_ / start showing a profit for the year.
|
| You were thinking of Good Friday.
| simiones wrote:
| Oops, you're right, I should have researched that a
| bit...
|
| Still, apparently the origin of the name seems to have
| more to do with the idea of a "black day" (a day when a
| disaster occurs), according to Wikipedia:
|
| > The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday
| originated in Philadelphia, where it was used by police
| to describe the heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic
| that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This
| usage dates to at least 1961.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Also Black Thursday (and Monday and Tuesday) (big stock
| crash Oct. 1929.) probably had a little to do with the
| naming.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Blind? You should better use a less offensive term. /s
| gambiting wrote:
| Twitch removed the tag "blind playthrough" because
| someone complained that it _might_ be offensive to blind
| people. Of course the person complaining wasn 't blind,
| they just thought they were doing a good deed. Absolute
| idiots all of them, both the person complaining and
| Twitch for following with it.
| callmeal wrote:
| >Should we also stop dressing in black for funerals?
|
| Why would you do that? Wearing black does not imply that
| a person is bad. "Blacklist/whitelist" implies that
| whatever is in the list is bad/good.
| simiones wrote:
| Black has a negative connotation because of its
| association with death. That is in fact the origin of the
| term "blacklist" - a list of people associated with the
| execution of Charles II's father. It's also the origin of
| the term "black day" - a day of death and, by extension,
| disaster.
|
| While this association is not in any way "natural" or
| necessary, and it's not even universal, it is still
| extraordinarily old - dating all the way to Ancient Egypt
| and influencing European culture from there to now. And
| thus, it is extraordinarily hard to remove by playing
| language games with one word.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| > Not directly no. But they enforce the unconscious
| belief that "black == bad" and "white == good". Read up a
| bit on unconscious/implicit bias [0]. There was an online
| test floating around that measured your response rate to
| a white face or a black face and those results were eye-
| opening.
|
| This is a pretty huge jump in reasoning. These things
| have nothing to do with each other. You might as well be
| saying "red means stop and green means go, so
| subconsciously people hate Native Americans". Which is
| nonsense for many reasons.
|
| Perhaps principally that people can discern racial
| features from faces without using colors at all.
| callmeal wrote:
| >"red means stop and green means go, so subconsciously
| people hate Native Americans".
|
| That's pretty strange reasoning. Unless you mean to imply
| that "red man" is in common usage for a male Native
| American?
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| It's not common usage, but we're supposedly talking about
| unspoken and unconscious bias, so why aren't any vague
| linguistic or metaphorical associations fair game? The
| argument is precisely that you _don't_ directly think of
| red as related to Native Americans, so it doesn't make
| much sense for you to say that people don't think about
| it like that in response. Because well, yeah, the
| question is whether they _unthinkingly_ make the
| association.
|
| Let me paraphrase this argument, but correct me if you
| have a different understanding: - 'black'
| and 'white' have some racial associative strength, x,
| which is sufficient to cause bias in other contexts.
| I.e. x > r for some threshold r. - 'red' has racial
| associative strength kx, for some k < 1. I think we
| agree that k < 1, since the association is less strong.
| Where we differ is I am (hypothetically) saying kx > r,
| still, whereas you (seemingly) think kx < r.
|
| This is a strange argument because we've never actually
| established the relative values of x or r. Even if we
| assume the first point is true, it tells us nothing about
| the second, because kx might still be below or above the
| threshold.
|
| In fact, we _haven't_ demonstrated the first point
| anyway, so it's just compounding an already hand-wavey
| explanation of how things work. If someone can assume x >
| r with little evidence, why can't I assume kx > r? You
| might have priors on the size of k because you think
| 'red' is less strongly associated with race, but we know
| nothing about x or r, so it's pretty irrelevant. If you
| can hand wave the first point, you can hand wave the
| second. As I did.
|
| I'd rather there was no hand-waving. But if that's the
| game we're playing...
| akvadrako wrote:
| But in some contexts black is bad and white is good.
| Would you rather move into the light or into the
| darkness? It's in our genes to prefer the more well light
| areas much of the time and this is a valuable survival
| instinct.
|
| Not everything is about skin color.
| callmeal wrote:
| >But in some contexts black is bad and white is good.
| Would you rather move into the light or into the
| darkness?
|
| It depends. Am I trying to sleep or stay awake?
| flir wrote:
| Something to think about: are you typically prescriptivist
| about language, or are you more of a descriptivist? If you
| are a descriptivist (most people are, but you might not be)
| it might be worth pondering why you're being prescriptivist
| on this issue.
| roenxi wrote:
| Technically speaking, this is the opposite - the point is
| that while a prescriptivist would find the whole thing a
| bit silly a descriptivist would have a problem with this
| situation, because it is creating new racial insult (eg,
| calling something a blacklist in the presence of a black
| person) where none existed before.
|
| It seems like a mistake to invent racial terms out of
| whole cloth for no reason. It shouldn't be done.
| flir wrote:
| Language changes over time. A word that used to mean
| "knife" now means "flatware". That's linguistic
| description.
|
| > It shouldn't be done.
|
| That's linguistic prescription. "This word means what it
| means and if you change it you're incorrect".
| roenxi wrote:
| Linguistic prescription is saying it shouldn't be done
| because there are rules, and the change breaks them.
|
| I'm not saying that. My position is it shouldn't be done
| because creating new slurs for no reason is stupid. A
| prescriptivist and a descriptivist could both agree to
| that, though they'd disagree with each other on whether
| the idea of the change is legitimate.
|
| Which is probably a similar position to ccmcarey's
| original comment. No position was taken on whether the
| change breaks the rules of language or not, the argument
| was that either way the change is being bought on by
| ignorance of both normal usage and the lineage of the
| word (ie, potentially in defiance of both prescriptivist
| and descriptivist logic).
|
| This isn't really an issue of prescriptive vs descriptive
| philosophy. Although the descriptivists will be hopping
| mad.
| jansan wrote:
| GitHubs decision is a form of cultural imperialism. That's what
| it really is. Only because the US want's to somehow deal with a
| dark part of it's history, the rest of the world should not be
| foreced to adapt their views.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| The rest of the world is not forced to do business with an
| American company following American cultural standards.
| jimmies wrote:
| >dark part of it's history
|
| Oh hey you offended me by implying my skin color means bad.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| You'd think the rest of the world could come up with a
| centralized git repo.
| leshenka wrote:
| Of course we couldn't, we're practically apes here
| iagovar wrote:
| I think you're too naive. This decision makers are not worried
| about anything but their PR. Your competitor is the Woke mob,
| although they'll say they do it for you.
|
| Adressing real issues cost money. Making bullshit changes is
| free.
|
| The culture shock is particularly noticeable for non-anglo
| people.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I will never go along with that farce, especially when I
| learned that a bunch of people bullied Antirez for years in
| order to force him to change the language in Redis.
|
| http://antirez.com/news/122
|
| It serves absolutely no purpose, other than for a group of
| people to feel like they have an ideological hold on the IT
| industry. Some of these people are already coming with new
| lists of "forbidden words" they are trying to impose with the
| old same excuse of "diversity and inclusiveness". Enough.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| It was amusing to see the GitLab ticket where they try to
| orchestrate the change. It's still going on. At least 100
| people involved and multiple tickets open for an entirely
| pointless change.
| jansan wrote:
| Take a look at CIA's "The Simple Sabotage Field Manual" from
| 1944 (declassified 2008). Under the section "General
| Interference with Organizations and Production" it recommends
| among other things:
|
| - "Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible"
|
| - "Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes,
| resolutions."
| J-dawg wrote:
| This is amazing, I'm noting this down for future use.
|
| As someone said elsewhere in this thread, it makes you
| wonder what's really going on while we are distracted by
| this stuff.
|
| What I find interesting is that there (probably? maybe?)
| isn't a shadowy CIA-like organisation promoting this stuff,
| this "tactic" is a naturally emergent property of the woke
| belief system.
|
| I think I find this more frightening than if there actually
| were a shadowy organisation pulling the strings: here we
| have a philosophy, which many well-intended people
| subscribe to, that causes them to behave like a
| sophisticated intelligence agency deliberately trying to
| disrupt a foreign power.
| eurocent wrote:
| In fact, a lot of that woke stuff actually comes from the
| CIA.
|
| It's a tactic they first used in the 70s in Europe, when
| "real" left parties (i.e. the old-school
| socialist/communist parties, affiliated with the soviet
| union) started gaining ground. All of a sudden they
| started funding a lot of stuff like that, because it
| weakened/marginalized those parties. Why fight for
| workers rights when you can fight for LGBT, immigrant,
| women rights, etc. I.e. the right of fifteen distinct
| groups that have no power.
|
| Much more recently that tactic was used to destroy the
| Occupy Wall Street movement.
| J-dawg wrote:
| That's interesting, I didn't know that.
|
| I wonder what is different now. The woke movement doesn't
| seem to get any weaker, even as it adopts more and more
| identity groups.
| oefrha wrote:
| This is actually worse. With bikeshedding, once the bored
| people have finally decided on the color of the bikeshed,
| everyone just goes on with their life unhindered. With
| this, once the bored people have decided to make the
| change, everyone and their mom has to waste time on
| following or actively resisting the change on their end.
| dsun180 wrote:
| Same here in germany. When we hear the word master, most people
| think of the master in karate kid or the master degree of a
| university. I think only in the usa people are so full of hate
| that they directly think of bad stuff.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| "I'm in the USA. I think only in Germany are people so full
| of themselves that they over-generalize entire nations with
| their own ignorant assumptions."
|
| That would be a rather rude, dare I say hateful thing for me
| to say, wouldn't it? In reality, I really enjoyed all the
| places in Germany I've visited, and most of my interactions
| with German folk that I've interacted with socially and
| professionally over the years. I especially enjoyed taking a
| technical and engineering German language course, so I can
| appreciate words like "Kaftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung"
| and "benzinbetriebenes Motorsystem". I wouldn't think to make
| such a comment about the German people, like you did about
| people in the USA.
| vermilingua wrote:
| Interpreting that as a personal attack, and leaping
| straight to a retaliation would sorta be evidence for their
| statement, no?
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| The point I'm attempting to make is that stating blanket
| negative over-generalizations about any group of people
| isn't productive, and in this case it's seemingly ironic
| to me. If you think I'm a hateful person because of
| pointing that out, then by your definition I am hateful
| and I'm okay with you thinking that. I obviously
| disagree, though, and I'm happy to attempt to civilly
| discuss that with you if you'd like.
| yosamino wrote:
| Germany is a really bad example though. The German way is to
| pretend racism just doesn't exist - today is the aniversary
| of a racist, arson attack that happened in 1994 killing 7
| people (one of them pregnant) where the official line is
| still "the guy was just crazy what can you do ?!".
|
| If you want to transplant the "master"-example, look at all
| the discussions of how they name certain sauces,schnitzels
| and deserts as well as a weird insistance that offensively
| named streets, underground-stations and (for some reason)
| pharmacies "must not need to be renamed, why would you even
| be offended".
|
| Germany is not the example to go with concerning offensive
| language.
| linza wrote:
| I don't buy the assertion that the German way is to pretend
| racism just doesn't exist.
|
| There are racists, and fascists, neo-nazis and old-nazis.
| They do exist, it's just that they don't pose that
| widespread of a problem in every day life, like it does in
| other western countries.
|
| I'd say gender (in)equality is something you will encounter
| much more often in every day life over there.
| Brotkrumen wrote:
| We've got a far right party that gets around 13% in
| national elections, in some states around 25%.
|
| We've got a minister of interior that does not want to
| start a study on racism in the police forces.
|
| That's two of the big issues, that's not even every-day
| racism where it's hard to get an apartment or a job with
| a "foreign name", underrepresentation in leading
| positions or that in some parts you'll get at least
| hassled for walking with brown skin.
|
| Germany is and always has been extremely conservative and
| integration/racism is an issue precisely because the
| largest party always saw imported skilled labor as people
| that should be forced back "home" again, even with a
| second and third generation growing up in Germany.
| fho wrote:
| Something about gender equality to keep in mind:
|
| It's about choice ... there are women (also in Germany)
| that gladly _chose_ to stay at home, _chose_ to prepare
| meals for their husband and _chose_ to care for the kids.
|
| On the other hand there are women that _chose_ to give
| their children into daycare weeks after birth to go back
| to work.
|
| It's not about condemning any lifestyle as wrong, it's
| about given everybody (males included) the ability to
| life their live as they want.
|
| Sadly this is far from the reality with median wages
| being barely high enough to sustain one person, forcing
| women (and men) to work and robbing them of their agency.
| mbeex wrote:
| > The German way is
|
| What exactly do you know about "the" German way?
| nosianu wrote:
| You just showed the problem: Mixing completely different
| things and pretending it's the same. The parent comment and
| the parent-parent and the submitted text all talked about
| something, you come up with something else.
|
| > _look at all the discussions of how they name certain
| sauces,schnitzels and deserts_
|
| Okay I do - and that is exactly the useless actions that
| the submitted text and this discussion is about. For some
| reason you just ignore all that was said and just repeat
| those exact criticized points as if nothing happened.
| yosamino wrote:
| Well, they parent tried to transplant the word "master"
| into a german context and noted it doesn't translate. I
| then gave examples of words that work analogous to the
| word "master" in English. These things are connected by
| the concept that "I'm not offended by them, why should
| anyone else?"
|
| Where these discussions about how Germans call their
| pharmacies connect to the article is that in both cases
| the arbiters who decide how things are called are the
| white - once you start to involve the people that these
| offensive words are about, you suddenly get a different
| sense of how important or offensive these words are.
| There's a recent example of a talkshow where a couple of
| white more-or-less-celebrities decided that these words
| are just german heritage, and really what is all the fuzz
| about ? To appease the ensuing mini-scandal the station
| organized a roundpanel of people who might be affected by
| these slurs - and surprise, they really weren't so fond
| of them.
|
| Or see this article about a campaign to rename a
| trainstation: https://isdonline.de/umbenennung-der-
| mohrenstrasse-mehr-resp...
|
| You are obviously right, changing words by itself doesn't
| change a thing - but if I can't even count on someone not
| using slurs about me, I can't expect to respected at all.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| > The German way is to pretend racism just doesn't exist
|
| I don't know if and where you've been to Germany, but
| having went to school there entire _years_ of our history
| class were dedicated to the Nazis.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| > but having went to school there entire years of our
| history class were dedicated to the Nazis.
|
| To be precise it is about the atrocities committed by the
| Nazis and how they managed to subvert the society to be
| able do their crimes. By the way they started early on to
| change the everyday language.
| bionoid wrote:
| "Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment" - it
| was candidly named, if nothing else.
|
| > Indeed, Goebbels initially opposed the term propaganda,
| recognizing that in popular usage, both in Germany and
| abroad, it was associated with lies. Even after the
| ministry had been in existence for a year, he proposed
| changing its name to Ministry of Culture and Public
| Enlightenment, but Hitler vetoed this proposal.
|
| https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ministr
| y-o...
| yosamino wrote:
| See the thing about that is, that it let's you neatly
| compartmentalize racism to the nazis, and since the nazis
| don't exist anymore (well, the ones being talked about in
| history class) there is not racism or antisemitism
| anymore.
|
| That is of course simplifying it a lot, but Germany as a
| whole has a problem with right-wing extremism who almost
| regularely murder people, and a police force who
| regularly have scandals involving members being present
| day Nazis, and these Problems not being adressed
| properly.
|
| So I am not sure learning about The Nazis of the olden
| days is very helpful withouth showing the reach that
| these ideologies have into present day Germany.
|
| And I say that as someone who has gone through these
| years that you reference as well.
| HerbsMan wrote:
| You forgot to mention WWII.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| In the Netherlands, which unlike Germany was significantly
| involved in the transatlantic slave trade, AFAIK the word
| _meester_ never had any connotations of slavery, only of
| expertise and teaching ability (as in a guild master).
|
| It's still used to refer to a male teacher, particularly in
| elementary schools, as well as being the title used by
| lawyers.
|
| A slave owner was simply a _slavenhouder_.
| brnt wrote:
| Or _slavendrijver_ , which is still a very derogatory way
| to point out exploitative behavior.
|
| I think an important difference between ex-colonial
| European powers and the US is that the (ethnic) slavery did
| not take place on European soil. Most colonies were
| operated with very few Europeans to oversee, and as such
| people were not as exposed to it as people in the US, where
| masters and slaves would perhaps not live in the same part
| of town, but also not a continent away. So this may explain
| why those terms seem inoffensive/only have their meaning
| outside of the slavery context in Europe.
| Tomte wrote:
| I wouldn't say they are full of hate. Slavery has defined the
| country and has repercussions still.
|
| But I'm really worried about how we import everything
| American to Germany without thinking twice.
|
| Left newspapers have started to write BIPoC everywhere when
| it comes to domestic issues. What exactly are the indigenous
| people of Germany? Even blacks are relatively rare. It would
| make much more sense to coin an acronym that includes Jews,
| Sinti and Roma, given our sordid history. But we simply take
| what American culture has thought up.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Slavery has defined the country_
|
| I don't think this is true. What percentage of White
| Americans, during the period of slavery, owned any slaves?
| Was it even 1%?
|
| It is one facet of American history yes, but it is very far
| from the "definition" of the country.
| cabite wrote:
| Same here in France.
|
| We've had our first trans kid on what would be the
| equivalent of Oprah's show audience-wise just a few days
| ago.
| myspy wrote:
| We have problems to integrate Turkish or Russian immigrants
| and their children as Germans, not as people from
| elsewhere. As well as the refugees from Syria.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| As an immigrant, I didn't want to leave my country, let
| alone integrate where I did.
|
| I was forced to because the government in my country
| steals and wastes so much money that the economy breaks
| and you can't make money there. Still the quality of life
| is much better at home and I'd rather stay there.
|
| All my friends are immigrants, I couldn care less to
| integrate here. Ideally I'd just rather live in a town
| with just immigrants from my country. As long as you keep
| them out of politics they'll probably won't rob you.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| I understand and I think that is acceptable. I'd welcome
| you and yours in Canada. When both groups respect each
| other, true integration comes over generations of working
| together.
|
| Obviously we did not respect the Indigenous people and I
| hope that can me mended through generations of mutual
| respect.
|
| I think Vancouver is better because of the rich mix of
| cultures. It's not perfect here but I think it is pretty
| good. I have seen a Muslim man give his shoes to a
| homeless man on the bus and walk home barefoot in the
| rain. I believe anything is possible.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Having met some white people in Asia, it's not like
| immigrant (ex-pat) community all make that much effort to
| integrate.
| lokedhs wrote:
| Just like any other immigrants, westeners in Asia
| integrate do different degrees. Some only hang out with
| people from their own country and refuse to go to
| anything but restaurants that serve their own food. While
| others practically become locals.
|
| Some nationalities integrate more than others. This goes
| for different European countries even, so it has very
| little to do with "race".
| nlitened wrote:
| > Ideally I'd just rather live in a town with just
| immigrants from my country.
|
| That town was in your country which you fled though.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Interesting. I also left my country but mostly because
| there wasn't really anything left for me there and I met
| my girlfriend and she was from somewhere else... So I
| moved to her country.
|
| Her country is clearly superior in almost everything
| except for weather and food. I like living here and I've
| made good friends and enjoy my life here.
|
| Now the curious part comes... I have zero attachment to
| both countries, their culture and their national
| identities. I couldn't care less about their language or
| customs. I just see myself has some kind of post-
| nationalistic person that would much rather speak English
| with everyone, hang out on the internet and live
| wherever.
|
| As far as I'm concerned national identities and culture
| are useless and holding us down as a species. I really
| wish people could outgrow this nonsense.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I partly feel the same. I agree with you that
| identification with a country (patriotism/nationalism) is
| holding us back. However I do recognize that my
| upbringing has shaped me culturally and similar in my
| behaviour. Similarly the 3 other countries I have lived
| in for significant time, which have also formed my
| personality. I also do feel attachment to those places,
| but this is much more due do people and the location, not
| the nation.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| I agree with you that the culture I was raised in has had
| a huge effect on me. You can take the man of the country
| but you can't take the country out of the man.
|
| In hindsight I don't think I was raised in a particularly
| enlightened culture. Do those even exist? I would much
| rather have us move past dumb social biases and
| constructs and work together to build a better future and
| a more universal and cooperative world.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| "I would much rather have us move past dumb social biases
| "
|
| On person's unbiased Baysian predictions based on a
| lifetime of experience and evidence, looks a lot like
| biases and prejudice to the delicate of mind.
|
| And they get nasty about it.
|
| So no, there will be no building of a better world.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Generalizations like "chinese people are ..." or "muslims
| tend to..." are garbage. There is no possible objective
| truth to any of these since we are talking about billions
| of people.
|
| You brain might think it's very smart and clever and has
| the world all figured out but most likely it doesn't. The
| world is a chaotic system beyond any one's comprehension.
| All generalizations that are not purely mathematical and
| 100% abstract in nature are wrong.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Who the _&_ ^& said I think like this? You chose
| literally the worst example and then attributed it to me.
|
| Perhaps a quick reread of the site guidelines is in
| order.
| fho wrote:
| Having lived in a mostly Turkish neighborhood for five
| years (as a German, Turkish landlord, Turkish
| "housemates" (?)) I think some just don't want to be
| integrated...
|
| Landlord was pretty chill and I kind of miss being able
| to just ask anything and he would try to make it happen
| (including things like repairing car motors).
|
| Housemates were of the mildly radicalized religious kind,
| with daughters that did not attend the normal school
| system and are now being married of early.
|
| I don't know if the German "integration system" has
| failed for the later ... they have the freedom to chose
| and they chose a path that is different from what is
| considered "normal" in the "West".
| ficklepickle wrote:
| I think "integration" is a sham. Integration implies a
| give and take, a compromise. It seems actually
| assimilation or submission is what many Euro countries
| want.
|
| As a Canadian (Vancouver), I can tell you true
| integration happens over generations of people working
| together and respecting each other. In those conditions,
| it is unavoidable.
|
| If either group lacks respect, the outcome is always
| conflict.
|
| You put their kids into school together young and they
| won't know not to be friends until you tell them. That
| was my experience, anyway.
| nix23 wrote:
| >It seems actually assimilation or submission is what
| many Euro countries want.
|
| No we think that forced marriage has no place in Europe,
| or the oppression of woman's. And yes, that's our
| culture..so is the freedom to choose your religion and to
| have free speech. If someone from another culture comes
| we are happy to integrate it into ours, but NOT when it
| clashes with our Laws.
|
| >You put their kids into school together young and they
| won't know not to be friends until you tell them.
|
| And what when they go into different schools (Jewish or
| Muslim etc), live in different parts of the City (look at
| Paris or Berlin), and never met someone outside of their
| bubble until 20 or later?
|
| BTW:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_Canada
| fho wrote:
| > but NOT when it clashes with our Laws
|
| I said it in another post ... it's not about being forced
| into something, it's about freedom of choice. And that is
| something universal, it's just codified in our laws.
|
| It's completely fine if a women decides to become married
| and have children early ... it's probably not a good
| choice ... but morally there is no way to reject that.
|
| The problem arises when people never learn that they have
| a choice ... I have (female) friends from rural Germany
| that think it's perfectly reasonable to go study and once
| finished move in with their husband and be the perfect
| stay-at-home mom.
|
| edit: heck ... I even have friends from larger cities who
| would just prefer to be stay-at-home moms because that
| gives an excuse to sloth on the couch for half of the day
| :-)
| nix23 wrote:
| Totally with you.
|
| >The problem arises when people never learn that they
| have a choice
|
| Exactly, that's the problem with the bubbles like
| (Ghettos/Banlieues), and "special" schools.
| bad_good_guy wrote:
| And yet you've ignored the person you're responding to in
| their claim that turkish immigrants don't send their
| children to the same schools.
|
| I'm all for give and take but I wouldn't want the "give"
| to result in backwards steps for woman's rights being
| imported from the countries of origin
| clusterfish wrote:
| The point is, "BIPoC" means specifically "Black,
| Indigenous, People of Color". It does not mean
| "immigrants" or "refugees" or "all marginalized groups"
| or whoever else needs social justice in Germany.
|
| Borrowing that specific term for other purposes is
| stupid.
| gsich wrote:
| I haven't heared anyone using those terms in spoken
| conversations.
| [deleted]
| enriquto wrote:
| > What exactly are the indigenous people of Germany?
|
| Ha! I remember a drunken night with a north-american
| colleague; he asked why didn't we have indigenous people
| here in Europe. Then he suddenly realized the answer: oh,
| but it is you, _you all are!_
| creato wrote:
| The funny thing is, I don't think very many people thought of
| "bad stuff" before this idiotic culture war planted it in
| everyone's mind, even if in a negative light.
|
| I would bet that most people didn't have any idea that words
| like "grandfather" or "blacklist" had (or didn't have) any
| racist history.
|
| Wouldn't it have been better to just let the words outgrow
| their history? These words were already dead or dying as
| racist terms. Not any more.
| pydry wrote:
| I think the point was to generate a lot of noise that
| distracts away from the whole awkward "selling software to
| concentration camp" thing.
|
| And, policing language generates a _spectacular_ amount of
| distracting, harmless (to Microsoft) controversy.
| caf wrote:
| I don't know, but it seems plausible that awareness of the
| term's origin might well be considerably higher among those
| whose own father or grandfather was disenfranchised by one
| of the original grandfather clauses.
|
| _I_ at least was intellectually gratified to learn about
| it.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I would bet that most people didn't have any idea that
| words like "grandfather" or "blacklist" had (or didn't
| have) any racist history.
|
| Faulty pattern recognition machine at blame.
| offby37years wrote:
| The idiotic culture war is media led:
| https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-
| great...
|
| > In 2011, just 35% of white liberals thought racism in the
| United States was "a big problem," according to national
| polling. By 2015, this figure had ballooned to 61% and
| further still to 77% in 2017.
| powerapple wrote:
| Of course everyone would have a different feeling towards
| those words. Every country has their own history. I think it
| is a positive step in the US going through all these hurdles
| to address their past. US has the power and the economic
| leverage to really step to next level, it can afford it.
|
| Every country is different. Developing world wouldn't care
| about rights, because they have to make cakes as fast as
| possible, and developed world can spend much time on being
| fair. It is something we should do.
|
| Is a name change really that difficult for everyone? I
| remember when I first saw 'main' branch on Azure, yes, I have
| to slow down a bit, is it the end of world? It means
| something important for the US, and would be good for the
| future generation, I think I can afford the personal
| inconvenience. We, developers, are having the best job in
| this world, do we really need to get pissed off for this?
| bildung wrote:
| _> Is a name change really that difficult for everyone?_
|
| It's just a complete misunderstanding of the topic.
| Changing "master" branches simply confuses signified and
| signifier, and the fact that multiple signified can have
| the same signifier (like the signifier _stool_ and the
| signified _faeces_ and _a thing to sit on_. Removing the
| word doesn 't remove the concept.
|
| If these companies _actually_ wanted to work for diversity,
| they could just do exactly that: employ more people from
| other backgrounds, or have extra internships for early
| orientiation in high school, or fund computer labs schools
| in poor neighbourhoods and so on.
|
| Edit: As an illustration of how this doesn't affect the
| underlying meaning: In Germany there's a similar discourse
| going on, and the result is that the German radical right
| also started to talk about _migrants_ instead of _aliens_
| or _foreigners_. But they didn 't change their attitudes at
| all! They just adapted to the new word and kept their old
| concept.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| It's not difficult, it's offensive and insulting to waste
| people's time on useless crap. It's a power play.
| tester34 wrote:
| >Is a name change really that difficult for everyone?
|
| So whole world has to change because US has its core
| problems?
|
| >We, developers, are having the best job in this world, do
| we really need to get pissed off for this?
|
| do we?
|
| spend thousands of hours of your free time in front of
| computer just to learn stuff, then spend 3.5/5 or even more
| years for degree
|
| then stay competitive / in touch with tech as a part of
| life style
|
| just to have office/remote job with good pay?
|
| is this "best job"? seems decent, but I wouldn't call it
| "the best", especially in countries where programmers do
| not have really outstanding pay like in SF.
| [deleted]
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| Actually, my first association - as a German - with master is
| the craftsman title "Meister".
| ekianjo wrote:
| It is the only right association because it's the same word
| coming from "magister" in Latin and which traveled to
| become maestro in Italian, meister in German, maestre and
| then maitre in French and finally master in English.
| dsun180 wrote:
| And then somewhere in 2019 it suddenly became a racist
| word against people of color in northern amerika.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Pretty sure next we are going to end up banning letters,
| because there's probably some letters that are
| intrinsically racist or something.
| mbeex wrote:
| I'm in no way a native speaker - but even I recognize that
| in English 'master' has - and always had - many different
| meanings. One of them completely equal to the German
| 'Meister'.
|
| It is all about context. Question is, why certain groups
| emphasize - or better: impose deceivingly by altering him -
| the wrong context to a crystal-clear situation.
| mikaeluman wrote:
| Same in Swedish: Mastare. Magister is also a word used in
| Sweden for teachers at schools.
| CaptainJustin wrote:
| I know it's anecdotal but I've asked my colleagues the same -
| in a country with a terrible history of this sort too. And
| turns out I can't find a single person who agrees with Github's
| decision.
| pansa2 wrote:
| -
| sergiotapia wrote:
| But again these are all white people, you see?
| scoutt wrote:
| When you think about masters/slaves, do you think about
| black people only? If so, why?
|
| There are countless examples in the history of the world
| about slaves, including different ethnics, in every
| continent. May they have a word on this issue too?
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Throughout history, various races struggled from slavery,
| pretty much the entire spectrum is fully covered across
| the world. Nowadays there are more people in slavery than
| at any given time before.
| Muromec wrote:
| Slavery in Russian empire was de jure abolished about the
| same time as slavery in US. Not surprisingly, it took
| even more time for "de facto" changes to happen with
| various restrictions still being a thing into 1970ies. If
| anything, kolhoz system was anything but slavery with the
| government being ultimate owner.
| nikanj wrote:
| It's not a coincidence that "Slav" and "Slave" sound so
| similar. And Slavic people are quite white indeed.
| petr25102018 wrote:
| Exactly. Unfortunately for many Americans history stops
| in the last century and at the geographical borders of
| the USA.
| praptak wrote:
| I think GP meant people who actually have reasons to be
| offended, like their ancestors having been actual slaves to
| actual masters.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| Almost everybody has ancestors that were enslaved. E.g.
| most Germanic people where enslaved by other Germanic
| people, or the Romans at some point in time. The only
| question is how far back you have to look and how far
| back you can look.
| NewLogic wrote:
| Thing is... nobody really has a valid reason to be
| offended. In this case context matters and the English
| language is an evolving construct.
| chha wrote:
| Isn't this what the article was criticizing in the first
| place? A bunch of white people pretending to care by doing
| a meaningless change?
| thecopy wrote:
| >We need to keep voicing these thoughts so that decision-makers
| in large companies have a chance to hear us and realize that
| they should focus on more useful issues instead.
|
| I suppose they are not doing it for your feeling's sake. They
| are doing it to avoid being a target of a woke mob feigning
| offense for their own ideological gain in the on-going identity
| culture war which is happening in the west.
| leshenka wrote:
| > avoid being a target of a woke mob
|
| What are they going to do? Stop using GitHub? Good f ing
| riddance
| marcodave wrote:
| No, but if GitHub is mentioned in a very angry Twitter
| thread, and is being targeted by a woke and bored
| journalist which would write an angry and misdirected
| article putting the words "racism" and "GitHub" together,
| is most likely a good enough motivation to avoid a PR
| disaster
| pydry wrote:
| The "woke mob" were chasing them because of the contract
| with ICE and the police facial recognition stuff that's
| very profitable and they'd like to continue doing.
|
| The master branch thing was an attempt at misdirection
| and throwing the mob a bone.
|
| It's a classic PR move. The entire objective was to
| generate distracting noise.
|
| Policing language is popular among corporations for the
| same reason oil companies got "woke" about recycling in
| the 80s:
|
| * It doesn't really change anything and doesn't affect
| profit margins.
|
| * It affects _everybody_ albeit very lightly and is
| extemely visible.
|
| * It naturally leads people to shame _each other_ ,
| taking the heat off the corp.
|
| * They can score some progressive points at minimum cost.
|
| Same mechanism, different era.
| cinquemb wrote:
| At some point if things continue to get worse overall,
| these games wont work because the "woke mob" (not limited
| to that particular "group", individuals may share the
| same opinion on such activities, or at least where the
| most disgruntled overlaps with most capable) will start
| to realize what you describe and just figure its more
| effective to target GH
| infrastructure/employees/family/friends and officers
| directly, no need for angry tweets (and not strictly
| related to GH but other corporations that engage in
| similar services as well).
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _They are doing it to avoid being a target of a woke mob
| feigning offense for their own ideological gain in the on-
| going identity culture war which is happening in the west._
|
| Another example, Bezos recently banned books critical of
| transgender from being sold on Amazon. And just like that,
| everyone forgot about Amazon's brutal suppression of union
| organising activity in their warehouses. Similarly the rest
| of Big Tech thinks it can toss out token gestures and placate
| those who are critical of its business practices.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I hate this "woke mob" branding, there isn't one, there are
| people who care about social issues who are individuals. Some
| go too far, I agree, but we should aim to treat everyone, no
| matter what they believe (yes even if you think they are
| really wrong) with respect rather than pigeon holing all
| their views in with a group you don't like.
| Siira wrote:
| > people who care about social issues
|
| Translation: people who see an opportunity to debase others
| for free and put themselves on a pedestal
|
| Update: We call this class of people Mullahs here in Iran.
| It's been slowly but surely becoming apparent to us that
| they are somewhat of a societal parasite.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| If you look extremely closely at what you just wrote you
| might see it as slightly ironic.
|
| Edited: removed snark
| Siira wrote:
| I actually knew my comment was following essentially the
| same game-theory as the woke, like almost every single
| complaint on the internet. The difference in targets'
| deservability is apparent to me.
|
| Edited: removed snark
| [deleted]
| virgilp wrote:
| Except a lot of those individuals will happily brand you to
| pigeon hole all your views with a dislikable group, so at
| this point I think branding them back is fair game.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Okay so now you're saying you want to get in there and
| call the other side names just in case. "But but but they
| started it" is not an argument for anything. I prefer
| personally to being open to both right wing and left wing
| ideas and people.
| virgilp wrote:
| No. I'm saying I don't feel the need to protect any side
| [+] from being called names. I'm saying people who live
| in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. That kind of
| stuff.
|
| [+] note how you just assumed "the other side", and the
| existence of exactly 2 sides.
| eptcyka wrote:
| These individuals generally share something in common.
| Whilst I think that "woke mob" may be a bit harsh, arguing
| that this isn't a group of people (regardless of they
| themselves think they are a group) is counterproductive.
| Having a name just makes it easier to talk about this. This
| isn't about pigeonholing, not any more than labeling people
| as "far right" or "antifa" is pigeonholing.
| luckylion wrote:
| That goes for literally any group of people though. SJW,
| Proud Boys, Antifa, Islamic State, Nazis, the CIA, Drug
| Cartels. They're all made up of individuals, yet I doubt
| you want to reserve judgement on individual's membership
| unless you know what exactly they were doing and do believe
| for most of those.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Some of the nicest people I know work for drug cartels,
| you really should stop bundling them in with the CIA.
| Mirioron wrote:
| But they behave like a mob. The smallest thing can set them
| off, even them misunderstanding the situation. When they go
| off, they unashamedly target people's livelihoods. Even if
| you later have your name cleared, it doesn't undo the
| damage. The Covington kids are an example that they do
| behave like a mob.
|
| The alternative interpretation is that they're consciously
| being malicious.
| austincheney wrote:
| This isn't a real thing. It's an artificial nonsense of
| social media. It's nonsense for two reasons:
|
| 1a. The number of valid participants is low. It is easy to
| feel powerful sitting comfortably hidden in your parent's
| basement behind a keyboard craving attention and direction.
| Misery loves company and when such people band together their
| numbers can appear large compared to something like a real
| world gathering of persons in a physical space. But it's not
| real people in a real space, because that takes considerably
| greater effort.
|
| 1b. The numbers also appear artificially inflated because
| there is a low effort of repetition, which can appear as
| false participation, spam, trolling, denial of service.
|
| 2. There isn't any real investment in most of this. Most of
| the motivation are bored people looking for inspiration to be
| emotionally concerned. They will point where the carrot
| leads. That isn't a movement. A real movement features
| numerous participants willing to make a personal investment
| like those criminals that stormed the capital.
| weddpros wrote:
| When the woke mob hinders the very minority it's supposed to
| care about, it starts a vicious circle and nothing changes
| for the best
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If you save the downtrodden you can't be the saviors of the
| downtrodden because the downtrodden don't need saving.
| morlockabove wrote:
| They're not supposed to care about minorities. If they
| actually made a positive difference- say, lowered the
| births out of wedlock/divorce rate among black US parents,
| thereby causing a slew of knock-on effects- if they
| actually solved the problems they complained about, they'd
| be out of a job. They're supposed to put on a good
| performance of caring and wanting to fix things, then make
| things worse. The best way for a foot soldier to do this is
| to fervently believe in the cause, and be swept up in the
| ideology that causes them to be incompetent and solving
| problems. Most people, of course, are just lying so they
| don't get fired.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > If they actually made a positive difference- say,
| lowered the births out of wedlock/divorce rate among
| black US parents, thereby causing a slew of knock-on
| effects- if they actually solved the problems they
| complained about, they'd be out of a job
|
| I get your sentiment, but this seems to be putting the
| cart before the horse, in multiple ways. Divorce rates
| and births out of wedlock do not have "a slew of knock-on
| effects"; they _are_ the effects. There are only two
| reasons to care about those rates:
|
| - They are easily measured, due to existing government
| accounting (birth/marriage/divorce certificates, etc.)
|
| - Religious bullshit
|
| I'll ignore the latter, since it cannot be reasoned with.
|
| In the case of divorce, it doesn't happen without reason.
| Anecdotally, my parents divorced due to alcoholism and
| domestic abuse; my childhood, social mobility, earnings
| potential, etc. was _improved_ by their divorce. Tackling
| alcoholism and domestic abuse may have "a slew of knock-
| on effects", including lower divorce rates; yet the
| reverse is _not_ true, e.g. making it harder to get a
| divorce will not reduce alcoholism and abuse, it would
| merely subject more children to it for longer.
|
| If we make the charitable assumption that the goal of
| what you're saying is for more children to receive more
| help and support, rather than the opposite described
| above, then that's several levels removed from what you
| actually said; and each of those levels introduces
| exactly the distracting, partisan rhetoric that you are
| arguing against.
|
| - The first level of abstraction is focusing on the US.
| This seems fair enough, assuming you're in the US. Yet
| it's still important to note this abstraction, e.g. in
| the context of foreign aid. For example, it might be more
| efficient (i.e. give more help to more children) to spend
| more on foreign aid, since money can go further in poorer
| countries; alternatively, spending that money
| domestically might be more efficient (give more help to
| more children) due to targeting and accountability. If we
| want to give the most help to the most children, we
| should base policy on measured impacts; yet this is often
| framed as a "left vs right" partisan issue (pretending
| for the moment that the US even has a left wing), which
| distracts from actually achieving the stated goal.
|
| - Next, you further narrow your focus to the black US
| population. This also seems fair, as they are a
| disenfranchised and oppressed group, and hence this
| focuses on a large number of large issues that need
| fixing. Even from a purely utilitarian point of view, it
| may be cheaper (or even _reduce_ costs) to, say, tackle
| over-policing of black neighbourhoods; compared to
| tackling some more diffuse, less directly-controllable
| issue in other populations (e.g. suicide rates in white
| males). However, it 's again worth noting the
| abstraction: in particular, a large improvement for the
| minority black population may have less impact than a
| smaller improvement for a larger population (e.g. the
| female population). Again, policy should be based on
| measurable impacts towards the stated goal, and again
| this has been turned into a partisan circus to distract
| from real change (e.g. with concern trolling about
| 'ignoring' white males).
|
| - Next you split the focus between births out of wedlock
| and divorce rates. I've mentioned the impacts of divorce
| above; the partisan circus in this case involves
| 'traditional values', and bleeds into other areas like
| gay, trans and women's rights.
|
| - The phrase "lowered births out of wedlock" is
| problematic, since (again) it is very far removed from
| the assumed goal of 'the most help to the most children',
| and hence puts the cart before the horse; and secondly it
| is charged with dangerous ambiguity. For example,
| lowering birth rates of 'undesirable' demographics (e.g.
| unmarried black people) could be achieved via eugenics;
| I'm hoping that is not what you had in mind, but that
| depends heavily on the reader's overton window; hence
| provoking both the far right and their opposition.
| Another way to lower this rate would be forced marriage;
| again, I hope that wasn't your intention, but again that
| depends on the reader, and the normalisation of such
| rhetoric stokes division.
|
| I agree with your overall point that 'culture wars',
| 'wokeness', etc. are a distraction from solving real
| problems; yet what you are saying is _itself_ an example
| of such distraction. I 'm not aware of a word that sums
| up 'concern-trolling about how "wokeness" is concern-
| trolling', but that's how I would describe your phrasing.
|
| In this case, I'm not aware of any person or group (e.g.
| Black Lives Matter, 'wokeists', etc.) who has asked for
| Github to change their naming policy, let alone demand it
| under threat of protest/boycot (AKA 'cancel
| culture'/'voting with your wallet', depending on which
| side of the circus one is sitting). Exactly the same can
| be said of Washington DC renaming Black Lives Matter
| plaza, and many other such real, measurable examples.
| Hence, when discussing such actions, any focus (for or
| against) on 'woke' _individuals_ is _itself_ a
| distraction.
|
| Those who applaud such moves (if that's actually a thing;
| I've come across nothing but scorn for such actions) have
| been successfully distracted from the real issues that
| have sparked protest and boycot; whether it's GitHub's
| sexism and discrimination, or the US police system's
| racism and lack of accountability.
|
| Those (like yourself) who _scorn_ such applause (again,
| under the assumption that it actually exists in some non-
| manufactured /devil's-advocate form) have _also_ been
| successfully distracted from those real issues of sexism,
| discrimination and racism. Complaining about 'wokeness'
| is a partisan circus, abstracted away from the stated
| issues themselves, fighting hypothetical slights from
| imagined enemies.
|
| Of course, I'm not immune from such attacks myself. In
| this case, I'm grounded by the sheer prevalence of such
| backwards logic as you've expressed here, which I come
| across without seeking it out (cherry-picking smallfry
| posts scoured from Twitter/Tumblr/etc. is a perennial
| hobby of the 'anti-woke' distraction machine). On sites
| like Reddit I merely find it concerning (whether real or
| astroturfing to shift the overton window, the effect is
| similar). When it starts infecting sites like HN, which
| tend to reward thoughtful, reasoned content rather than
| knee-jerk memes, I feel a need to push back :)
| lmm wrote:
| It's not _for_ helping minorities. It 's for helping the
| PMC stay on top, by making rules that only people who grew
| up in the right class and went to the right schools will be
| able to follow, cloaking that function in a nominal reason
| for those rules that's unimpeachable. And it does that very
| well.
| gwd wrote:
| > It's for helping the PMC stay on top
|
| You mean the professional-managerial class? Or something
| else?
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| Yes, pretty sure that this is a reference to the
| professional-managerial class. It's a common refrain on
| the populist left/"dirtbag left" that identity politics
| are often dishonest class warfare. (I agree.)
| HeckFeck wrote:
| They've immense power over corporations. It's a flex. It
| doesn't have to make any sense or to be connected in any
| way to the people it is allegedly helping.
|
| Insisting to help people is quite insulting, actually.
| Empowerment means you voice your own grievances. It doesn't
| mean recruit an army of armchair activists to do it for
| you.
| daptaq wrote:
| One have to be careful to not generalize their power,
| since I hear this a lot. It is strictly restricted to the
| "cultural sphere", just like a lot of politics itself. It
| is all about managing affections, not actions. Woke is
| performative radicalism.
|
| Or to put it this way, if the "woke mob" decided to
| protest capitalism or even higher/stricter taxes, do you
| think that anything would change? Probably not, because
| production for profit it still at the core of every corp
| while at the same time the woke crowd has a limited
| understanding of capitalism to begin with (as can be seen
| by the claims that capitalism is by necessity based on
| racism). It is the worst of both worlds.
| tsss wrote:
| They are the woke mob. Who else ever cared about this? It's
| the doing of the toxic corporate diversity committees who
| pull this shit to appear like they're doing something against
| discrimination without actually making any meaningful
| changes.
| otikik wrote:
| > mob feigning offense for their own ideological gain
|
| Yes, it is definitely the "woke" who do this, and you are
| absolutely not projecting.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| I read the parent comment to mean that by pro-actively making
| changes in an effort you avoid the woke buffoons, while
| completely ignoring the voices of those who ought matter
| most, you're admitting defeat and in doing so granting the
| buffoons yet more power.
|
| I'd argue if someone is feigning offense we should call them
| out on it, not collectively fucking prostrate ourselves.
|
| This whole fiasco just makes me wonder what the hell is going
| on in the background while we're being distracted by this...
| surstromming-level red herring.
| josephg wrote:
| > on-going identity culture war which is happening in the
| west.
|
| I'd love to see some demographics around this. When I lived
| in the bay area, most of my friends were part of this woke /
| "activist" community. I had some friends who disagreed, but
| mostly they were terrified to say so for fear of the mob.
|
| Here in Australia, it seems like the demographics are the
| other way around. I know a few people who are part of the
| leftist woke / "activist" tribe. But most people I interact
| with socially think that while racism is a problem, the
| twitter mobs are a bit silly, and the woke stuff is
| overblown.
|
| I don't know how you'd measure, but I'd love to see stats on
| what percentage of the communities in different cities hold
| this political stance. Is it growing or shrinking? Is it
| widespread in the west, or is it mostly just a bay area /
| portland / NY phenomenon - with small satellite groups in
| other countries?
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| From my subjective and anecdotal perception as someone who
| interacts with people from many countries, it looks mostly
| like an US thing at the moment.
|
| The problem is that most of the West tends to imitate
| cultural and political trends that originate in the US. And
| this is already being imitated. In most other countries we
| are not yet seeing a war to the extent we see in the US,
| but the American situation could be the canary in the coal
| mine.
| m12k wrote:
| My theory is that because the US has been shifting right
| for decades, parts of the US leftwing has to some extent
| resigned itself to thought policing and arguing semantics
| instead of fighting for actual policy changes. When you
| can't fix the big problems, find some small problem that
| you can focus on instead. If the US had a leftwing party
| that occasionally got in power (instead of a two-party
| system with a centrist and a rightwing party) then
| lefties would probably spend their effort on making that
| happen instead.
| chx wrote:
| > instead of a two-party system with a centrist and a
| rightwing party
|
| LOL no
|
| You have a moderate right and a far right party by now.
|
| Even in 2016, an analysis between Hillary Clinton and
| Theresa May showed some of Clinton's views were to the
| _right_ to those of May.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Here in Australia, it seems like the demographics are the
| other way around. I know a few people who are part of the
| leftist woke / "activist" tribe. But most people I interact
| with socially think that while racism is a problem, the
| twitter mobs are a bit silly, and the woke stuff is
| overblown.
|
| It's going to be funny a few years down the road when the
| trend comes to Australia before they actually notice.
| xg15 wrote:
| Seems not even in the US things are as clear-cut as it
| seems:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-
| majo...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Fascinating, thank you!
| mbeex wrote:
| First and foremost, it is a disproportionately loud group
| in terms of the media, small or not. This is the important
| issue.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Think pendulums reacting to their perceptions of each
| other, maybe.
|
| I work with a Canadian team but American parent company. We
| see what they are going through and it is definitely
| different. I think our version of equality is just working
| together as peers and respecting each other, there is no
| performative or ablutionary aspect.
|
| For the record, I think parent co. is genuine and seems
| very diverse too. Views are my own yada yada.
| thisrod wrote:
| Here's Australia taking the piss out of woke:
|
| https://iview.abc.net.au/show/why-are-you-like-this
|
| I don't know if iView works overseas, but I think the show
| is on Netflix too.
| [deleted]
| tomp wrote:
| I'm Slavic, i.e. the ethic group of people that is the likely
| etymological origin of the word _slave_.
|
| I'm not _offended_ by the concept of _slavery_ , or by the words
| _master_ or _slave_. Indeed, I think it 's important to keep this
| important concept in mind, so that we can solve the related
| problem of enslaved humans. In addition, I don't see a problem
| with these words being used in non-human concept - slavery is
| only a problem if slaves are human. Personally, I _want_ to be
| the _master_ to my (non-concious) _computer slaves_ (well, better
| than the reverse, at least...).
| hartator wrote:
| Exactly. Don't have human slave, but slavery of computers is
| actually something desirable. Until AI become emotional and
| that's not a thing we should be doing anymore. :)
| gammalost wrote:
| This reminds me what Assad said about Trump.
|
| >I tell you, he's the best American president. Why? Not because
| his policies are good, but because he's the most transparent
| president[1]
|
| The quote being about how Trump didn't pretend to have a
| humanitarian foreign policy in contrast to past presidents.
|
| It's about two different situations but they are similar. People
| pretending to care about a cause and through that making it worse
| than not caring at all. While Assad and Mooseyanon both want
| people to drop the act to make everything easier
|
| [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/01/syria-assad-
| trump-b...
| bloody-crow wrote:
| > They forgot to talk to people who are actually members of the
| black community. The very people they are trying to not offend.
|
| I don't get what makes the author think that any such change
| should only happen with an explicit approval from "black
| community". TBH I don't see how community's opinion on this topic
| is relevant at all.
|
| This is a change by people who felt uneasy about the old name for
| people who felt the same. If you're not in this category, it's a
| no-op for you. Existing repos still have master, new repos can
| have main branch renamed to master trivially.
|
| Don't attach so much meaning to something so fucking
| insignificant. It makes zero difference for some, it makes some
| difference to others. Who gives a shit?
|
| My only problem with the rename is that I apparently have muscle
| memory of typing `gco master` and `git rebase master` without
| thinking so I now lose a few seconds of productivity on newer
| repos until I learn to adapt to it. I can live with that.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think an interesting technical problem is: How can a person
| reliably understand the amount of consensus within the black
| (or any other) community for a given idea?
|
| It's an challenging problem that could apply to any demographic
| group or subculture.
|
| Any person only interacts with a portion of a demographic and
| thus developed biased impressions based on the slice they see.
| Ex. "Are black people nerdier than portrayed in the media, or
| is my social circle just disproportionally nerds?" or "My
| liberal friend group is more pro-gun more than liberal
| political rhetoric implies, is my friend group or the political
| rhetoric closer to the median liberal position?"
|
| Currently, we have polls and extrapolation - but this system
| has a number of its own flaws and selection biases.
|
| I think there would be a lot of technical and social challenges
| to succeeding, but building a web service that could measure
| community sentiment and quantify consensus more accurately than
| current polls would be incredibly powerful and valuable.
| Perhaps there is a method where you could measure the size of
| each tail of the bell curve (people who love or hate idea X
| enough to create an account to make their opinion known) to
| estimate the position of the mode.
| ismaildonmez wrote:
| A good article about this naming issue -
| https://reason.com/2020/08/12/is-your-master-bedroom-racist/
|
| For me, it seems like since no one dares to solve real problems
| like Police violence, income gap, real racism that's ingrained in
| the society (like people calling the police because a black guy
| is wandering around), they pick up some non-issue and dress it
| like a problem and solve it.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| So you think Github should try and solve those issues, I agree.
| ismaildonmez wrote:
| Yes, they can stop their ICE contract for example. Or they
| can stop fixing non-issues for just the illusion of caring.
| dusted wrote:
| "Either do some real shit or stay silent. Stay the fuck out of
| our way and don't pretend you care. Then we can all get on with
| our lives."
|
| In general a brilliant writing.
| viach wrote:
| Relax, this is just a marketing move. It doesn't matter the tone
| of the the news buzz, negative or positive. What matters is
| someone have written a post with "github" in the title and it's
| on the top of HN. Kudos to Github marketing team, exellent
| provocative move, everyone is talking about it.
| hezag wrote:
| > "We really don't need to arm police with any shitty, biased
| facial recognition software. Their eyes already do a perfectly
| good job of that. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor can both attest
| to that. I can attest to it."*
| auggierose wrote:
| Great article. First time I heard about this name change. WTF?
| ecmascript wrote:
| This is a topic I feel cannot be openly discussed on HN (and
| basically everywhere else), sadly.
|
| I switched from Github to Gitlab after this change. Political
| correctness is a great way to know that a company has the
| completely wrong focus and will be unable to innovate and create
| good products.
| input_sh wrote:
| But GitLab also implemented this change?
|
| Well, they gave admins the option to change the default branch
| name to whatever they like, and they've announced they're
| changing from master to main by default in the next two months
| or so: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/03/10/new-git-
| default-bra...
|
| You may as well stop using Git completely then, since Git
| itself uses main as recommended.
| ecmascript wrote:
| The news is just a week old, I didn't know about it. Maybe
| I'll use something else than git, what are some modern
| alternatives?
| JimDabell wrote:
| > Git itself uses main as recommended
|
| The default branch name in Git, as of v2.31 (released two
| days ago), is master.
| input_sh wrote:
| As of v2.28, they've made that configurable with `git
| config --global init.defaultBranch main`. They're working
| on it, and that's the first step.
| JimDabell wrote:
| As far as I am aware, no decision has been made to change
| the default. They just want it to be configurable and not
| have people make assumptions.
|
| Has this changed?
| Jiejeing wrote:
| It has been discussed to death on HN, what are you talking
| about?
|
| Now for some notes on your comment:
|
| - Gitlab has switched the name of the master branch too
|
| - The point is not that it is harmful or bad to do so, and
| anyone actually crusading against this change as if it was some
| kind of a slippery slope leading to the downfall of their
| subculture or even civilization may want to think about their
| priorities and sense of hyperbole.
|
| - This is not at all what the article complains about. The
| author argues that this is essentially a form of virtue
| signalling that allows essentially overpaid white engineers to
| pat themselves in the back without putting in actual work and
| money for diversity, inclusion, and equality; a symbolic change
| that is not rooted in materialism.
| ecmascript wrote:
| > It has been discussed to death on HN, what are you talking
| about?
|
| Not without getting downvoted to oblivion for the only reason
| which is having an opposing opinion.
|
| > Gitlab has switched the name of the master branch too
|
| Yes I have been made aware of that now.
|
| > The point is not that it is harmful or bad to do so, and
| anyone actually crusading against this change as if it was
| some kind of a slippery slope leading to the downfall of
| their subculture or even civilization may want to think about
| their priorities and sense of hyperbole.
|
| I don't even understand this sentence.
|
| > - This is not at all what the article complains about. The
| author argues that this is essentially a form of virtue
| signalling that allows essentially overpaid white engineers
| to pat themselves in the back without putting in actual work
| and money for diversity, inclusion, and equality; a symbolic
| change that is not rooted in materialism.
|
| So.. it's exactly what the article complains about?
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > Not without getting downvoted to oblivion for the only
| reason which is having an opposing opinion.
|
| You have no idea why people downvote things. I find these
| discussions trite and boring.
| wott wrote:
| > I switched from Github to Gitlab after this change
|
| Ah ah. You didn't believe you could run away, did you?
|
| https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/03/10/new-git-default-bra...
| ecmascript wrote:
| Sigh, I wonder when smart people did become so unbelievable
| stupid?
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Most likely they didn't and you're just weird.
| exdsq wrote:
| Sounds like git itself will be changing too -- may as well plan
| for it and set your new repos to main instead.
| dsincl12 wrote:
| GitLab made the change[1] as well unfortunately. I completely
| agree with everything written in the post as well. The problem
| with attacking words for cheap points is that it doesn't make a
| difference to the actual problem and is mainly used to show
| "aware" and "great" people are.
|
| 1. https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/03/10/new-git-default-
| bra...
| dustinmoris wrote:
| The biggest genocide in human history was against people of the
| Jewish community, yet we are still using words such as:
|
| - boot "camp"
|
| - Let's go "camp"ing
|
| - you need to "concentrate" more
|
| - lots of other words which remind of concentration camps and
| other cruel crimes against humanity
|
| When will we eradicate those words from our every day language?
|
| Heck we even use the word "work" when we know too well that Nazis
| used the slogan "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes free) at the top
| of Auschwitz.
|
| What does it say about Microsoft that they are still labelling
| the employees as "workers" and asking them to do some "work".
|
| Maybe Microsoft should rethink the words they use and how they
| are harmful and contribute to genocide.
| [deleted]
| systemvoltage wrote:
| If Aliens visited earth, they would see us all and exclaim
| "WTF!??. Let's go back. This place sucks."
| thinkingemote wrote:
| My and your progressive peers would say "Don't let perfect be the
| enemy of good".
|
| How would you argue against that?
| stevenhuang wrote:
| I am reminded of Antirez's experience on being pushed to rename
| the master/slave terminology in Redis:
| http://antirez.com/news/122
|
| > I believe that political correctness has a puritan root. As
| such it focuses on formalities, but actually it has a real root
| of prejudice against others. For instance Mark bullied me because
| I was not complying with his ideas, showing problems at accepting
| differences in the way people think.
| yrombinator wrote:
| The only way to win this game is not to play. Which is why the
| game is being set up this way!
|
| Had GitHub not done anything it would have looked bad. Now that
| GitHub did do something, it's not enough.
|
| I disagree that GitHub needs a minority consortium to ask them
| about every little detail and the impact it has on their
| culture/etc.
|
| I really wish we could set up a "Culture Firewall" around the US
| for the next decade lest the whole world gets infected with these
| mind viruses.
| xyproto wrote:
| I fully agree that changing _master_ to _main_ doesn 't really
| solve anything. When supporting people, they should be supported
| in a way that matters.
|
| _git_ itself changing the default branch name to _main_ was a
| sufficiently good reason for me to go for _main_ as the default
| branch name for my projects as well. It 's a central project and
| their decision carries weight, regardless of their motivation.
|
| If people choose to use _main_ for their new projects, I see the
| argument for also renaming _master_ to _main_ for older projects,
| to be able to have a slightly more uniform git workflow on the
| command line. It depends on the project if making this change
| outweighs the hassle.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > _git_ itself changing the default branch name to main was a
| sufficiently good reason for me to go for main as the default
| branch name for my projects as well. It 's a central project
| and their decision carries weight, regardless of their
| motivation.
|
| Git hasn't changed the default. It's still master. It's
| _GitHub_ that changed their default. The only thing Git has
| done is make it configurable.
| xyproto wrote:
| You are right. I thought git itself had changed the default
| branch from master to main, but I found no mention of that in
| the release notes. I was wrong on the internet.
| snemvalts wrote:
| You know it's all for show when the employees actively celebrate
| ICE contracts for $56k, and when minorities use the word "nazi"
| to describe far right protesters they are fired as a kneejerk
| reaction.
| ryneandal wrote:
| Incredibly entertaining writing. Keep writing.
| xroche wrote:
| > "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 avoid any
| taxes, and as a result, poor kids will never have any chance of
| getting a decent education:
|
| * The IRS Decided to Get Tough Against Microsoft. Microsoft Got
| Tougher. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-
| get-to...
|
| * Facebook, Google and Microsoft 'avoiding $3bn in tax in poorer
| nations' https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54691572
|
| I am baffled by the naivety of people in our IT industry who
| swallow the hypocrite "inclusivity" discourse of those big tech
| giants. They don't care about inclusivity, they only care about
| money folks.
| [deleted]
| douglaswlance wrote:
| 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.
| rory wrote:
| 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.
| scruple wrote:
| Therefore we shouldn't address the fact that corporations
| aren't paying their taxes? We could also put more money into
| the pockets of parents by easing their tax burden...
| CivBase wrote:
| > More money isn't going to fix it.
|
| Bingo. My wife teaches for an urban school district. They get
| plenty of money. We see where it all goes, and it isn't into
| supporting education.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Rather than rely on innuendo, can you provide specifics and
| cite the district's budget to support them?
| CivBase wrote:
| I'm not prepared to write an entire article on the
| subject and I'm not sure it would be wise for me to
| publicly criticize my wife's employer. But I can at least
| elaborate on how I feel the funding is being mismanaged.
|
| The biggest problem I see is a bloated administration. As
| is the case with most large organizations, power
| gravitates towards the top. The admin at the top get
| overwhelmed with responsibility and end up hiring more
| admin beneath them to handle things, but the power just
| gravitates back towards the top and the cycle continues
| until you have a highly-bureaucratic, admin-heavy
| organization. The salaries for all those admin has to
| come from somewhere.
|
| Meanwhile, teachers are treated as warm bodies to fill
| positions. Their performance is evaluated by admin who
| have little-to-no actual education experience, so grade
| inflation and brown-nosing are the most effective ways to
| keep a teaching position. This ensures the school keeps
| wasting money on bad teachers while the bloated admin
| retains support from the rest of the organization.
|
| Many teachers get shuffled around from school-to-school,
| and in some cases subject-to-subject, so they are
| constantly adjusting instead of refining their craft.
| Admin's solution to this is to take the burden of course
| development away from teachers by purchasing bundles of
| course materials/frameworks from third parties and
| pushing (sometimes requiring) teachers to teach according
| to them. So much of the material ends up being useless
| that teachers end up having to spend just as much
| time/effort anyways adjusting the material and sorting
| the wheat from the chaff.
|
| Going into a little more specifics, my wife works with
| special needs children at a high school level. This is
| getting especially frustrating because admin and other
| non-education staff lazily put any kids who misbehave or
| just don't do their work on special development plans.
| These plans involve a lot of costly bureaucracy and are
| very difficult to get rid of once created. Meanwhile, my
| wife has to put less and less of her attention on kids
| who legitimately need the extra help as an increasing
| portion of the student body gets put on these plans.
|
| Naturally, many of the kids don't like getting put on
| special development plans and separated from their peers.
| Admin's solution is to abandon self-contained classes for
| kids with special needs in favor of co-taught classes
| where two or more teachers manage an oversized class of
| mixed-needs students. This results in classes which are
| less effective for both groups of students while costing
| more as teachers now have to spend extra time and effort
| on coordination.
|
| These are just examples that are fresh in my mind based
| on recently discussions with my wife. Unfortunately, a
| lot of this isn't made evident by budgets.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| > These are just examples that are fresh in my mind based
| on recently discussions with my wife. Unfortunately, a
| lot of this isn't made evident by budgets.
|
| I urge you to look at your district's budget in detail.
| Many of them do in fact break out administrative staff
| costs separately from teaching staff costs. Decades of
| frustration on the part of the electorate has forced them
| to in some cases. You might have to dig for it, but its
| in there. I don't doubt your wife's experience with an
| overbearing administration, but one person's lived
| experience does not count for your whole district, let
| alone the entire nation. You have to examine the data.
|
| My kid's district's breakdown is on page 92 of https://ww
| w.adams12.org/sites/default/files/uploads/document...
|
| Administrative staff is only 9% of the the labor budget.
| CivBase wrote:
| My wife's district's budget includes "Instruction" as one
| opaque budget item which accounts for 47.9% of the 2020
| budget (up from 46.3% in 2017). Admin accounts for 9.6%
| (up from 8.3%). There is also a vague "Non-Instructional
| Expenditures" category which accounts for 5.1% (up from
| 4.6%). Almost everything else is operation/maintenance,
| transportation, construction, and debt service.
|
| Less than half of the district's budget goes to
| "instruction" and who knows how much of that budget item
| really ends up being spent usefully. The "instruction"
| budget item did increase as a portion of the budget, but
| budget items specifically labeled as "admin" increased
| disproportionately by nearly 5x as much. "Non-
| Instructional Expenditures" also increased
| disproportionately by nearly 3x as much.
|
| Comparing to your district, yours spends much more on
| instruction and much less proportionally on construction
| and debt services. Your district's budget is also much
| more granular, splitting out categories like utilities,
| printing, safety, and IT, plus a breakdown of your
| instruction budget.
|
| I'd link to my wife's district's budget but like I said,
| I don't think it's wise to name my wife's employer as I'm
| complaining about them publicly.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| This happens doubly so for some Universities. If you take
| a look at some of the more expensive ones w/ small
| endowments most of them are broke because of huge
| bureaucracies.
|
| I wonder if there's a principal in here somewhere,
| something like an optimal amount of middle management.
| bena wrote:
| I think the "per capita" bit is misleading. Because it lumps
| in certain area with other areas.
|
| Certain school districts are way underfunded compared to
| others. Part of that problem is that a lot of school
| districts are funded through property taxes. Which has a way
| of reinforcing the cycle of poverty.
|
| Your voucher system would simply exacerbate the problem. You
| know what happens when you allow people to be selective about
| their schools? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight In
| your case, it would just be a move to private schools and if
| you don't think those people wouldn't be able to vote out all
| taxes that go to schools now, then you are naive.
|
| And breaking up the teachers' unions? Yeah. That's a race to
| the bottom. Already schools in those underfunded districts do
| their best to discourage long-tenured teachers as their pay
| is directly related to years of service. Make it easier for
| schools to churn teachers and that's exactly what you'd see.
| Not a selection for the "best", but for the cheapest.
|
| Education is a service with no direct material benefit.
| Investing in it does not pay off any particular person or
| group in any noticeably tangible way. However, having a well-
| educated population benefits everyone and everything.
|
| Education is one area where we probably need less
| privatization rather than more.
| douglaswlance wrote:
| >Your voucher system would simply exacerbate the problem.
|
| That cannot be proven without testing.
|
| >You know what happens when you allow people to be
| selective about their schools?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
|
| And...? Race of citizens doesn't matter. The city schools,
| since they face _the most_ competition (due to proximity)
| would improve the most quickly.
|
| >In your case, it would just be a move to private schools
|
| Exactly. New models would crop up. Overnight, a new multi-
| billion dollar industry would be created. Startups would
| spring up everywhere to get certified and capture that new
| value.
|
| >And breaking up the teachers' unions? ... That's a race to
| the bottom. ...
|
| That's because there is no competition. In a non-
| competitive marketplace, there is no forcing function for
| quality.
|
| >Education is a service with no direct material benefit.
|
| Education is a service with _the greatest_ material
| benefit. It is the foundational service. It allows all
| other goods and services to be generated.
|
| >Education is one area where we probably need less
| privatization rather than more.
|
| This does not follow from your previous assertions.
| Homogenizing education has clearly failed. It is a race to
| the bottom.
|
| The education system has been captured by the political
| class via teachers unions. That is why they want to churn
| out homogenized thinkers who are only smart enough to vote
| for their aligned political faction.
| runarberg wrote:
| I'd just like to point out that if you want to radically
| change the education system the burden of proof should
| probably be on you. Being skeptical about introducing
| some alternative ways for funding (e.g. a voucher system)
| is the natural thing to do, and pointing out possible
| flaws is actually helpful. Yes it cannot be proven
| without testing, but it cannot be disproven either. Even
| with testing it is hard, as the test might be biased, or
| does not generalize to other neighborhoods.
|
| I think parent was simply answering logic with logic, and
| dismissing parent's logic because it has no empirical
| backing while promoting your own logic which doesn't have
| one either, is a bit disingenuous.
| bena wrote:
| > That cannot be proven without testing.
|
| But your assumption is that it would be better, also
| without any testing. It's the very definition of a wicked
| problem.
|
| > And...? Race of citizens doesn't matter. The city
| schools, since they face the most competition (due to
| proximity) would improve the most quickly.
|
| And... that's what happens when people are "allowed to
| choose their schools". People will find ways to
| segregate. Unless you want a perpetual chase of the
| students in the poorer schools to the richer schools?
| Which is weird. And white flights aren't some
| hypothetical thing that might happen. It happens. It
| happened. We know why it happens. We've seen it as a
| response to things. We shouldn't do those things again
| and expect a new result.
|
| >Exactly. New models would crop up. Overnight, a new
| multi-billion dollar industry would be created. Startups
| would spring up everywhere to get certified and capture
| that new value.
|
| Private schools exist now. And it's not really "new"
| value. It'll just redirect the tax money to private
| enterprises. And those disadvantaged will continue to be.
| It will further entrench the disenfranchisement of
| millions of children. And it'll enrich some private
| citizen.
|
| > That's because there is no competition. In a non-
| competitive marketplace, there is no forcing function for
| quality.
|
| Has the education system failed you? I said that breaking
| up the union would be a race to the bottom. You then
| infer that the union itself is the race to the bottom. I
| don't see how you can make that inference from what I
| said. The "forcing function" wouldn't be one for quality,
| it would be one for cost.
|
| > Education is a service with the greatest material
| benefit.
|
| First, I said _direct_ material benefit. Tell me. What
| does education directly produce in the way of material
| goods? I 'll answer that, nothing. Because education,
| like you said, is foundational. It is indirect, much like
| infrastructure and dozens of other things no one wants to
| pay for. Because the reason no one wants to pay for it is
| that there is no _direct_ benefit. And I don 't care how
| much people say they care about foundational things or
| indirect sources, where they prioritize their efforts say
| otherwise.
|
| Education is not "homogenized". Not by a long shot.
| Having goals is not the same as the process of achieving
| those goals.
|
| > That is why they want to churn out homogenized thinkers
| who are only smart enough to vote for their aligned
| political faction.
|
| That is a weird way to say that you don't know any
| teachers at all. Or at the very least, don't listen to
| them.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| As a Canadian who's spent some time in various parts of the
| States, I would say the biggest change that needs to be made
| is a greater cultural value being placed on good education.
| In simpler terms, I believe disadvantaged youth will do
| better at school when those youth start _wanting_ to go to
| school.
|
| The most successful ethnic group in the United States are
| Nigerian-Americans because in Nigerian society, education is
| valued above all else. 61% of Nigerian-Americans over 25 hold
| a Masters degree - a remarkable number!
| xkiq wrote:
| Please avoid using "virtue signaling" and other thought-
| terminating cliches
| nailer wrote:
| How does stating that a position is being taken due to optics
| rather than effectiveness 'terminate thought'?
| xkiq wrote:
| Not sure, I never said that. I said "virtue signaling" is a
| thought-terminating cliche, like "fake news."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-
| terminating_clich%C3%A...
|
| Maybe this was done for optics _and_ as a good-faith
| effort. Maybe efforts to increase inclusivity can happen
| _alongside_ paying your taxes. Maybe all black people don
| 't agree with the author.
|
| Please leave them on reddit, and discuss things with nuance
| here.
| nailer wrote:
| > Not sure, I never said that. I said "virtue signaling"
| is a thought-terminating cliche, like "fake news."
|
| Evidently you think the phrase, rather than its actual
| meaning, is the issue. OK.
|
| > it's (using the term 'virtue signaling') only function
| is to stop an argument from proceeding further, in other
| words "end the debate with a cliche... not a point.
|
| I personally don't think stating you believe a position
| is taken due to optics ends the debate. Likewise pointing
| out that information is being manipulated by those that
| seek to report it. The short term for these is 'virtue
| signaling' and 'fake news'. I'm not sure if you have ever
| lived in the US but in the current political climate it
| likely does the exact opposite of stopping arguments
| proceeding further.
|
| The concept of 'thought terminating cliches' - that these
| concerns somehow aren't valid points - seems itself to
| terminate thought.
|
| Please lets actually consider arguments here, rather than
| dismissing them because they're considered popular.
| xkiq wrote:
| I don't think that either, and I never said it.
|
| You just learned what they _are_. Maybe try to understand
| why they 're bad before getting defensive. Or just call
| everything "fake news," your choice.
| nailer wrote:
| > > > I said "virtue signaling" is a thought-terminating
| cliche, like "fake news."
|
| > > Evidently you think the phrase, rather than its
| actual meaning, is the issue. OK.
|
| > I don't think that either, and I never said it.
|
| ok
|
| > Maybe try to understand why they're bad before getting
| defensive.
|
| If there's a flaw in my understanding the best thing
| would have been to point out what it was.
|
| > Or just call everything "fake news," your choice.
|
| I don't think that either, and I never wrote it.
|
| Let's leave the discussion here, it's not very
| productive.
| xkiq wrote:
| The phrase's meaning _is_ the issue; it 's an
| oversimplification.
|
| I encourage you to learn what a thought-terminating
| cliche is before getting defensive.
| nailer wrote:
| As you have declined to point out how my understanding is
| flawed when asked, I'd say my understanding is perfectly
| fine.
|
| Again: let's leave the discussion here.
| [deleted]
| mLuby wrote:
| > Virtue signalling is a pejorative neologism for when one
| expresses a _morally disingenuous_ viewpoint with the
| intent of communicating good character.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
|
| Accusing someone('s company) of being "morally
| disingenuous" (i.e. a lier) will likely end rational
| discussion, regardless of whether it's true or not.
| sumedh wrote:
| > decent schools could be funded
|
| or you could use that money to invade a foreign country and
| drop more bombs on them.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| > 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.
|
| So the biggest issue I have with this is that the US government
| is really good a pissing away money on useless stuff. Take a
| look at the latest round of "stimulus" and the breakdown of
| where everything is going.
| heyoo wrote:
| This should get more attention (& upvotes).
| eyko wrote:
| Whilst I agree that they should pay their taxes, let's not get
| confused here: no matter how much the budget is increased,
| education will not be properly funded because it's not a
| political priority. Most countries with better education
| systems don't really invest _that much_ more than the USA, but
| it's the attitude towards education that counts.
| runarberg wrote:
| Looking at absolute funding is a bit simplistic in this
| instance. The problem OP is pointing towards is that some
| schools are disproportionately bad. In an unequal society
| where distribution is racially biased, an education system
| might be superbly funded, while still leaving several
| district underfunded, yielding the racial bias OP was taking
| about.
| varispeed wrote:
| It's always when government screams around elections that they
| will increase taxes for the rich, the middle class and small to
| medium business cry. I am yet to see the likes of Amazon,
| Facebook, Google pay their fair share. Meanwhile small and
| medium businesses have hard time to compete because of the
| increasing burden bestowed upon them. The big corporations work
| hard to gatekeep their wealth garden, so no outsider could ever
| join them. I will vote for any government that will promise to
| partition those companies, make them pay the tax they ought to
| pay had they not used accounting tricks and finally to ban
| selling personal data for advertising purposes.
| simonw wrote:
| I don't think companies paying their taxes - in the USA at
| least - would help much on the education side of things,
| because much of the USA has a stunningly bad system of using
| property taxes to pay for schools.
|
| So schools in rich areas get more money than schools in poor
| areas.
|
| Charging companies taxes and simultaneously reforming how
| schools are funded could work?
|
| I imagine changing the funding mechanism would be extremely
| politically unpopular with homeowners who's property values are
| attached to the quality of their local schools.
|
| It's such a gross system.
| moduspol wrote:
| Does evidence show more school funding would fix
| underperforming public schools?
| jaywalk wrote:
| You can find studies that support either side of that
| argument. So I guess the answer is: it's more complicated
| than that.
| moduspol wrote:
| Are there records of any US public schools that were
| underperforming, were given notably more funding, and saw
| a corresponding increase in test scores or other
| objective metrics?
|
| EDIT: I guess I'm looking for the success stories.
| "Here's an inner-city school and the outcomes were bad.
| Then we increased funding and now their outcomes are
| comparable to good schools."
| jaywalk wrote:
| None that I'm aware of.
|
| I live outside of Detroit, so I'm very familiar with the
| example of how the absolute bottom-tier Detroit Public
| Schools spend more per student than some of the richest
| (and highest performing) school districts in the suburbs.
| mLuby wrote:
| It's common sense that a school with more money can hire
| more and better teachers as well as remove barriers to
| learning like food insecurity and lack of
| textbooks/computers.
|
| The burden of proof falls on the counterintuitive claim
| that the same school would have the same sustained
| effectiveness regardless of funding.
| moduspol wrote:
| Nobody claimed that all schools (or schools in general)
| will have the same outcomes regardless of funding.
|
| It's quite possible parent engagement and cultural
| differences are stronger drivers for positive outcomes,
| and that those things lead to higher funding for schools.
| But that doesn't imply higher funding causes positive
| outcomes. They're just correlated.
|
| Many of our nation's underperforming schools are located
| in urban areas with no shortage of funds available and
| under the control of the political party supporting this
| idea. Yet the issue remains unsolved.
|
| Is there any level of funding that would lead proponents
| to acknowledge funding may not be the primary issue?
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| I've heard precisely the opposite, though that was an
| anecdote from Milton Friedman, so take that how you will.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| > because much of the USA has a stunningly bad system of
| using property taxes to pay for schools.
|
| This might have been true once upon a time, but pushes in
| State and Federal funding over the last couple of decades
| have mostly filled in the gaps. Take a careful look at
| district funding per-pupil in your state and you might be
| surprised. While there certainly are differences, they are
| nowhere near as large as they were in the past.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > Take a careful look at district funding per-pupil in your
| state
|
| Off-topic, but where can I find this data for CA?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Only about half of the funding comes from local sources.
|
| > On average, 8% of revenues are federal, 47% from the state,
| and 45% locally sourced.
|
| And this varies widely from state to state.
| varispeed wrote:
| There is another problem regardless of how good education you
| get chances are you'll become a wage slave. The harder you
| work, the increasingly more tax you have to pay, so making
| effort does not pay these days. Then you have things like
| illegal drug market teasing the youth, as the margins are
| high and tax free. I thing just making the schools better
| will not have much effect, because young people have no
| motivation to do better as they'll have mediocre lives
| regardless of how much effort they put in education as the
| system is designed for the poor to stay poor.
| dpcx wrote:
| I can tell you first hand that "the youth" aren't thinking
| about margins and taxes when they are deciding between
| taking a job and joining the illegal drug market. They're
| thinking about how long it takes to earn a dollar.
| varispeed wrote:
| Yes, they don't think about it directly, but this is what
| is responsible for how long they need to work to make a
| dollar. I thought that is obvious... Essentially in the
| legal market, the more you work, the less you get thanks
| to progressive tax.
| ggggtez wrote:
| You seem to imply that _every_ tech worker is pro-tax breaks
| (they are not).
|
| In fact, it's perfectly possible to disagree with your
| company's policy on taxes, and agree with their policy on
| inclusivity! In fact, these tech workers have _almost no
| control_ over the taxes their company pays or doesn 't pay!
|
| I think many people here would agree with me: I'd be happy if
| tax laws were changes to make big companies pay more! I would
| never expect _anyone_ to quit their jobs because they disagreed
| with how their company filed their tax return. That 's just a
| kind of insane way to think about the world. A worker only has
| one bargaining chip: they can quit. That's an unreasonable ask.
| knorker wrote:
| By taking away words like "master" and "hit" because with
| completely different context they mean other things, these people
| are making it worse.
|
| "Master" does not mean slavery _until you ban every other
| interpretation_. Then it does mean slavery. Well done, you
| encouraged slavery views.
| [deleted]
| hit8run wrote:
| I was okay with master and I am also okay with main. Main is
| shorter to type so hey we're all saving some keystrokes a day.
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| "So, what was tech's big song and dance? Let's remove offensive
| terminology from our collective lexicon."
|
| The movement to remove unfortunate terminology (master/slave
| absolutely being one) from our stack has gone on _long_ before
| the George Floyd protests - literally _decades_ , including many
| discussions on here. This framing renders the entire article just
| noisy hysterics.
|
| Of course it has yielded the predictable "As a gay black man..."
| commentary. Right.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I teach 2 git classes each year. I used to use GitHub for the
| pull/push section of the class, but last autumn half the class
| got stuck with branch name mismatches.
|
| I switched to GitLab in the next class.
|
| Surely this is just anecdata, but it seems to me that there can
| be real commercial consequences to letting your business get
| hijacked by the thought police.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Sounds like you should just update your teaching material to
| match how GitHub works.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Wait, I need to explain details of remotes and named branches
| before a basic collaboration exercise because some angry
| lefties in California got offended? Come on. Git can be very
| overwhelming to new users. Any concept I can leave
| undiscussed before people can get their hands dirty is a win.
| GitHub forces me to add a concept for political reasons.
| mik09 wrote:
| reminds me a passage in the opening chapters of the three-body
| problem: instead of maxwell equations, they called it electro-
| magnetic equations. (and so on.)
|
| identity politics is basically infighting and it's not very
| productive as pointed out by some other comments.
| newswasboring wrote:
| > We're going to change the branch name because it could be seen
| as offensive but we're still going to sell police facial
| recognition software that is biased against black people and
| women. Facial recognition software that misidentifies black
| people as gorillas. Facial recognition software that was used to
| identify unmasked BLM protesters. We're going to change the
| branch name to be more inclusive of minorities but we're going to
| carry on selling software to ICE. Get the fuck outta here.
|
| This is a weird paragraph. They are contrasting GitHub's
| decisions against some other companies entirely.
|
| edit: These were the links cited [1]
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50865437
|
| [2] https://www.cnet.com/news/google-apologizes-for-algorithm-
| mi...
|
| [3] https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/18/21373316/nypd-facial-
| reco...
|
| [4] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tech-companies-
| quietl...
| bb101 wrote:
| Microsoft was the talking point in a couple of the articles,
| and they also own Github. The rest, could be considered under
| the tech giants umbrella -- so I'd say the links are topical
| and relevant.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Whats not clear to me is whether the first part of the
| sentence is talking about Github or tech giants? Actually,
| thats a general thing in this article, switching between
| those two modes.
| [deleted]
| shantara wrote:
| I think we've reached the peak of absurdity, when a linting
| utility adds an enabled by default inclusive language rule that
| breaks people's builds for daring to use racist terms like
| "MasterViewController" or "MasterCard".
|
| https://github.com/realm/SwiftLint/pull/3243
| FDSGSG wrote:
| They seem to have whitel... sorry, "allowlisted" mastercard. I
| guess the m-word is somehow acceptable in that context?
|
| https://github.com/realm/SwiftLint/blob/master/Source/SwiftL...
|
| Hilariously enough, their repo still uses the master branch.
| maxrev17 wrote:
| I'm in the UK and disappointed in all this 'awareness' bullshit.
| It is a complete cop out for making real change.
| SeriousM wrote:
| That's exactly what I think about that topic. Master branch is
| the master record. Nothing more or less.
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| Especially since there is no such thing as a slave branch.
| detaro wrote:
| Yes and no. Git took the terminology from BitKeeper, which
| did have master and slave repositories. So while there are no
| slave anythings in git, git uses the term because of the
| master-slave meaning.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Even if there was one, as noted in the article, context
| people. Context.
|
| Master/Slave nodes and ports are to be found in a lot of
| hardware.
|
| No one in their right mind ever would think of it in terms of
| horrible atrocities of the past. It's a technical term.
| That's where it ends.
|
| Humans are a shitty bunch.
| swayvil wrote:
| Word-usage is a natural meritocracy.
|
| It's a practically perfect interface between mechanics and
| morality.
| hackwith wrote:
| I like main better
| nailer wrote:
| It's shorter, but it's a change. If it was main historically
| it'd be annoying to change it to master now.
| lcrz wrote:
| I just want to add a link to this[0] post here as a counterpoint
| for why changing language _can_ matter.
|
| The author seems to imply that the name change is all about being
| non-offensive to some people. Since the author doesn't find the
| language offensive, they conclude that name change is only
| political correctness or virtue signalling and a hollow gesture.
| I do not agree with that. Language and words are very powerful in
| how we perceive the world. A changing vocabulary is part of
| cultural change.
|
| [0]: https://mokacoding.com/blog/main-vs-master-xcode-12/
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| That article hurt to read. I'm not surprised the author is from
| Melbourne too.
| 3saryHg6LP2e wrote:
| This article doesn't explain how "main" is more "inclusive"
| than "master". I don't agree that it is at all.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That article is garbage. He just takes it as given that the
| change is more inclusive.
|
| Oh course being inclusive is good. _That 's not the argument
| here. _
| ukj wrote:
| Everything humans do is part of cultural change, because what
| humans do is change things.
|
| The post is about prioritisation. Moving the needle in a way
| that matters, not merely doing something so we can pat
| ourselves on the back for doing it.
|
| Just because you can change something it doesn't mean you
| should or ought to. Opportunity cost....
| lcrz wrote:
| But that's just saying that a change that only has a small
| effect is almost never worthwhile. What are the real
| opportunity costs here?
| ukj wrote:
| No, it's not saying that at all. You are missing all the
| nuance.
|
| It's saying that the change which has a small effect is
| never worth while (and... pay attention now. This is the
| other part of the post you missed: context)....
|
| *IN RELATION TO* the larger effect which costs the same in
| time/effort/capital/energy/emotions/stress/give-a-fuck.
|
| That's just how prioritisation/choice works.
| lcrz wrote:
| Ok, so what is that larger effect that costs the same,
| then?
|
| The idea that you need to do something that is better
| before you can do something that is less, even if the
| cost is the same seems to imply that there is only a
| limited amount of energy that is expendable on these
| topics.
|
| As seen from the bucketloads of comments and posts about
| this _OLD_ issue (the python link is from 2018) it seems
| there 's enough energy going around.
|
| The idea that something can't be good, just because it is
| not the highest item on a list is nonproductive.
| ukj wrote:
| Nobody is saying that X isn't good. Everybody is saying
| that X is good, but Y is much better.
|
| So if you want to make a productive choice then go for Y,
| not X!
|
| At the very least, if you are going to choose X anyway
| stop trying to persuade everybody else to choose X with
| you, when they are already focusing on Y. That's just
| attention-seeking behaviour.
|
| You are extremely uncharitable. There's no point of
| engaging you further.
| gebruikersnaam wrote:
| > Since the author doesn't find the language offensive
|
| You're missing the point, the author concludes that the
| companies decide that the language is offensive without asking
| the people who are supposedly the offended party.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| No, he's complaining that they didn't ask him specifically.
| It really easy to find black developers who were consulted
| and agree with the change.
|
| Here we go (this took under 5 seconds for me to Google)
|
| https://dev.to/afrodevgirl/replacing-master-with-main-in-
| git...
|
| Now there's duelling anecdata and the OP provides no
| suggestions on how to reconcile them.
| gebruikersnaam wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "So if this change did not really even attempt to involve
| the black developer community..."
| emteycz wrote:
| They could simply rename their own branches.
| 1f60c wrote:
| ...yes? No one is forcing anyone to do anything.
|
| I don't think anyone expects "main" ("develop",
| "default", "trunk", ...) to ever become the default
| branch name.
| emteycz wrote:
| It is already the default branch name... That's the point
| of this whole fluff. Nobody would care about people
| changing their own branch names.
| lcrz wrote:
| Are you sure about that though? They didn't publish anything
| about their internal decision making. It is an assumption
| that they didn't talk to any person of color. The idea of
| using so called neutral terms is not new:
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3243656.stm
| gebruikersnaam wrote:
| See my other comment, the author says the change didn't
| involve the black developer community. I have no knowledge
| either way, just emphasizing their point.
| lcrz wrote:
| Sure. I'm just calling their point into question because
| I see a lot of people of color that are actively engaged
| in the evolution of language in the context of slavery.
| The Rijksmuseum in The Nederlands has changed most
| occurrences of 'slave' to 'enslaved person' and trying to
| find out the actual name of the person depicted, among
| other things. The commission that was responsible for
| this change was headed by a person of color[0]. This
| isn't a movement that we are only seeing in Silicon
| Valley.
|
| [0]: https://www.parool.nl/ps/hoofd-geschiedenis-
| rijksmuseum-ik-w...
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| As far as I know, most of the changes happening at large
| companies regarding this have been driven internally
| primarily by people of color - at MSFT, which owns GitHub,
| some of these changes were being driven by Employee Resource
| Groups (affinity groups) which are made up of those who would
| be affected by the language, for example
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Frankly this is the opinion of a white guy, why should latino
| and black people care about his perception of "racially charged
| words" like `master`?
|
| This is like some dude from Vermont telling me I should use
| latinx as it's more inclusive -- linguistic colonization eh
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| From the article, I don't believe this is "the opinion of a
| white guy":
|
| _Being a highly paid software engineer, like most of you
| reading this, did not stop a bully van flying up the curb I
| was walking on and 7 City of London police officers pinning
| me against a wall with guns in my face. They wouldn't believe
| it was possible for someone like me to work in central London
| till one of them searched me and found my work ID. All this
| because I fit a description. What was this description? I
| don't know, black male between 4'11 and 7'4 probably._
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I was talking specifically about the link in parent
| comment. https://mokacoding.com/blog/main-vs-master-
| xcode-12/
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| My bad, thanks for pointing that out.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I read this whole article, super disappointed. Its
| nothing but a bunch of assertions about something being
| offensive without even a small effort to show why it is.
| This just perpetuates the idea that this is just virtue
| signaling and has no effects.
| GrayShade wrote:
| The person your parent linked to is a white guy, who also
| links to the Twitter account of another white guy.
| [deleted]
| lcrz wrote:
| Ok, that's fair. Here's an article from Wired where there are
| people of color on both sides of this issue:
| https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-
| master...
| [deleted]
| garfieldnate wrote:
| I view language policing as a type of misguided adherence to a
| strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which basically
| states that people can't think what there is no word for in their
| language. This is utter nonsense; people have likes and dislikes
| and biases and will always find new ways to express these views.
|
| There was a long period in linguistics research where linguists
| thought they could understand language best by discovering the
| etymologies of every word; this drove a lot of the work of
| recovering Proto-Indo-European. They thought that if they knew
| where a word came from that they would then know the absolute
| truth regarding the meaning of the word. Things changed at the
| beginning of the 20th century, and this approach is now
| considered pseudo-scientific; linguistics is data-based now, with
| meanings of words determined by their usage and context.
|
| "Master" is a pretty neutral word, with about a dozen meanings if
| you check Meriam-Webster. Even if the top meaning listed were
| "one having authority over another" (and it's not), this is still
| too vague to simply declare that it's associated with slavery and
| needs to be avoided. There's nothing about a Git repository
| that's directly reminiscent of American slavery, so it's quite
| arbitrary to declare the word "master" inappropriate in this
| context. It could be quite a different story if the spelling were
| "massah", which would directly evoke the image of slavery.
|
| In general, though, even for actual offensive words I think the
| banning approach is counter-productive. Melioration, the loss of
| a negative connotation, is a perfectly natural process, and by
| outright banning a word you prolong the process or even
| strengthen the negativity of it. Let negative word meanings fade
| out of our consciousness as the negative feelings that gave birth
| to them disappear.
| elygre wrote:
| I had zero ownership of the name "master". That just happened,
| and I lived with it.
|
| I will remain having zero ownership to the name "main". That just
| happened, and I will live fine with that, too!
| asmr wrote:
| I'm a black american and I think it's more racist to attribute
| the word "master" to master/slave dynamic. Especially when I've
| always thought of something like "master" in the context of
| GitHub to refer to a "master" copy. This change is ineffective.
| fart32 wrote:
| The people pushing the agenda see racism everywhere. The
| attribution probably has never occurred to most people in tech,
| because they are not obsessed with other people's color or
| beliefs.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| > Last summer an(other) unarmed black man was killed by police in
| Minneapolis, Minnesota. [...] So, what was tech's big song and
| dance? Let's remove offensive terminology from our collective
| lexicon. There were several casualties, white/blacklist are
| examples of words deemed to be too offensive to use.
|
| In my memory this started way before the recent BLM protests -
| around the time CoC (Code of Conduct) was being introduced.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > around the time CoC (Code of Conduct) was being introduced.
|
| The things about the CoCs that really annoyed me:
|
| 1. People would literally go around projects and send pull
| requests just to change the code of conduct to improve the
| wording even tho no one had made any complaints or anything.
| Anytime a CoC get added you would see more people mess around
| with the CoC than the code. It was like people just wanted to
| look like they were improving things while not actually doing
| anything.
|
| 2. The only blog posts I've seen about CoCs at conferences and
| stuff have sounded nuts. One was for SunshinePHP[0] where one
| of the infractions was someone flirting with someone who had a
| boyfriend who was at the conference and said she could do
| better. They wrote that they told the offender to go to his
| room to prevent him from being assaulted. But mentions nothing
| happening about a guy threatening violence for flirting. I
| would understand if they were threatening violence in response
| to violence but flirting, nah. Then there was the whole
| fast.ai[1] thing where the infraction was basically someone was
| offended on the behalf of someone else who wasn't offended.
|
| [0] https://geekyboy.com/archives/1179
|
| [1] https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/
| eertami wrote:
| >someone flirting with someone who had a boyfriend who was at
| the conference and said she could do better
|
| I don't know what you think flirting is but that ain't it.
| Your man was being a creep and while I'd agree violence isn't
| the answer, I'm not at all surprised if he was threatened. (I
| also wouldn't be surprised if he was just told to back off
| initially but then pushed the issue because that is what
| creeps do.)
|
| And if for some reason this still isn't obvious to the
| reader, here's a top tip for how to avoid getting into a
| fight: maybe don't insult people.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > I don't know what you think flirting is but that ain't
| it.
|
| Let's be serious it depends on the context of the
| conversation. She could have been flirting with him and
| then when he flirted she said "but I have a boyfriend" and
| he could had said that and she could have agreed. That is
| flirting. It could have been what we suspect some guy
| hitting on a woman and she said "I have a boyfriend" and he
| said that. I used the word flirting because that is what
| the source used.
|
| The guy was probably a creep and I am not surprised either
| but if you're going to have a code of conduct for everyones
| safety then say someone had to go to their room for their
| safety tells me your code of conduct isn't for safety but
| for apperance.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| That fast.ai post is insane. I feel really bad for him. I
| watched Lex Fridman's interview with him and he seemed very
| nice and thoughtful.
| turbonoobie wrote:
| CoC is such a strange document. All I've seen it do is sit in a
| repo as a flag post. When I see a license document it gets me
| thinking about what intentions the project is released with,
| but when I see a CoC document all I do is mentally filter it
| out and go about my day..
|
| One would think it could leave some sense about the
| maintainer(s) being decent in some way. Instead I'm just left
| with a feeling of coercion if anything.
|
| It just shouldn't be necessary to "present" yourself as a
| decent person as the author of some code.
|
| Some document in a project folder online doesn't make you or me
| better people. It seems to me more of a futile (and stupid)
| gesture if anything.
|
| We need to spend our time actually doing decent things, and
| being decent people. Putting a document in our projects telling
| others that we are doesn't really change that.
|
| A standardized way of telling others you are a certain way,
| doesn't make you so. It relieves us of putting in the effort if
| anything.
|
| /idealistic early morning rant over
| josephg wrote:
| I know this is controversial, but I still love SQLite's old
| code of conduct (now 'code of ethics'[1]). Its based on some
| old religious text. If you skip the religious bits, the rest
| is extremely wholesome. I much prefer it over most projects'
| CoCs - I've never seen much benefit in spending a lot of
| words to say "please be civil".
|
| > Be a help in times of trouble.
|
| > Do not return evil for evil.
|
| I will try, for you SQLite! :D
|
| [1] https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
| turbonoobie wrote:
| I like this approach
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| > 30. Do no wrong to anyone, and bear patiently wrongs done
| to yourself.
|
| This one is similar to "be conservative in what you say and
| liberal in what you accept from others"[1], but worded
| better.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
| yosamino wrote:
| Reading CoCs they are usually full of language that you would
| expect people would have already learned in Kindergarden.
| Unfortunately there are too many grown-ups around that seem
| to not have internalized these things, so while I don't like
| the patronizing myself, I see some value in writing down a
| set of "if you wanna collaborate here, please respect these
| rules".
|
| And while you are right, the code itself doesn't care, there
| are lot's of interactions around producing that code that are
| between humans, where behaviour is important.
|
| It's not much different from the guidelines that exist for
| this very site:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| I mean, that is a kind of code of condcut, too.
| foobar33333 wrote:
| >Unfortunately there are too many grown-ups around that
| seem to not have internalized these things
|
| This is true, but they wont read the CoC. And even if they
| do, they won't follow it. If someone can't practice basic
| decency, a txt file won't change them. Its an entirely
| futile effort at best and more likely a virtue signal than
| actually trying to improve things.
|
| The only thing that works is strict moderation. You don't
| need a CoC for that.
| yosamino wrote:
| I agree that a CoC by itself doesn't do anything. But if
| you want to do strict moderation, you need to put in
| place some rules that you can use to guide moderation and
| to make it transparent what the rules ares whch govern
| this moderation.
|
| Otherwise you end up with arbitrarily enforced rules,
| created ad-hoc by whoever is doing the enforcing, without
| a way to know what they are or a way to appeal if you
| feel wrongly moderated.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > We need to spend our time actually doing decent things, and
| being decent people.
|
| Is this mutually exclusive to stopping people doing bad
| things and being bad people though?
| baud147258 wrote:
| You don't really need a CoC to do that.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'm curious how you plan to run a community without
| formalizing the rules that are expected to be followed
| somewhere. Restaurants generally have a sign outlining
| dress and language expectations, why is it so
| controversial to document community behavior
| expectations?
|
| There are a number of internet communities which
| essentially have this in the opposite form - as in
| "getting insulted is expected, no we are not going to do
| anything about it".
|
| This was the de facto Linux mailing list way for a bit,
| and was somewhat documented in a lot of "how to interact
| and what to expect on LKML" guides.
| aniforprez wrote:
| Is "don't be a dick" not enough? For a long while there
| was a group of militant people hell bent on having
| everyone keep a CoC in their repos and ironically being
| the more intrusive and rude force themselves. I don't
| think any such document I've read has had any more
| substance or achieved much beyond the initial kerfuffle
| pseudalopex wrote:
| People don't agree what's being a dick and what's not.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Is "don't be a dick" not enough?
|
| If everyone is going to act in good faith the whole time,
| sure, it's fine. But as soon as you get one person acting
| in bad faith, it all falls apart - see the current
| Republican Party, for example.
| supergirl wrote:
| > They forgot to talk to people who are actually members of the
| black community.
|
| everyone should be consulted. however today's black people in
| this case should not have the final word. they adapted to a
| system that opresses them so they might not have the vision of
| what the ideal system is. i. other words, even if today's black
| people are not offended by this word it doesn't mean it's ok.
| same with the n word. black people use it but I think it is not
| ok. their grandchildren might do better in a world where black
| people don't use this word. same with women. today's women might
| not have the vision of what equality is. people with vision are
| needed and they might be black, women or even white men
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I would agree "slave" seems a weird choice of a word but I can
| see nothing wrong in "master". Not a single moment in my life I
| thought about slavery when hearing/seeing the word "master".
| Should we also rename master degrees perhaps?
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| Master bedroom, master record, master copy. The word master is
| just a synonym for main.
| lanternfish wrote:
| It should be noted that of all of the ways master is used in
| this thread, master bedroom is pretty high up there in bad
| history and connotation. The etymology derives from the
| 'master of the house', a term which historically served to
| diminish the agency of wives, servants, and slaves. I don't
| know about master/main, but I could definitely get behind
| renaming master bedrooms.
| nayaketo wrote:
| Company I'm currently working for deals with real estate
| drawings. We were notified recently that we're changing
| "Master bedroom" to "Main bedroom" too.
| roel_v wrote:
| 'Master bedroom' is going out of real estate descriptions,
| being replaced by 'main bedroom'. E.g.
| https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/fun-at-
| home/a1087/m... but that's just the first google hit, there's
| plenty out there.
|
| In Dutch (both in .nl and .be), the English term 'master
| bedroom' was fashionable for a few years, until the stigma of
| that term carried over from the Anglosphere and it's now
| being replaced (in the woke areas of the country) with
| 'ouderslaapkamer', which is literally translated 'parent
| bedroom'. Although now _that_ term itself is 'controversial'
| (not mainstream controversial, more in small hardcore
| circles, so I'm not sure if this will actually become an
| issue) because (to the best of my understanding of this
| objection) 'parent bedroom' implies that the 2-parents-with-
| children family form is normative (you can't make this up if
| you tried to), which it shouldn't be.
|
| Not sure what my point is, maybe that using 'master' for
| 'main' is no longer outright commonly accepted usage?
| stephen_g wrote:
| I'd never heard of any stigma around the word 'master'
| until today... It's still as commonly used to refer to
| master bedrooms in Australia as it ever was...
| plett wrote:
| In the UK, lots of real estate descriptions side-step the
| problem completely and use terms like 'Bedroom 1' for the
| largest bedroom and 'Bedroom 2' etc for the 2nd largest.
| jlokier wrote:
| About 'parent bedroom', a lot of houses are occupied by
| house-sharers these days. Some sharers get the 'parent
| bedroom', others get the non-parent bedroom but they are
| all the same age. It makes some sense to change the
| description.
| roel_v wrote:
| That's a utilitarian argument (I think?) that I could get
| behind (not that anyone asks for my opinion on what rooms
| should be called). From that POV I guess it would be best
| to just call any room that isn't a kitchen or bathroom
| just 'room' and let buyers decide. But then again, most
| people don't have much imagination and like to be shown
| how space can or is intended to be used, much like how a
| neatly decorated house sells easier than an empty or
| cluttered one.
|
| But the objections I read about last summer (tried
| looking but I can't find it any more) were moral, that
| the term is also 'oppressive' (not sure if that's the
| actual term they used, that was the gist of it),
| basically the same arguments that are made for removing
| 'master' from Git, language frames our thinking etc.
| iso1631 wrote:
| In Ye Olde Dayes it referred to someone who had control or
| authority over a place, object, craft, etc -- a teacher would
| be a master for example. It's a common word across European
| languages, and certainly predated the atlantic slave trade.
|
| Probably descended from the Latin word "magister", which
| (despite Rome having plenty of slaves) didn't neccersarilly
| refer to a slaveowner -- indeed many Roman slaves were _Ludi
| Magister_ -- educated slaves that were teachers at Roman
| schools
|
| Etymology of "master bedroom" seems to come from "Master's
| bedroom" in boarding schools, where it was the bedroom that
| the school master occupied (with Master having descended from
| Roman times)
| himinlomax wrote:
| Note how master is not even the main term used to describe
| people who had slaves. The term typically used is owner, as in
| "so and so was a slaveowner."
|
| A Marxist would chuckle at the notion that Microsoft would be
| removing the word "owner" for being offensive.
| foobar33333 wrote:
| Both gitlab and github make heavy use of the term owner and
| ownership. Someone should let them know they have more
| renaming to do.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The word "master" when applied to slavery is itself a
| euphemism for owner, which is the truly abhorrent type of
| interpersonal relationship.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| That's my impression too. "Slave" should be replaced with some
| other more neutral term, but "master" shouldn't be a problem.
| There are multiple uses of it in different contexts, but the
| shared implication is of a definitive source:
|
| Master copy; Remastered (music); Master of Arts/Sciences;
| Mastery
|
| Etc. None of that implies a master-slave relationship.
| tigerlily wrote:
| Why not use gimp for slave? Master and gimp.
|
| Edit: No! You see Ivan, it should be master and margarita!
| stephen_g wrote:
| I'd be really interested to hear from any black people here -
| does the idea of having a device or piece of software being
| called a 'slave' really actually offend anybody?
|
| I'd never subconsciously linked the term with human slaves,
| only ever really thinking of it as an abstract concept, until
| people started complaining about it... Part of it may be
| coming from a different cultural context, not being from the
| US though...
| Telemakhos wrote:
| The English word "master" comes from the Latin "magister,"
| which is freighted with thousands of years of meanings and
| history. The meaning of slaveowner was not one of those
| meanings until probably the seventeenth or eighteenth
| century. In Latin, "magister," never meant the master of
| slaves (a "herus" most properly, or a "dominus," an owner of
| anything with legal title to that thing). Instead, the
| "magister" was a leader of a group: the "magister equitum"
| was a cavalry commander, and a "ludi magister" a schoolmaster
| or classroom teacher. It is from the latter that we have
| "master" in the sense of an MA (magister artium) degree,
| which, like the PhD, was originally a teaching license. The
| use of the English "master" to refer to slavery is
| comparatively recent and might well not predate the
| eighteenth century.
| kgwgk wrote:
| On the other hand, "family" comes from Latin "familia"
| (household servants) from "famulus" (servant).
| [deleted]
| Roark66 wrote:
| >I would agree "slave" seems a weird choice of a word
|
| I disagree, however I'm not a native English speaker. It is the
| most descriptive single word describing this mode of working.
| We can't ban master/slave as a word or we will loose
| understanding of what it means. Another poster already
| mentioned that there are actual human slaves in existence
| today. I once heard in our time there are more human slaves
| than ever (mostly due to there being more people overall). It
| is sad that large companies like Microsoft(Github) choose to
| waste energy on such pointless activities instead of actually
| doing something about modern slavery.
|
| Microsoft is still in unique position of being able to pressure
| hardware makers. Why don't they pressure them into at least
| trying to improve conditions of actual slaves that mine cobalt
| and other rare materials at the bottom of their supply chain?
| eythian wrote:
| > It is the most descriptive single word describing this mode
| of working.
|
| It often isn't. It's not uncommon that "replica" or
| "secondary" actually make more sense.
| Spivak wrote:
| I've also seen leader, follower in use.
| junon wrote:
| Replica means replicated data, usually a copy.
|
| Secondary means backup or parity module.
|
| Slave means neither of those things. A slave, in technical
| terms, means a "dumb" worker (meaning it doesn't make its
| own decisions about how it operates within the greater
| system) that is controlled by another module in the system
| (often called a "master").
|
| And no, "worker" isn't descriptive because it doesn't
| specify the nature of autonomy within the system -
| oftentimes, a worker might autonomously pick tasks off a
| queue and perform work offline or something. A slave is
| directly, actively and imperatively given commands by
| another entity in the system.
|
| Further, it is also implied that a slave has a lifetime
| that spans within the lifetime of the master. Workers,
| replicas, or secondaries do not share this trait.
|
| "Slave" is the only word that accurately infers the
| _technical operating aspects_ of such an actor within
| system 's design.
|
| Stop messing with our vocabulary please. We need it to do
| real work. Bring on the downvotes, because I know the
| performative woke crowd loves to ignore these facts.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I would have likely upvoted you without the request for
| downvotes, but sure I guess I'll oblige. Even if it won't
| convince you to change, maybe I can warn other people
| you're using such an annoying rhetorical device.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I don't know of any meaning of the "slave" word besides a
| person doing involuntary labor.
|
| BTW I remember Russians translating master/slave (in the IT
| context, e.g. primary/secondary master/slave for IDE PATA
| drives) as the the leading and the led.
| tim44 wrote:
| With the NBA right now, there is debate about teams having
| "owners."
| derpthebert wrote:
| let's ban all words.
| tomtomtom777 wrote:
| > I would agree "slave" seems a weird choice of a word
|
| Can you clarify this? If one machine/repo/system acts only on
| the orders of another, wouldn't "master" and "slave" be clear,
| descriptive choices of words?
| elsjaako wrote:
| Let's say you had a database based application and a feature
| to remove a subset of records. You wouldn't call that feature
| any variant of "ethnic clensing", "genocide" or "Holocaust",
| no matter how descriptive those terms were for your specific
| function.
|
| Slavery was really bad, and for that reason shouln't be used
| as a description.
|
| There are always alternatives, like "leader and follower"
| xupybd wrote:
| We use terms like demon, basically a personification of
| evil.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Apparently copyright infringement is also tantamount to
| raping and pillaging on the high seas (piracy).
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Demon, also spelled daemon, Classical Greek daimon, in
| Greek religion, a supernatural power. In Homer the term
| is used almost interchangeably with theos for a god. The
| distinction there is that theos emphasizes the
| personality of the god, and demon his activity.
| XorNot wrote:
| And we'll stop in the event of the demonic invasion of
| Earth, but Doom 2 remains just a video game.
| kgwgk wrote:
| The origin of the term is not so evil:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)#Etymolog
| y
| dijit wrote:
| But we don't seem to care about origins of words, Master
| itself didn't mean slave owner until late in the 17th
| century.
| [deleted]
| viraptor wrote:
| > There are always alternatives, like "leader and follower"
|
| Which is a worse analogy, because "following" is a choice
| and doesn't have to be strict, unlike slave (execute
| commands or get killed).
| elsjaako wrote:
| There is no need for the metaphor to be perfect. It
| should make clear what each device/process/whatever does
| without confusing people. The exact details aren't that
| important, understanding the roles is.
|
| On my computer I can open a folder twice without closing
| it. I can't open a physical folder twice without closing.
|
| With a race condition, no one cares if both processes
| started at the same time. That's not an important part of
| the analogy.
|
| Even your point about killing doesn't really fit with the
| metaphor. Historically, whipping would be the most common
| punishment.
|
| I do agree with your idea that the metaphor has to be
| clear. Modbus replace master/slave with client/server,
| which tends to confuse people used to the old analogy.
| It's not ideal, but neither is referring back to that
| time we could trade people.
| llimos wrote:
| Actually, we do call it a "purge". That's not a word
| without connotations.
|
| We also kill child processes. No-one's had a problem with
| that till now. Sometimes a metaphor is just a metaphor.
| Minor49er wrote:
| These aren't metaphors, though. For example, a "parent
| process" uses the term "parent" that's defined as "a
| source or origin of a smaller or less important part,"
| not "a father or mother," or one of the other half-dozen
| definitions
| llimos wrote:
| "Kill" is definitely a metaphor. A more literal phrase
| would be "force stop".
| Minor49er wrote:
| One of the definitions of "kill" is "to put an end to or
| cause the failure or defeat of (something)." This is not
| a metaphor either.
| IshKebab wrote:
| One of the definitions of "slave" is "A device (such as a
| secondary flash or hard drive) that is subject to the
| control of another". Is that not a metaphor either?
| [deleted]
| randalluk wrote:
| I don't think anyone is arguing that it's always a bad
| metaphor, just that it's an unnecessarily violent one.
| tomp wrote:
| Do you not see how ridiculous that is? Do you wince every
| time you _kill_ a process? A program _crashes_? You _slice_
| a steak? _chown_ a file?
| randalluk wrote:
| I don't think it's ridiculous, no. (But I think wincing
| at some of your examples would be.)
|
| Really I'm not the best person to judge though. I'm happy
| to be guided by people who experience racism and groups
| tackling the legacy of slavery. Because those things seem
| important whereas my terminology preferences for
| asymmetric nodes in a distributed system, when there are
| plenty of sensible alternatives, seem less so.
| willis936 wrote:
| The important thing to know here is that it is not how _you_
| interpret the words that matter. Social justice isn't asking
| how github or existing developers feel because it isn't a
| change that takes their feelings into account.
|
| I'm playing devil's advocate. I don't have strong feelings on
| this specific change, but I can see my line of thinking
| surprisingly absent in this entire thread.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Same here, until this debate surfaced I never thought about
| slavery when I saw these terms.
|
| What made me think more about slavery was the materials that go
| into computers like cobalt and sulfur. Someone has to go down
| into the sulfur mine and get that for us. That's an actual
| master/slave relationship that is going on right now to power
| all our fantastic infrastructure.
|
| But so much industry has depended on sulfur for so many years
| that this debate is much deeper and more complex. The ugly
| truth is that someone far away has to be enslaved for us to
| live comfortably.
|
| Bring that debate to the front instead and we might find a
| technical solution to it.
|
| But it's always cheaper to find a desperate person than to
| maintain a robot that is being attacked by gas and sulfur
| daily.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| And now I am imagining some video where they go down into
| sulfur mine and tell one of the miners "We bring great news
| for you! Github changed the default name of master code
| branches to something else! Gitlab too! It was kind of a
| little bit annoying a little but they're doing it anyway!"
| XorNot wrote:
| Yeah and just think, then we could also tell those people
| about how a wrongly accused man in not their country was
| released after charitable efforts to clear his name, in the
| process overturning a negligent evidence handling process
| which will make things much better going forwards!
|
| And...it still wouldn't matter to those people at all
| because it wouldn't change their specific situation!
|
| This is a pretty insipid argument.
| leg100 wrote:
| Once you agree that one word is apt for removal then you agree
| with the agenda that the article author roundly rejects.
|
| By going down the road of agreeing to some words to be removed
| you're then imposing a presumption of guilt on anyone who
| refuses to remove said words. If I maintain some software that
| uses the word slave or blacklist and I don't accede to making
| the changes to remove it, or agree to approve a PR that does
| the same, then it's presumed I am stubborn or worse still,
| racist. Despite the usage of the word being completely
| innocent.
|
| Of course, context is everything, which only proves the point.
| You cannot systematically ban certain words.
| llimos wrote:
| And MasterCard. Everyone must switch to Visa now.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Another "radical" take that basically boils down to saying "stop
| trying to do good, white people, what we really need is to
| replace you with more positive discrimination".
|
| With the usual scarecrows, like algorithms being racist, "white
| boys" being used as a slur, etc.
|
| The conclusion? Stop being racist, and make black-only employment
| programs, you bigots!
| tda wrote:
| Though I initially sympathized with the name change from master
| to main (cause I don't care what it is called), I am now more of
| the opinion that this kind of window-dressing might actually be
| harmful as it distracts from addressing the root cause. It is a
| bit complicated as the name change in itself is not bad, but
| given the context, and that it distracts from addressing real
| issues it actually is.
|
| Same thing with plastic recycling, in and of itself it is better
| than landfill, but as it allows us to feel good and look away
| from the real problem (plastic is cheap because most impacts are
| externalized) the recycling of plastic contributes more to the
| problem than to the solution. I know people who traveled around
| the world about once a year, own a big house and altogether have
| a pretty big impact that could easily be reduced, but they do
| recycle plastic and think of themselves as somewhat
| environmentally responsible.
|
| For the record, I do recycle plastic.
| mlazowik wrote:
| At the risk of being cpt obvious: <= 10% of plastic has ever
| been recycled + AFAIK there's a pretty low limit on how many
| times you can recycle.
|
| https://text.npr.org/897692090
|
| > Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it
| can't be reused more than once or twice.
| ivanche wrote:
| > _Though I initially sympathized with the name change from
| master to main (cause I don 't care what it is called)_
|
| It seems you don't have any bash/zsh/fish scripts which assume
| that the most important branch is named "master"...
| cforrester wrote:
| For smaller scripts, this is trivially resolved. For larger
| scripts, this is a bug, and the script should be updated with
| a more flexible solution that doesn't rely on hardcoded
| branch names.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > For the record, I do recycle plastic.
|
| You don't. Nobody does. The plastic you "recycle" gets turned
| into lower grade plastic and so on until it gets landfilled.
| For plastic, the only way is down.
|
| Steel, aluminium and glass are examples of materials that are
| recyclable.
| tda wrote:
| You are correct, let me rephrase that:
|
| I separate plastic so it can be either burnt together with my
| other trash, or shipped to Turkey where god knows what
| environmental crime is committed with it. An extremely small
| percentage might be melted into some low grade park bench.
| Absolutely zero plastic will be turned into high quality
| plastic pellets for industrial as a substitute for new
| plastic. It does not make me feel good, but not doing it
| makes me feel worse.
|
| I just voted today for real change. Voting matters, plastic
| "recycling" doesn't*
|
| * if you live in a place where you have meaningfully
| different options, not just two flavors of the same
| edbob wrote:
| Off-topic, but I really enjoy products whose packaging I can
| dispose of well because it's all paper and/or metal. I buy
| Celestial Seasonings tea because there's no foil, and I can
| compost the tea bags. But there are still plenty of products
| that I only find in plastic, like frozen fish. I mainly shop at
| Wal-Mart because I'm poor. Does anyone have any tips for
| someone on a low budget?
| adamcstephens wrote:
| It doesn't matter where you shop, plastic and food are
| constantly used together.
| robin21 wrote:
| It's more about creating a new enemy in the people who still
| use master branch. Some people always need someone to hate on.
| pietrovismara wrote:
| > this kind of window-dressing might actually be harmful as it
| distracts from addressing the root cause
|
| The root cause can't be addressed by the same people who reap
| the benefits of this system, because it's so deep in its core
| that it would require substantial change, possibly breaking the
| system itself.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > I am now more of the opinion that this kind of window-
| dressing might actually be harmful as it distracts from
| addressing the root cause
|
| Came here to express similar opinion and your articulation has
| succinctly and perfectly captured it so I'll just add to it.
|
| Over the years I've come to realise that effecting _real_
| change to address the root cause is hard. It almost certainly
| won 't be done by private corporations; the changes need to be
| enforced by (and at) institutions that are answerable to
| communities e.g., right to quality education, a humane law
| enforcer. Not only is change going to be hard but slow as well.
| However with more and more institutions getting privatised
| (private jails, contracted police force etc.,) whose sole
| motive is to earn more profits I don't see how anything is
| going to improve in the near future. So what ends up happening
| is every atrocity against oppressed community gets hijacked by
| these private mega-corps as they sense PR opportunity.
|
| To take another example; Diversity & Inclusion. We do all the
| song and dance at the workplace to make it more diverse. But
| when you actually see the process from the inside you see how
| optical and ridiculous it is. The entire program is a joke. No
| matter what one does the _top of the funnel_ is so ridiculously
| non-diverse that it 's excruciatingly difficult to hire a
| diverse person. The reasons are obvious, the entire education
| system (and society to an extent) is so rigged against
| oppressed community that it takes a miracle for one of their
| community to even make it to resume-writing stage. Instead of
| addressing the problem at the root cause (make it easier for
| them to get high quality education, lead a decent life) every
| corporation makes a big PR-noise around D&I while in reality
| the work place continues to be non-diverse. Net result is we
| end up having debates like "why should we reduce interview
| bar", "it's unfair to the deserving candidates" while
| completely being blind to the root cause of the problem.
|
| /rant
| munchbunny wrote:
| > But when you actually see the process from the inside you
| see how optical and ridiculous it is. The entire program is a
| joke. No matter what one does the top of the funnel is so
| ridiculously non-diverse that it's excruciatingly difficult
| to hire a diverse person.
|
| I agree based on my personal experiences.
|
| One of the concrete suggestions by the author of the blog
| post really strikes me as a step that we could implement, but
| we don't: drawing from non-traditional backgrounds. And it's
| because it's an uphill battle. Much easier to do some low
| hanging fruit.
|
| I'm not a minority in tech, but coming into my current job I
| had a semi-traditional background. Even getting first rounds
| was a struggle, only ameliorated by having a professional
| network of tech people, which is very much not something that
| you can expect a non-traditional candidate to have.
|
| Seriously, my "get to phone screen" rate without network
| referrals was around 2-3%. With referrals was about 60%.
| That's how bad it gets. So now when it's in my direct control
| I go out of my way to look for non-traditional backgrounds in
| the pipeline and give them the benefit of the doubt during
| resume screening, paid for in hours I spend interviewing
| instead of programming
| systemvoltage wrote:
| D&I is a coverage against lawsuits for discrimination. It's a
| dog and pony show.
| myspy wrote:
| I think such a change generates awareness. A lot of problems
| linger in the tech sector I'm not really aware of. The write up
| of the article author sheds light again on biased recruitment
| in the tech sector. Something that appears to be a fundamental
| problem with the education sector in the US being broken.
| slightwinder wrote:
| But it is good awarness? The major awarness people get from
| this cases is not about actual problems, but about very
| questionable wording-problems and behaviour of certain
| people. Not sure whether this at the end not creates more
| hate&blind eyes than important awarness.
| emteycz wrote:
| True, it generated awareness - but also hate, possibly much
| more than not.
| bregma wrote:
| It doesn't generate hate. The hate was already there. It
| just reveals it.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| The hate I've seen generated by ham-handed thought-and-
| speech policing is hate against the people doing the
| policing and hate against people standing up against the
| policing, not hate against the people the policing is
| ostensibly protecting.
|
| So no, it's not revealing existing hate. It's actively
| generating new hate.
| bregma wrote:
| The hate against the people "doing the policing" and the
| hate against the "people standing up to the policy" were
| already there. Hate doesn't spring parthenogenically from
| the void, it has to be seeded and nurtured and cultivated
| and be vomited out only when the time is right.
|
| Voicing a disagreement does not require or beget hate.
| XorNot wrote:
| If someone decided they don't care about bias in the tech
| sector because the default git branch name was changed,
| they weren't going to and didn't care to start with.
| gopiandcode wrote:
| This feels like a strawman - the issue isn't people
| deciding they don't care about bias because of this
| change, but rather that if tech companies are bending
| over so much as to make such an insignificant change to
| avoid seeming biased against minorities then how could
| bias in the tech industry exist at all?
| cforrester wrote:
| I'm confused by this question, aren't you essentially
| asking, "how can a problem exist if some people are
| presently taking actions that try to mitigate that
| problem?"
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Also, this kind of change might increase cynicism.
| morlockabove wrote:
| I wonder how many friends that attitude will win you.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| The only awareness it generates is awareness to do the same
| language policing in other places that never asked for it.
| lcrz wrote:
| I have to separate my plastics for them to be recycled. It has
| actually made me realize how much plastic a small family throws
| away every single week.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The majority of plastics aren't even accepted by my town's
| recycling program.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| I have the same issue and it's frustrating, but I
| understand. Last time I checked we don't even recycle the
| plastics here in the US. They get packed up and sent over
| seas which is even worse.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Less so since many of the target countries stopped
| accepting it. But the issue is that the stuff you could
| make by recycling these categories is of such low quality
| that nobody wants to buy them.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > as it distracts from addressing the root cause.
|
| This would imply that people are capable only of doing one
| thing at a time and, potentially, that they're only capable of
| doing one thing full stop. I would honestly be _amazed_ if a
| single person, anywhere[1], looked at this change and thought
| "yep, I don't have to think about slavery now".
|
| > think of themselves as somewhat environmentally responsible.
|
| Well, I guess they're more environmentally responsible than if
| they weren't recycling plastic. It's better to do something,
| however small, than nothing, surely? (And I doubt their
| environmental footprint even registers in the grand scheme of
| things - it's industry we need to shame, not individuals for
| the moment.)
|
| [1] Who wasn't already heavily invested in ignoring the
| repercussions of slavery, etc., I suppose.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| > I would honestly be amazed if a single person, anywhere[1],
| looked at this change and thought "yep, I don't have to think
| about slavery now".
|
| This is exactly what people do. WAY too many people do "feel-
| good" charity work. They just pick something that's visible,
| easily partaken and then decide they're "helping" and go
| about their lives feeling better.
|
| Like donating clothes to Africa, which actually harms the
| local economy[1][2]. As does dumping tons and tons of food
| without proper end to end oversight.
|
| Or having a demonstration in a public location, bothering the
| end-users or workers of a business. Because it's easy and
| good publicity. They don't attack the people on top who
| actually make the decisions, because it's hard and boring
| work.
|
| [1] http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628
| ,00... [2] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mariah-
| griffinangus/africa-cha...
| twic wrote:
| > If we can do both, why do we never do both?
|
| https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/perhaps-we-cannot-do-
| bo...
| wraptile wrote:
| > This would imply that people are capable only of doing one
| thing at a time
|
| No, but it certainly makes you care less. Human attention is
| not linear.
| caseyross wrote:
| > I would honestly be amazed if a single person, anywhere[1],
| looked at this change and thought "yep, I don't have to think
| about slavery now".
|
| Surprisingly, human minds _do_ seem to work that way. After
| doing a "good" deed, we're liable to believe that we've done
| our part, and owe society no further action. Even if our good
| deed didn't actually change anything.
|
| This effect is often called "moral licensing".
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > After doing a "good" deed, we're liable to believe that
| we've done our part, and owe society no further action.
|
| Yet people keep on recycling and switching their lightbulbs
| after they do the first one (a "good" deed.) People keep
| protesting even after they've succeeded in one protest.
| etc.
| ErikBjare wrote:
| People will naturally continue with their existing
| behaviour, but I think the GP was saying that once people
| have adopted a behaviour to aid cause X they sometimes
| stop looking for other "gooder" behaviours addressing the
| same issue.
| nsonha wrote:
| > imply that people are capable only of doing one thing at a
| time and, potentially, that they're only capable of doing one
| thing full stop
|
| A lazy and overused argument. No one said only one thing can
| be done. Fact is time and attention are resources and by
| doing some thing you allocate less of them to other things.
| viraptor wrote:
| To turn it into a specific example, in a large enough
| company, to make the master->main change you have to:
| announce it, update the repo, update the documentation,
| update the CI, update any automation around code, then
| everyone has to update their local copies. It takes time
| that costs the company real money. You can calculate that
| amount and ask the company to donate it to an organisation
| which can influence real change instead of renaming.
| chaboud wrote:
| There is a chasm between "doing something like this distracts
| from more effective options for change" and "people can only
| do one thing at a time", and arguing the latter when someone
| says the former feels disingenuous.
|
| For example, in California, due to long term drought, urban
| water usage legislation was enacted. Urban water usage in
| California accounts for less than 10% of the state's total
| usage, so a 20% reduction, at significant personal impact to
| urban residents, has a sub 2% impact on total use. However,
| it also gives the appearance that the legislature is actively
| engaged in addressing the problem of water conservation to
| under-informed voters without compelling those legislators to
| address agricultural and manufacturing uses (and their
| organized lobbying efforts).
|
| The problem with "every little bit helps" mentalities is that
| they enable perverse outcomes when coupled with limited
| information decision making, finite resources, and multiple
| concerns to balance. All of this leads to the politically
| optimal (and thus career sustaining) option set being deeply
| suboptimal application of resources.
| cheez0r wrote:
| Americans at large are heavily invested in ignoring the
| repercussions of slavery.
|
| Our President still lives in a house built by enslaved
| peoples. Our Congress still legislates in a Capitol built by
| enslaved peoples.
|
| That fact remains true, and is the prima facie evidence that
| all Americans have profited from our legacy of slavery, and
| that we aren't all that concerned with tearing down that
| legacy and eliminating the harms to folks that those
| monuments contain... instead a plaque or statue explaining
| the role of the enslaved peoples is enough.
|
| Meh.
| timsneath wrote:
| Ironically, the solutions prescribed here are themselves
| virtue signaling: in that they do nothing to actually right
| the wrongs of the past.
|
| As a practical way to help, I want to call out
| organizations like DonorsChoose. Find a Title I school or
| one with high economic need, and chances are high that a)
| more of the students are people of color; b) they don't
| have an effective or well-resourced PTA; c) their asks for
| resources are for basics that you'd assume would already be
| provided for. For those who want to make an actual
| difference, I'd highly encourage supporting an organization
| like this, and I'm pretty sure their communities would
| appreciate it more than tearing down the White House. https
| ://www.donorschoose.org/donors/search.html?moderateHigh...
| xupybd wrote:
| Seeing this gave me the warm fuzzies. Finally some push back
| against the pointless posturing that makes people feel good about
| themselves while helping no one.
|
| This made it to the top of HN. I'm filled with hope.
| throwawayhhn wrote:
| Many may agree with the author, but the fact is that many people
| do get offended about words. In the last few days there has been
| a significant firestorm about South African academic Adam Habib,
| who was recently appointed as head of the School of Oriental and
| African Studies at the a University of London because he stated
| on a Zoom call with some students that if someone used the word
| n**r that would be a breach of policy. His sin was uttering the
| word, rather than saying "the n word", which as a South African
| person with Indian ancestry, he is apparently not entitled to do.
| He tried to explain that words need to be understood in context,
| but was ripped apart by a woke Twitter mob (he has also made
| enemies in South African politics who gleefully amplified the
| outrage). After initially standing firm, he seems to have issued
| a grovelling apology.
|
| If an outrage mob on social media is going to go after you, and
| they can be placated by changing a few words, it seems eminently
| rational to change the words.
| tigerlily wrote:
| > We're going to change the branch name to be more inclusive of
| minorities
|
| It struck me that GitHub's suggested alternative, "main", could
| be taken to mean "mainstream", as in _not_ inclusive of
| minorities. In which case OP 's suggested "fuck-github" is by far
| the more preferable branch name.
| redkinght99 wrote:
| I just wanted to comment how great it was to "Something for ya
| ears while you read." music on this post. I wish every Hacker
| News tech link had a music link to accompany the information
| being shared.
| vletal wrote:
| Anyone else here whose script actually broke due to this change?
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| No, because it wasn't retroactive.
| vletal wrote:
| Sure. We got a set of CI/CD tools which, applied to a new
| repo started by a colleague, did not work.
| erk__ wrote:
| Would scripts not already have broken on repos using non-
| default names?
| stared wrote:
| It's all about symbolic actions.
|
| In principle, symbolic actions are meant to show the intention.
| (E.g. pointing to an object instead of grabbing it.) In many
| cases, it is impossible to act quickly, or at all, yet - someone
| wants to point to the direction where they head.
|
| In practice, everywhere when PR is involved (by people,
| companies, or government), symbolic actions are usually used
| instead of actual actions. They are orders of magnitude cheaper
| and offer an easy way to fool people with a false sense of care
| and engagement.
| fbunau wrote:
| My company changed our team name: "Black" to something else. just
| because .. really ? are we not allowed to use colors anymore ?
| Everyone on the team is white and european. I wasn't there when
| the team was named, but I think it had to do with rock cool
| factor, not slavery.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Late to the party, but I have a relevant story:
|
| My last job did a bunch of faux diversity tactics starting around
| the same time this happened at google. Part of it was starting
| "support" groups for different groupings, for example one for
| Asian employees or another for LGBTQ. This is good.
|
| However, I had to work weirdly hard to also have one for us
| Jewish employees. Weirdly hard when you consider all that had to
| be done was make a slack channel.
|
| Anyway, I suggested a group for Jews, and when I finally got
| someone to make the channel (begrudgingly), they asked what I
| wanted to name it. The other channels had names like
| "InspirAsian" so I wanted to be clever. I came up with "the
| tribe", as the term "member of the tribe" refers to someone being
| Jewish. The channel was made, the other 10 Jewish devs were
| happy.
|
| A day later I got a worried slack message from another employee.
| He was worried the name "The Tribe" would be offensive to Black
| employees, I guess because African societies are supposed to be
| called tribes? How about the 13 Tribes of Israel, Steve?
|
| I think it's a great example of the kind of fake progressivism
| discussed in the article. The org didn't care about making a
| group for us because we are white, the overly concerned employee
| getting preemptively offended over his own ignorance. It's all so
| telling about how little people really care about inclusion.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| -
| dairylee wrote:
| Anti-Zionism isn't the same thing as anti-Semitism.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| It's all about ticking boxes and patting themselves on the
| back. I had similar situation, but very little people wanted to
| participate as they didn't want to be pigeonholed. They wanted
| to be treated like everyone else.
| [deleted]
| greatgib wrote:
| Fun fact, in a mean time, so far, no one targeted the term "scrum
| master" yet.
|
| Despite this being the closest to software dev modern slavery in
| big companies ...
|
| So, please, can we profit of that to cancel the usage of 'scrum'
| everywhere ? :-)
| anon9001 wrote:
| > So, please, can we profit of that to cancel the usage of
| 'scrum' everywhere ? :-)
|
| If we do a good enough job, "scrum" will become a dirty word
| merely by association.
|
| To the Twitter, everyone!
| marcodave wrote:
| And next what? Agile?
| greatgib wrote:
| Hum, it requires to think a little bit deeper but it could
| work:
|
| - Agile has: "Burndown Chart"
|
| - This could be offensive to people that were burned.
|
| - Let's cancel Agile...
|
| QED
| christiansakai wrote:
| I'm Asian, wasn't born in America and didn't grew up in America
| as well. I don't have a horse in this race. I don't feel annoyed
| to change that term. I'm only annoyed if someone guilt trip me if
| I don't change the name out of ignorance (i.e, I don't follow
| politics, no time for social media). I don't think I have any
| bias against women or minority in tech. Changing main or master
| or slave doesn't ring a bell or evoke an emotion in me. If my
| boss wants it master or main or slave or white or black, I'll do
| it.
|
| I'm very very surprised about this whole identity politics thing.
| First time I came to the US and I conversed with this Asian women
| friend, who told me that she wanted to go to business school, and
| I asked her "why business school?" and suddenly another Asian
| women (friend of her) cut me and said "Oh why not, because she is
| a woman?" and I was like "wow, where did that come from? what
| does that even mean?" and since that day I know that US racial
| issue is fucked up big time.
| nvarsj wrote:
| It's not an American thing, this happens everywhere. I moved to
| London from the US a few years ago, and when I first moved
| here, interacting with unfamiliar cultures, I made these kind
| of mistakes all the time.
| nvarsj wrote:
| I thought some people might find it amusing the kind of
| mistakes I made. Here are a couple.
|
| I asked my Pakistani heritage boss when he immigrated,
| innocently. Note I'm an immigrant to the US myself and now
| the UK, so I thought it was not a bad question to ask. He's
| British born though, and considered himself a British citizen
| foremost. And given the rampant racism in the UK against
| those of Pakistani origin (many white Brits don't consider
| anyone Pakistani to be "proper British"), well you could see
| how he might be offended at my question. Fortunately he just
| laughed at my rudeness.
|
| Another time, I made a bad joke to a French colleague of mine
| who I'd been working with for a couple weeks. I think he said
| I didn't seem like a normal American, and I responded saying
| I didn't think he looked French, not wearing a striped shirt
| and a beret. Oh man, that really dug my grave right there.
| Saying he didn't look French was probably the greatest insult
| I could ever have said. He is of Turkish heritage, and
| Turkish people have been persecuted and treated poorly for a
| long time in France, including lots of racism based on "they
| don't look French". He was angry with me for a very long time
| over that. I apologized to him profusely, saying I was just
| an idiot American, and I think he forgave me eventually.
| threatofrain wrote:
| > "Oh why not, because she is a woman?" and I was like "wow,
| where did that come from? what does that even mean?" and since
| that day I know that US racial issue is fucked up big time.
|
| But what does your example have to do with race?
| christiansakai wrote:
| Not race in particular. Just identity politics. In this case,
| it seems one of the woman friend in my circle thought I was
| being sexist to her friend. We were Asians, but I didn't grow
| up in the US, but these 2 women do. The immediate reaction to
| that question must had evoked something deep within her, that
| I attribute to her upbringing here in the US.
| cema wrote:
| You are right, but I would add another item. She forcefully
| inserted herself in the conversation you had with your
| friend, and did it in a way that changed the conversation
| to the worse, with the tone becoming adversarial, and the
| direction of the thought rather different from what the
| original participants of the conversation intended. When it
| happens to a friendly group of people (as was the case
| here) it is okay, the confusion can be resolved peacefully
| and the conversation can move whichever way the three of
| you choose, being friends and all. But sometimes it happens
| in a larger scale, and then the conversation can be
| destroyed. I really wish people had been more conducive to
| maintaining a dialogue, we need to maintain a decent level
| of discourse in the society (and, more particularly, in our
| industry).
| christiansakai wrote:
| Indeed, after that night everyone just forgot about that
| conversation, since we mostly know each other.
|
| I imagine social media is the worst environment to have
| this kind of dialogue.
| dekhn wrote:
| yes many people today are tuned to parse your sentences as
| making value judgements about specific classes, races, or
| genders.
|
| I've been working to help correct this misconception through
| careful writing.
| kazinator wrote:
| Changing the default branch name in git is technically
| disruptive, therefore annoying to people who have to deal with
| it.
| christiansakai wrote:
| I imagine so for monorepos with plenty of developers working
| on it. But wouldn't that be solved easily with "git rebase -i
| <the_branch_that_change_the_name>" and maybe some other CI/CD
| pipeline.
| kazinator wrote:
| In contrast, _not_ perpetrating an idiotic rename requires
| no action at all.
| mathw wrote:
| It would be a pain, but they're not changing any existing
| repos so it's up to the team to coordinate if they want to
| adopt such a change themselves (and GitHub have enhanced
| some of their tooling around branch renames to make it
| easier to do as well).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lostcolony wrote:
| >> First time I came to the US and I conversed with this Asian
| women friend, who told me that she wanted to go to business
| school, and I asked her "why business school?" and suddenly
| another Asian women (friend of her) cut me and said "Oh why
| not, because she is a woman?" and I was like "wow, where did
| that come from? what does that even mean?" and since that day I
| know that US racial issue is fucked up big time.
|
| It is, but I'd encourage you to examine that a bit more from
| the perspective of the person weighing in. Yes, you meant
| nothing by the question, and you would have asked it regardless
| of the other person's gender, but what is interesting is
| -someone got defensive-. Why? She's hypersensitive; is it more
| likely she got that way apropos of nothing, that she has just
| bought into some victim culture that is determined to create
| claims of systems issues wholecloth to rail against, or because
| she -has- run into misogyny enough times that she assumes the
| worst?
|
| Again, it's not reflective of you, but take an empathetic view
| to where people like that are coming from, as it's not a
| vacuum.
| kahmeal wrote:
| Honestly, you're absolutely correct in encouraging an
| empathetic perspective but I would counter that your
| dismissing the very common reality of the victimhood
| mentality being a root cause to a lot of these types of
| outbursts is a bit short sighted. While the underlying reason
| this mentality exists is certainly, as you described, born
| from decades of misogyny, there is an entire population that
| has not necessarily experienced it to nearly the degree that
| warrants the level of hypersensitivity they exhibit.
|
| I am not saying misogyny doesn't continue to exist, but it is
| now very often misattributed in scenarios that technically
| fit the criteria (man didn't hire woman, etc) but are in fact
| the result of other factors (woman wasn't a good hire). It's
| a slippery slope and the reason we have such outrage in
| response to equality movements in general. Kneejerk reactions
| to non-misogynistic interactions are counter productive and
| serve to undermine the validity of the complaints against
| misogyny by giving naysayers a reason to dismiss them.
| lostcolony wrote:
| >> there is an entire population that has not necessarily
| experienced it to nearly the degree that warrants the level
| of hypersensitivity they exhibit
|
| Does it need to though? A black person may never have been
| a victim of police brutality, but if they have experienced
| a couple of questionable stops, is hypersensitivity really
| "victim mentality", and not -completely understandable-?
|
| Most racism, misogyny, etc, nowadays -isn't- overt. Almost
| no one is going to say "I didn't hire you because you're a
| woman", because they know doing so is going to get them
| socially ostracized at best, legally culpable at worst.
|
| Of course kneejerk reactions are counter productive,
| because it's easy for people who -weren't- coming from a
| racist, misogynist, etc, position to get defensive. That
| doesn't mean they aren't understandable, warranted, and
| that someone on the receiving end of that claim doesn't
| need to seek empathy in how they respond. That's allyship;
| understanding that a cry against injustice, even directed
| at you, isn't something you need to get defensive about,
| but to instead see for what it is. Trying to blame them for
| having a victim mentality is to dismiss the basis they even
| made the claim in the first place, thereby making us part
| of the problem.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I grew up as part of the overwhelming majority in a place
| with a small but distinct minority. I tried to befriend the
| minority and was often harshly pushed out. I came to think
| they were oversensitive because of some victim culture.
|
| Then I spent some years in a culture where I stuck out by
| skin color, hair color, language skills, height, shoe size
| --pretty much every way possible. People were not mean to
| me or racist towards me. But every waking moment I knew I
| was different. And I knew I would never have the right hair
| or skin or height or accent to fit in. I would always be an
| outsider.
|
| For the first time, I understood in some small way that
| minority from my youth who seemed to have a chip on their
| shoulder. I can't say that I have had their experience, but
| I have had an experience that opened my eyes to realize
| what it means to always know you are an outsider.
|
| I wish they didn't react so negatively. But I think I know
| better now than to condemn their hostility outright. My
| experience was some short years as an adult. And I wasn't
| treated as inferior. How would it be to grow up under that
| and to expect it for your entire life?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > victimhood mentality
|
| Is this a term for something real, or just a contentless
| way to denigrate people who claim to have been victimized?
| Is there some diagnostic criteria other than "that person
| annoys me"?
| Proziam wrote:
| > Is this a term for something real
|
| It's real. The most privileged people I know (and later
| cut out of my life entirely) are the first to play the
| victim card. We're talking the type of people who would
| choose to show up to work late every day and then
| complain that they were fired because they were [insert
| trait]. Or people that refused to study and then demanded
| they get extra support and financial aid because they
| came from a 'difficult' background.
|
| Some _definitely white_ people claim to be minorities
| because some percentage of people will use every card in
| the deck to get ahead. The tragedy is that these people
| sour the conversation and make people distrust those who
| bring up the actual issues they face.
| verisimilidude wrote:
| I'm reminded of an incident at a local school. The
| principal, a black woman, became increasingly
| incompetent. The teachers, many of them POC themselves,
| were now collectively doing her job for her. They tried
| to get her removed.
|
| The NAACP got involved. There was outrage and shame to
| spare. The principal wrapped herself in righteous
| indignation, despite herself being in the position of
| power.
|
| Months later, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.
| Oops.
|
| I'm sure this person definitely experienced racism and
| sexism in her life and career. There were undoubtedly
| many incidents when she was slighted by white people.
| It's America, after all. But in this particular case, she
| was not the victim. The teachers were the victims. The
| students were the victims. Yet she still acted the
| victim. Hence, "victimhood mentality". "Contentless" can
| cut both ways.
|
| The insidious thing about these types of incidents is how
| it discredits the rest of the racial justice movement. We
| need to hold our outrage to a higher standard.
| munchbunny wrote:
| It's real, but it's rarely ever just one or the other.
| There's no situationally objective criteria for whether
| someone has victimhood mentality or is actually a victim.
|
| When you get into the territory of microaggressions and
| subconscious bias, which are real problems but aren't
| necessarily clearly benign or bad on a case by case
| basis, the lines can get very blurry depending on who the
| observer is. Generally you should give the benefit of the
| doubt, because part of the nature of the social problems
| we talk about come from blaming the weak for being weak.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Oh yeah for sure, but this conversation already derailed, so
| no further dialog was necessary. I was coming from a point of
| view "small talk on a dinner table during hangout" and she
| came from a view of "You are sexist and I am mad at you" so,
| better to let the conversation die down and continue another
| time.
| icebergonfire wrote:
| > she came from a view of "You are sexist and I am mad at
| you"
|
| Is it fair to you? No, it isn't.
|
| However you need to realize that _that question_ has been
| used, probably verbatim, in bad ways against her or her
| peers... therefore she has pattern-matched this into a
| sexist question too.
|
| This is not an irreversible state. 99% of these
| communication breakdowns can be solved with a polite
| correction: "no, didn't cross my mind. I am sincerely
| curious about what drives that career decision, if I may
| ask".
|
| I won't get entangled into a straw-man battle-royale, so if
| the person cannot recognize they made a mistake and correct
| course: sure thing I'll retreat.
|
| That hasn't happened to me just yet, but I know it could.
| Fair? No, but it is what it is.
|
| I am aware we are dissecting a quickly summed-up situation
| here, so my argument might not apply to the actual
| encounter you experienced. But if it does, I think you and
| lots of others are skipping on conversations that you
| actually wanted to have due to a very small and temporary
| defect on the dialogue.
| christiansakai wrote:
| I quickly changed the conversation topic after that,
| since we are in about 6 - 10 people in the table, and I
| don't want to make situations awkward.
| Udik wrote:
| > However you need to realize that _that question_ has
| been used, probably verbatim, in bad ways against her or
| her peers...
|
| And how do you know? You have direct knowledge of it or
| are you just pulling out a factoid?
| lostcolony wrote:
| Because the alternative is she's hypersensitive without
| any reason. You can, of course, -decide- that the person
| is just unreasonable, rather than try and figure out what
| might have caused her to respond the way she did, and be
| empathic towards it, but it doesn't seem like it'll get
| you far in life.
| Udik wrote:
| Well, the alternative is that a lot of people around her
| are misogynistic for no reason, so your empathy for her
| means you're assuming a lot of other people are
| unreasonable assholes. How far does this get you in life?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Does that logic work for why I cross the street when I see a
| black person coming my way?
|
| Why? I'm hypersensitive; is it more likely I got that way
| apropos of nothing, that I just bought into some racist
| culture that is determined to create claims of issues
| wholecloth against blacks to rail against, or because I
| -have- been mugged by a black person enough times that I
| assume the worst?
|
| Would you take an empathetic view to where I'm coming from?
| lostcolony wrote:
| A black person, or a black man?
|
| A black man, or just any man wearing street clothes?
|
| Any man wearing street clothes, or just any man wearing
| street clothes on an otherwise empty street?
|
| Because if you do that in broad daylight, on a well
| populated street, because a black woman in business clothes
| appears to be a possible threat, but you don't do it for
| the white man in street clothes on an empty street at
| night, then it sounds like maybe you have a pretty racist
| heuristic.
|
| Otherwise, yeah, I'm pretty empathic; race may indeed be an
| additional input, especially given your history, but if
| it's just one more heuristic that makes you slightly more
| likely to cross the street, and you also -recognize- that
| it's a generalization you're making, and that it's unfair
| to the individual even though it's based on personal
| experience...yes, I'm empathic towards where you find
| yourself. Certainly, as a man, if the input of "a man
| approaching" on its own caused you to be more likely to
| cross the street, I don't view it as some sort of misandry,
| and would not take it personally.
|
| (And yes, I know this is an attempt at a rhetorical counter
| argument, but I'm purposely treating it as a real position
| to make clear I don't view it as a particularly compelling
| argument)
| rezonant wrote:
| What if you had been mugged by a white person? Would you
| then carry the same fears moving forward? I have to assume
| you are not black, and thus, to you, black is "the other".
| You are making the assumption that because one person was
| dangerous, everyone else with that skin tone is dangerous.
| I'm sorry, but that is textbook racism
|
| EDIT: After a second look I realize this is probably what
| the parent post is trying to get at :-)
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Yes. I agree it is textbook racism.
|
| Now for jumping to the defensive the moment a man asks
| you a benign question, because you assume he is sexist
| because of his gender - isn't that sexism?
| vc8f6vVV wrote:
| It's a bias. Let's assume that all muggers wear red pants
| (or you have been mugged mostly by people in red pants).
| So when you see somebody in red pants you cross a street.
| It's surely not a textbook racism, since no race is
| involved. Also how do you know that anybody wearing red
| pants is a mugger? The tragedy of blacks is that they
| can't change skin color, unlike pants. This bias will
| exist until crime percentages will at least equalize
| between blacks and whites (do they?). You can call it a
| racism if you want but it doesn't change anything. I have
| worked with many blacks, I had zero problems with any of
| them, I don't consider them worse than me in any way, but
| I will cross that street. Sorry. There is a difference
| between a concrete person and statistics.
| icebergonfire wrote:
| > Would you take an empathetic view to where I'm coming
| from?
|
| I personally would be empathic to you.
|
| However I would also expect you to recognize the failure in
| that heuristic, even as you continue to execute it.
| [deleted]
| dottlt wrote:
| I just keep my mouth shut talking to anyone in a minority
| status, born in the west, that I don't know well. I've seen it
| go wrong several times so I'm just 100% business. I'll get hate
| for admitting this, but what am I supposed to do? No one wants
| to think critically or challenge their beliefs on the matter,
| so if I'm not willing to 100% toe the line if I do make a
| mistake then either I have to debase myself in an Orwellian
| "there are two fingers" moment, or I get in trouble. I'm not
| willing to do either.
| bpt3 wrote:
| > Orwellian "there are two fingers" moment
|
| Would you mind sharing what this means and what the context
| is? I think I get what you mean, but don't understand the
| reference.
| christiansakai wrote:
| In my mostly 99% Asian circle of friends, we have a few white
| people, and I can't help but be super uncomfortable every
| time the topic of racism being brought up, because I was
| thinking "dang, how would these white friends in our circle
| feel, they must've felt uncomfortable in these kinds of
| conversations". Yeah, heads you lose tails I win kinda
| situation.
|
| In my circle of Asians, we have our own trouble as well. My
| wife is Japanese, and I grew up influenced heavily by
| Japanese culture (I'm Indonesian Chinese), but majority of my
| circle is 99% Koreans and Chinese. So yeah every time WWII or
| Japan/Korea/China thing gets brought up I also just stay
| silent and will just ask my wife to go home early or pretend
| we have some business to do. Definitely something will go
| wrong. We are in our 20s - 30s, and WWII are our grandparents
| generations battle. We are aware of Japan's WWII problem, but
| we aren't gonna pretend we know what to do.
| rolph wrote:
| >>...thing gets brought up I also just stay silent...<<
|
| when you are not blinded by the sound of your own voice you
| can see beyond your eyes
| pnutjam wrote:
| Now imagine how uncomfortable the non-whites are in almost
| any other conversation or setting.
| junon wrote:
| Define "non-white", because two messages above were
| written by someone categorically "non-white".
| recursive wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is exactly the type of comment being
| talked about here.
| wcarron wrote:
| > I'm Asian
|
| The person you are replying to
| ngokevin wrote:
| It fits the bill. Asians are treated as white in tech.
| There's never any conversation around Asian-Americans.
| It's awkward because we're not quite Asian, but not quite
| treated as fully American either. Many programs have
| checkboxes to identify as minority groups (black, LBGTQ+,
| women, LatinX, which is great), but not Asians, who are
| statistically one of the biggest minorities at ~5%.
|
| Despite my family being refugees, much of which died
| getting here. Despite eastern culture being almost the
| polar opposite of western culture. I wish that counted
| for something more.
|
| Not asking for any special treatment because I feel
| Asian-Americans just put their head down and do the work.
| But it's stark how silent the conversation around Asian-
| Americans is, except for when we talk about Crazy Rich
| Asians.
| wcarron wrote:
| > It fits the bill. Asians are treated as white in tech.
|
| Or are they treated as asians? This whole thing is
| complicated, but including asian people as 'white' when
| it is colloqially used to mean 'caucasian european' for
| the most part, is just disigenuous and moving the
| goalposts.
| ngokevin wrote:
| Never in tech have I seen conversation about Asian
| Americans been brought up. When I say, they're treated as
| white, it's more like they're treated "not a POC", which
| only leaves a designation of white. Except Asians don't
| get put in leadership positions as easily as white
| counterparts (bamboo ceiling). I've seen many times
| (online at least) where people have explicitly said
| Asians don't count as POC, despite facing a large brunt
| of racism.
| wcarron wrote:
| > When I say, they're treated as white, it's more like
| they're treated "not a POC"
|
| You have missed the point. However they are being
| treated, by definition, is how asian-americans in tech
| are treated.
|
| They aren't being treated as "not POC", that _is_ how
| asian poc are treated.
| ngokevin wrote:
| Okay, sure. I'm just drawing an equivalence to how Asians
| are treated to how whites are treated, rather than how I
| think they should be treated, as POCs. That's my point, a
| point of comparison and contrast.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That seems like a pretty circular argument.
|
| What evidence would falsify it?
|
| What if I made a similar argument except I replaced
| "asian" with "french"? How would you prove there's a
| difference between that argument and your argument?
| recursive wrote:
| > Never in tech have I seen conversation about Asian
| Americans been brought up.
|
| But also
|
| > Except Asians don't get put in leadership positions as
| easily as white counterparts
|
| I guess it's now been brought up, so that's a milestone.
| ngokevin wrote:
| We ain't known for speaking up :)
|
| It is a time where we are getting violently targeted. And
| while people are jumping at the bit to speak up for every
| other group, we're forced to uncharacteristically muster
| it up ourselves. I imagine if I was any other minority
| group talking about my experiences, it'd be taken more
| seriously.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I've seen discrimination against Asians. Sometimes a
| current of disrespect or resentment exists. I also notice
| a distinct different between how an Asian, or non-white
| in general, is treated when they are in a superior
| position vs an inferior position.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Doesn't matter. If you take a particular viewpoint,
| there's a whole strata of American society that will call
| you white/black based on politics alone. Or you'll be
| called a race traitor, etc... e.g. "Asians are considered
| white because they have privilege."
| pnutjam wrote:
| You never feel uncomfortable when you are the only non-
| white? I too am non-white and see myself as white, due
| largely to the way my mother raised us.
|
| My Father is white and my mother is hispanic, but I've
| been asked if I am Asian or Pacific Islander many times.
| I've also noticed a distinct difference in how people
| treat me when they see me, vs virtual or phone.
|
| I meant to draw attention to how many non-whites are
| forced to immerse themselves in mostly white groups and
| can feel ostracized in the US.
| ipsocannibal wrote:
| The only problem with your statement is you didn't include
| women, the disabled, gays, any trans person, or any other
| newly conjured victimized group in your 100% business
| attitude. It is simply too politically incorrect to deal with
| people in these groups as critically thinking beings even if
| they are so best to just avoid any conversation that isn't
| absolutely necessary. The best bet is to pretend to be a
| hapless robot and make the interaction end as soon as
| possible, much in the way minority groups attempt to minimize
| their interactions with the police. It is a useful survival
| mechanism in a no win scenario. Stray into victimization
| territory and you'll either be asked to self-flagulate or be
| accussed of an '-ism'. I waiting for the word 'conversation'
| to be redefined by the intersectionalists much like 'racism'.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| It sucks, too. I am super progressive but rather critical
| of solutions. Which is to say, i agree with an assessment
| of almost all problems and want to discuss solving them.
| BUT, discuss, is the key there. I'm interested in peoples
| views. On what actually can solve the problems. Racism for
| example i believe as a series of mitigation strategies and
| a core principle of education and standard of living.
|
| Yet, i don't discuss this stuff with anyone interesting.
| Just my core group, and my core group has had this
| conversation to death.. nothing to be gained anymore.
|
| So i don't grow on these subjects. I don't feel more
| progressive. I don't feel like i understand the problems
| better, or the solutions, and certainly don't know which
| areas i'm motivated to help in.
|
| Because i want to discuss, to critically analyze the
| problem space and try to question and verify solutions, i'm
| terrified of being labeled an -ist.
|
| This isn't a "woe is me" post. Rather, this is my
| explanation that in my eyes i am _less progressive_ as a
| result of this culture. I _act/help less_ in this culture.
| This culture shuts me - a self identified very progressive
| liberal - down.
| ipsocannibal wrote:
| Purists of any ideological bent have a tendency to
| alienate potental friends and excite their adversaries
| due to their overwhelming emphasis on argument by
| authority and appeals to shame. They are divisive by
| definition and generally lose their struggle because of
| it. Your comment is an excellent reflection of how the
| purists cut off their noes to spite their face.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| That's the rational thing to do. Lots of risk, little reward.
| Everyone reaps what they sow eventually anyway.
| onelovetwo wrote:
| As a black man in tech, I can say its always frustrating to me
| when a company tells me what I should be offended by. The master
| word has never even crossed my mind in that way, I've always
| thought of it as in the music term. Its one of those settle
| racist things that I've noticed time and time again in tech. Its
| as if a bunch of white people come together to prove how "not
| racist" they are to their other white friends. They start to try
| to out do each other so much It starts to have the opposite
| effect and alienates people that just want to be treated normal,
| not like former slaves.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| >Every summer countless tech companies of all sizes run
| internship programs, would it be a stretch to run an
| apprenticeship program of the same length for non traditional
| applicants?
|
| Specifically how would you define non-traditional, and in your
| opinion why should this non-traditional segment of people get a
| separate funnel?
| mnd999 wrote:
| If your funnel isn't catching certain groups then you need to
| do something as you're missing the opportunity to hire talented
| people from those groups. Why shouldn't that be another funnel?
| [deleted]
| petr_tik wrote:
| I'm not the OP but am "non-traditional" - didn't do CS at
| university, worked in sales before moving to programming.
|
| I don't want a separate funnel thank you very much. I know some
| companies will reject my CV because of my education - that's
| fair enough. I know some interviews will be harder for me. I
| prefer the risk of being filtered out early or having tough
| interviews over the lingering suspicion that I am a non-
| traditional hire.
| is-ought wrote:
| When can I downvote posts?
| sokoloff wrote:
| When your karma hits 501, so only 505 points to go.
| is-ought wrote:
| Wait, I have to post things people like?
|
| Ouch there goes my Sokal slant. Better read up on my Sartre.
| mfru wrote:
| No, you get upvoted for posting stuff that other people
| think are contributing to the discussion in a meaningful
| way.
|
| Not everyone is going to be voting 100% according to HN
| guidelines, but it is in everyone's best interest here to
| hold each other to high standards regarding them.
|
| > Ouch there goes my Sokal slant. Better read up on my
| Sartre.
|
| Stuff like this will probably get you downvotes as your
| sarcasm is not contributing in a meaningful way (at least I
| think it doesn't)
| pw6hv wrote:
| HN is not about downvoting things one disagrees with but rather
| posts that do not add anything to the discussion.
|
| Same holds for upvoting, many times I upvoted posts I did not
| agree with but that raised interesting observations on the
| topic discussed.
|
| This is what makes HN great in my opinion.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 both dang and
| pg disagree with you, for the record
| eloff wrote:
| I wish HN actually did work that way, most people do not use
| their votes like you.
| tekknik wrote:
| > HN is not about downvoting things one disagrees with but
| rather posts that do not add anything to the discussion.
|
| That's not at all how any site with a downvote button works.
| They're used to hide what you don't want to see or what
| doesn't fit your narrative. You'll see this on HN as well if
| you stay around long enough.
| wan23 wrote:
| That's why for most people HN isn't a site with a downvote
| button.
| V-2 wrote:
| That's how it should work, but that's not how it actually
| works :)
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Isn't "git" an offensive word for a disabled person? At least it
| is in the society I grew up in. When will github stop their
| insensitivity and change their name?
| justtopostthis3 wrote:
| > All this because I fit a description. What was this
| description? I don't know, black male between 4'11 and 7'4
| probably.
|
| I have been stopped, searched, and detained in handcuffs for over
| an hour because I "fit a description." (I was fired for being
| late.)
|
| I have missed international flights because I was "randomly
| selected," again, to be subjected to additional screening and
| interrogation.
|
| I was held at gunpoint in _middle school_ while officers tore
| apart my backpack looking for a stolen _pen_.
|
| I am a cis white male, the paragon of privilege, and I'd be
| standing right there with you if you would only stop excluding me
| based on the color of my skin.
|
| Pot, meet kett--no, wait, I didn't mean--it's just an expr--
| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
| dijit wrote:
| it should be noted that git (the binary) is also in the process
| of deprecating `master`.
|
| This is the message I get on my machine when running git init:
| hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This
| default branch name hint: is subject to change. To
| configure the initial branch name to use in all hint: of
| your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
| hint: hint: git config --global init.defaultBranch <name>
| hint: hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are
| 'main', 'trunk' and hint: 'development'. The just-created
| branch can be renamed via this command: hint: hint:
| git branch -m <name> Initialized empty Git repository in
| /tmp/test
| gspr wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's in the process of deprecating "master".
| It's just reminding user that they shouldn't plainly assume
| that the default initial branch is, or will always be, named
| "master".
| dijit wrote:
| https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqwnu8z03c.fsf@gitster.g/
|
| Based on this it does appear to be deprecated, the current
| favourite is 'main'
|
| There are references in code to `PREPARE_FOR_MAIN_BRANCH`.
|
| You can see some commentary on the mailling lists: https://lo
| re.kernel.org/git/CAMP44s3DExJ-F=MKhKyupr5M0RDvr8k...
| gspr wrote:
| TIL! OK, seems you're right: master seems to be about to be
| deprecated as the _default_ initial branch.
| jholman wrote:
| Why do you think this means that git is deprecating master?
|
| Similarly, GitHub claims that git is making similar changes,
| and links to a "Statement" that actually says the opposite, and
| a code change that also does not include anything like making
| that change (both are from June 2020). Since GitHub's claim is
| obviously in error, I wonder if it's malice or incompetence.
|
| Is there some other evidence that git is going to deprecate
| master?
| dijit wrote:
| Based on my comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26488240
|
| The 'hint' is nicely worded, but there is sufficient evidence
| of a pending name change (likely to `main`) for the default.
| jholman wrote:
| Huh. You're right. Horrifying.
| Obsnold wrote:
| I just tested this and don't get any message.
|
| What version are you using?
| dijit wrote:
| git version 2.30.2
| lukeramsden wrote:
| I get this on version 2.30.1 so presumably a 2.30 change. I
| don't think they're planning to move to main for definite,
| just that they're preparing people to stop treating `master`
| as always the default branch
| HajiraSifre wrote:
| > init: provide useful advice about init.defaultBranch
|
| > To give ample warning for users wishing to override Git's
| the fall-back for an unconfigured `init.defaultBranch` (in
| case we decide to change it in a future Git version), let's
| introduce some advice that is shown upon `git init` when that
| value is not set.
|
| https://github.com/git/git/commit/675704c74dd4476f455bfa91e7.
| .. git tag --contains
| 675704c74dd4476f455bfa91e72eb9e163317c10 | grep -v rc
| v2.30.0 v2.30.1 v2.30.2 v2.31.0
| user-the-name wrote:
| There sure are a lot of people here who read this as saying
| "don't change anything", rather than the actual message "this is
| nowhere near big enough a change". Here is what the article
| actually says:
|
| > We're going to change the branch name because it could be seen
| as offensive but we're still going to sell police facial
| recognition software that is biased against black people and
| women. Facial recognition software that misidentifies black
| people as gorillas. Facial recognition software that was used to
| identify unmasked BLM protesters. We're going to change the
| branch name to be more inclusive of minorities but we're going to
| carry on selling software to ICE. Get the fuck outta here.
| cheschire wrote:
| Eliminating the usage of words with offensive connotations from
| the English language is double plus good.
|
| edit: Downvotes and the wording of some responses make me
| concerned that some folks may be unaware of the reference.
| Doubleplusgood is a newspeak word used in the book 1984. Newspeak
| is a language that is used to eliminate the ability for people to
| express unapproved thoughts because there are no words with which
| to express the concepts to others.
| mosselman wrote:
| The argument of the author is that he feels like tech is ONLY
| doing the name changes and is congratulating themselves about
| being inclusive afterwards.
|
| I agree with this observation. For reasons that the author has
| articulated far better than I would in this comment, so please
| read the whole thing.
| cheschire wrote:
| Oh I absolutely did. No reason for me to repeat the entire
| article in my own response to it, so I referenced newspeak
| instead.
|
| The map is not the territory, and you may simply be noticing
| the differences between your map and mine.
| tudorizer wrote:
| People will always find negative conotations for any word. Have
| you see UrbanDict recently?
|
| Words are not he problem, attitudes are.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Everything changes, language changes, but I wonder if erasing
| negative words might make us forget their meaning and repeat
| the history behind them.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| American is not going to start the slave trade again because
| we stopped using the word "master" in software engineering
| INTPenis wrote:
| Slaves exist today. What else would you call it when the
| economic system makes people desperate enough to walk into
| a sulphur hole barefoot to carry chunks of sulfur out that
| will be used in all sorts of industry, including the making
| of circuit boards for switches and computers that power the
| infrastructure we're using right now?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Oh wow did someone say that would happen?
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| "but I wonder if erasing negative words might make us
| forget their meaning and repeat the history behind them."
|
| In response to an article about removing the word master
| ColFrancis wrote:
| I get the feeling sometimes that language is unstable in the
| absence of outside forcing.
|
| Stupid, moron, retard. People start using them as a
| pejorative and so a new neutral term is required.
|
| Lavatory, toilet, water closet, bathroom. People don't like
| talking about poo so they keep using euphemisms to describe
| the room where it happens. This one is a favourite of mine as
| some people find 'toilet' distasteful despite it being the
| furtherest from the actual action taking place.
|
| Very, literally. Not sure where this one is headed, but if
| it's happened at least twice, it'll shift again some time.
|
| Are we doomed to keep shifting language to keep up taboos and
| keep the meaning of words which naturally will shift?
| [deleted]
| shultays wrote:
| is it company's fault that the some groups are underrepresented
| as their employees? Cant talk for all companies but in my
| experience females are underrepresented simply because we dont
| really get any female applicants.
|
| If there is a racism/sexism within the sector it happens before
| the job application and I find it hard to blame companies for
| that. If anything I know some examples of people getting
| advantage during the hiring because of their race.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| The key quote from that passage, to me, was "Is it too much to
| ask for tech companies to run an apprenticeship program for
| people changing careers, etc?"
|
| Certain people face _structural_ impediments to getting into
| tech. CEOs and HR love to brow-beat _individual_ managers and
| recruiters to fix the diversity issue in companies.
|
| But you know what the decision makers never, ever do? They never
| create a _structural_ program to address the _structural_
| problem. What if they expanded headcount by 10% to add an
| apprentice and make time for the team to train that apprentice.
| How much difference would we make in 'fixing our ratios' every
| year?
| mgarfias wrote:
| I think this whole freak out is just dumb.
|
| It's just a name. It needs an identifiable name be it Master,
| main, develop, hell you could call it beavis and it would mean
| the same thing.
|
| Or don't.
|
| It just don't matter.
| RawaHorse wrote:
| Maybe it's just me but, outside of tech contexts, I associate
| "master" and "slave" much more with bdsm than I do with actual
| slave ownership.
| jamil7 wrote:
| Maybe we can start using dom/sub instead of master/slave in
| tech.
| angry-tempest wrote:
| I'm down
| terse_malvolio wrote:
| Is this yours? ---> \s
|
| Edit: super/sub may be more grammatically correct (e.g.
| subset, superset)
| INTPenis wrote:
| git config --global init.defaultBranch dom
| DJBunnies wrote:
| We already claimed it during the sub prime lending fiasco.
| akvadrako wrote:
| As a bonus it's even shorter than "main" and probably
| whatever the new terminology is for subservient processes.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Dom/sub actually have negative history regarding women's
| rights.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| I largely agree with the sentiments of the article, but side-
| effect I like is that it tests assumptions in git systems about
| "default" branches, and ensures that software isn't too committed
| to a certain branch name - so that people can call branches
| whatever they like.
|
| Even on Github people can still use master if they want, it just
| isn't the default.
| antattack wrote:
| Why do people call themselves Black in a first place? Neither
| calling someone White or Black is accurate - perhaps why we have:
| Brown? Calling someone Yellow, I think, is still considered
| offensive though.
|
| Indicating your belonging by color confuses. Color is such a
| crude indicator as it groups individual certain way, whether one
| wants it or not.
|
| Overall, color coding, or grouping people by how well their skin
| is absorbing light, removes part of personal autonomy.
| aaronbasssett wrote:
| Please name one country that never had slavery?
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26491220.
| oaiey wrote:
| Never is a hard word. Let me explain: In the US the white were
| masters and the black were slaves. A white was rarely a slave,
| a black person was likely a slave. And slavery was not
| abolished that long ago.
|
| In MANY countries people of color X enslaved people of color X.
| So now - many generations later - no one knows anymore who was
| slave and who was master. So the term master is insignificant
| for the individuals in the country and dominantly associated
| with mastery in something.
|
| So while technically the statement is correct, for the
| discussion here, many countries are not having an active
| discussion around slavery because it is no concern in the
| society because there are not slave-descendants (which are
| mistreated until today) vs. master-descendants.
| [deleted]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Less than 1% of American whites during slavery owned slaves.
| In fact, the most identifying characteristic of American
| slave-owners was Judaism. You could just as easily say that
| Jews were masters and blacks were slaves, although your
| argument would be equally as incorrect and ignorant. To say
| that "whites were masters" is just as ignorant as saying "all
| 1940s Germans were Nazis".
| eitland wrote:
| 1 million or more Europeans were enslaved in Africa:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade
| kaitai wrote:
| And is there a relatively distinct group of their
| descendants being pulled over by the police today in
| Morocco, after continuously being excluded from economic
| progress for a few hundred years? Actually really curious
| -- one of the "innovations" of US slavery was the slavery
| of the descendants of slaves -- was that the case in
| northern Africa? I think not; if you have some evidence
| otherwise happy to think about it.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > after continuously being excluded from economic
| progress for a few hundred years? Actually really curious
| -- one of the "innovations" of US slavery was the slavery
| of the descendants of slaves -- was that the case in
| northern Africa? I think not; if you have some evidence
| otherwise happy to think about it.
|
| No, if you read the article eitland posted (no judgment,
| I don't know) then you'd see that it was Muslims that was
| behind this slave trade.
|
| One of their habits (or "innovations" in your
| terminology) that we don't often talk about was that of
| _literally_ emasculating (in the literal sense) male
| captives.
|
| This explains a whole lot of why there isn't a white
| population like the black in US.
|
| Another explanation is that some where bought out from
| slavery by relatives in Europe.
|
| You should read up on this.
|
| You'll find that compared to the Arabic slave traders
| (that the Western slave traders sourced from), Western
| slave traders were kind of nice (edit: or smart, or less
| sadistic or something).
|
| Oh, and their slave trade didn't end until much later, if
| ever. (Ever heard about how facilities for a certain
| sports event in Qatar were built?)
|
| Why don't we talk about this? Sources are after all
| plentiful.
|
| Edit: Let me add my guess: it doesn't fit the narrative
| that white, Christian men are worse than everyone else.
| skinkestek wrote:
| From elsewhere in the comments, a quote by Thomas Sowell:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26496786
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _So now - many generations later - no one knows anymore who
| was slave and who was master_
|
| This is an "all blacks look the same" argument - but in
| reality, in Africa, everyone knows exactly which tribe they
| were from and which tribe someone else was from and who
| enslaved who. And it continues to this day.
| disease wrote:
| This is also true to some extent for Native Americans and
| slavery.
| oaiey wrote:
| You are right. Smaller groups/tribes remember in many more
| countries. Like you said, skin color is maybe not the best
| example.
|
| Take my situation: I am a German. Our slavery
| ("Leibeigener") cannot be seen in todays society. It cannot
| be seen by skin color or any other attribute.
|
| I try to void the statement "Tell me a society which never
| had no slavery". My argument is: There are societies which
| had slaves which you cannot reflect in today society. No
| ones knows, no one is affected.
|
| We have tons of other problems (like the Holocaust and tons
| of other crimes) we have to work on still today, but
| slavery among the German society (being a problem today) is
| no such problem. And I guess, there are many countries
| where this applies.
| christkv wrote:
| I would still consider trafficking of people slavery in
| everything but name and that is still going on right
| under our noses all over the world. Hardly anyone cares
| about that.
| acqq wrote:
| Yes. And there are enough places in the world where the
| "slaveowners" were those who, if I'd named them, I'd be
| immediately considered here as a "racist" for just
| mentioning the historical fact.
|
| So... I guess we all have to learn that there are more
| contexts than just one.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > And there are enough places in the world where the
| "slaveowners" were those who, if I'd named them, I'd be
| immediately considered here as a "racist" for just
| mentioning the historical fact.
|
| You're clearly hinting at something specific, though I
| don't know what it is. Mind explaining?
| eitland wrote:
| Try https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade
| etripe wrote:
| Your comment is as reductionist as it is to call all slaves
| black.
|
| What about Romans using Germanic slaves or ancient Greece?
| What about the Middle East, past and to some degree
| present? What about the Mongols or China?
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _What about Romans using Germanic slaves or ancient
| Greece?_
|
| British people have been enslaved at various times by the
| Romans, the Normans, the Vikings, the Moroccans and
| probably more besides. This is a matter of history that
| we are all aware of. But there is noone living right now
| who was ever a slave of a Norman nor are there any French
| who ever had a Saxon slave.
| Macha wrote:
| There are a lot of countries 100 years or less old, that were
| parts of big european empires, unless you want to hold them
| accountable for what the foreign ruling class did.
| oaiey wrote:
| Well ... it is societies which have a problem. As a German,
| my society is very old. As a country we are very young. But
| we would never think, that nationalism would not be a problem
| we had in our society.
|
| Accountable implies a lot. But mindful we should be.
| Igelau wrote:
| Sealand
| sneak wrote:
| I know someone who might disagree.
| splix wrote:
| Well, as it was discussed in another thread, in another
| culture/language it may be totally not about slavery. I mean
| the word "master", which comes from a common Latin root, in
| different languages it's evolved into a different meaning. So
| for Americans, it has an association with slavery (which I'm
| surprised to learn), but exactly the same word "master" in
| another language means just "doing good work".
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| For most Americans, until very recently, it only had an
| association with slavery in very specific contexts. Virtually
| nobody heard phrases like "git push origin master" or "I'm
| working towards my Master's degree" and thought "slavery."
| The blanket association is a product of very recent political
| activism.
| aksss wrote:
| I think this idea that "master" is associated so narrowly in
| English is ignorance, perhaps even willful. It obviously has
| broader meaning depending on context, and I would argue that
| the majority of its use is disassociated entirely with the
| history of the American slave trade (just think through
| examples and count them).
|
| It also occurs to me that having these kinds of fights means
| people are running out of meaningful struggles, like we're
| trying to wring out the last 5% and it gets inefficient
| because it starts doing harm as well. Then you see these
| hoaxes like Smollett and others and start thinking that the
| demand for egregious behavior exceeds supply in the US. It
| can happen, but it's surprisingly rare given the state of
| conversation and rhetoric in this country.
| saos wrote:
| This article made me really emotional. I really didnt think
| anything of "master" branch until Github pointed it out. There
| are bigger problems to solve and. For starters I hope the tech
| industry can be more open to people of colour.
| CivBase wrote:
| > "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". I guess mummy and daddy paying $20 mil for a new
| library to get me a seat at an 'elite' school is still
| meritocracy eh?
|
| That's quite a straw man. If you're genuinely in favor of
| meritocracy, you should inherently be against the rich buying
| their way into positions. Just because bad thing A happens, that
| doesn't mean we should just allow bad thing B to happen too. We
| should stop bad thing A!
|
| I do agree with the basic sentiment of this article. The tech
| industry would benefit from more diversity - particularly
| diversity of thought, which does not necessarily mean increasing
| diversity of skin color but would probably make the industry a
| more inviting place for minorities in the future. Nonsense like
| renaming benign technical terms does absolutely nothing to help
| with that.
| phnofive wrote:
| It's the politician's syllogism -with the added benefit of the
| 'something' being effectively free (no new headcount), though all
| the more visible by virtue of it being an annoying find and
| replace exercise all the line engineers get to participate in.
|
| Read to the end, and the author suggests SWE apprenticeships - I
| support the idea, but by contrast, it isn't free, and would
| require some actual effort by line managers, so...
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| Digressing here, but I really dislike Medium. I wanted to look up
| HBCUs which is an acronym in this article I was not familiar with
| (I am not American), but Medium's crappy UI displays a "quote on
| Twitter" popup thing when you select any text, and then deselects
| the text. This means I can't use the "look up" feature but into
| the OS, like I can on almost every other web page.
| willhinsa wrote:
| Agreed. For anyone's reference, here's what the acronym HBCU
| means:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_black_colleges_an...
| sequoia wrote:
| Another potential issue with a change like this, _for the reason
| that they give for doing it_ , is that it may communicate an
| inaccurate picture of what black people care about to non-black
| people. "Oh wow, black people are offended by and 'hurt by'[0]
| the use of this term. I didn't know this would make them feel
| hurt!"
|
| Articles like this clarify that at least some black people in
| fact do not feel "hurt by" this use of this term.
|
| I'm Jewish, if someone said "we have to take all the swastika
| imagery off this Hindu graphic because it will offend and hurt
| Jews," that would bother me. I'm not offended, much less hurt, by
| seeing a swastika in a cultural context unconnected to Naziism.
| To suggest most Jews would be "hurt" by this paints an inaccurate
| and extremely unflattering picture of my own resiliency and
| ability to contextualize words and imagery. I can't speak for
| black folks but I would be surprised if some didn't feel
| similarly about being informed that reading the word "master"
| would or should offend and hurt them.
|
| 0: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/jun/23/gitbranchname/
| (this is the rationale linked to by github[1])
|
| 1: https://github.com/github/renaming
| hivacruz wrote:
| I dislike this name change for almost the same reason. I switch
| back to master on every new project.
| jrm4 wrote:
| 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.
| PhilosAccnting wrote:
| As a trend-resistant individual, this entire discussion is
| ridiculous. While I'm white as the plowed snow, my wife is
| distinctly black.
|
| Whatever injustices that happened have, for the most part, been
| committed by long-dead people. The concept of "ancestral guilt"
| is mostly a social fashion for people to maintain their
| lifestyles without their status quo being disrupted.
|
| I believe this is a fashion that's moving to pivot back again,
| based on my metamodel of trends[1]. This may take months or
| years, depending on the culture, but at some point the practical
| use cases of judging others by what's in their minds will outpace
| even bothering what skin color someone is.
|
| Though, I must concede, this fashion of demanding reparation-
| driven political action has gone on for decades in many black
| communities, so it'll probably only change when their community
| leaders start forgiving stuff and moving on[2] without getting
| ostracized by their community[3].
|
| [1]https://gainedin.site/trends/
|
| [2]https://adequate.life/happiness-2/
|
| [3]https://gainedin.site/taboos/
| [deleted]
| jpm48 wrote:
| This explains my WTF moment when teaching a class full of
| students to push to the github classroom using push -u origin
| master and it being rejected and having to use main!
| jholman wrote:
| Yeah. For my own projects, and/or on my own command-line, I
| don't care what "ma<tab>" resolves to. "main" is not a terrible
| choice.
|
| But as a teacher, the way this makes all the existing guides
| and tutorials wrong means I have to waste 15 minutes of my
| semester (about 1%) explaining this.
|
| In short, the main effect of this change is to very slightly
| raise the barrier to entry for new developers.
| misnome wrote:
| On the other hand, for the non/new developers I've interacted
| with [non-US], "master" was a confusingly jargonistic name
| that has raised eyebrows for years. Being the "main" branch
| seems a much plainer, obvious name, and I think it's an
| improvement entirely separate from any social reasons.
|
| Is it an empty gesture? Maybe? Does it cost more than a
| couple of seconds for making things clearer and making a
| minority of people people happy? No.
|
| It probably wasted more integrated time across all the people
| reading this article than just shrugging and changing it
| does.
| albertopv wrote:
| The project I work on is going to migrate codebase from SVN to
| Git one of next days (yeah, like it's 2011...). There are
| collegues that have never used Git before (e.g. one is a junior
| dev and this is its first job ever), so they are learning Git
| right now. No one supported the use of name 'main'. It's just a
| name change and everyone considers it to be something totally
| stupid and just bc of that we are not going to use it. I can
| understand whitelist vs blacklist change, master\slave from the
| days I built PCs with IDE HDD, but this, God...
| selectnull wrote:
| I fight against this useless political correctness with my own,
| albeit invisible, rebellion:
|
| I've set repository default branch to `master` [1] on Github.
|
| I've created init.templateDir with HEAD set to `master` [2]
|
| That way, whenever I init a new repo, either locally or via
| Github, the default branch is master, not main.
|
| [1] https://github.com/settings/repositories
|
| [2] http://git-scm.com/docs/git-init
| chrisjs95 wrote:
| I'm really tired of when someone groups all white people in the
| same category like we all have rich parents and only where we are
| because they paid off someone at a college. It's really offensive
| because I worked hard to get where I was at and had no help. It's
| like assuming all African Americans like rap and fried chicken.
| It's just really offensive.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Western lunacy will truly never fail to amaze me
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Well - the usage of "Fuck" in the title of this post is itself
| extremely sexist. See [1] and [2] and [3]
|
| [1] https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/what-filthy-
| word...
|
| [2] https://kathmandupost.com/art-culture/2020/06/23/the-
| underly...
|
| [3] http://www.mountholyokenews.com/oped/2020/3/6/common-
| swear-w...
|
| I hope someone here sees the irony.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Semi-related: one of the things that really bugs me about
| master/slave terms as applied to databases is that it's a really
| bad metaphor. Sure, one node controls all of the other nodes, but
| if the master node dies one of the slaves will randomly get
| promoted to master. Or if you need to move regions maybe another
| slave will get promoted to master while the master will get
| demoted to slave.
|
| Needless to say, this isn't how most slavery systems have worked
| the world over. I feel that writer/reader terms are more
| accurately descriptive anyhow.
| msiyer wrote:
| Banning a word is pointless. The word itself has no power. It is
| the feeling piggybacking on the word that gives life to the word.
| The feeling will find another word as vehicle.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ghotli wrote:
| I won't waste an opportunity to frame this as a modern shifting
| of the overton window. Rather than editorialize, here you go.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > It signals to other privileged white boys, "hey, come work for
| us, we pretend to care more than all our competitors xoxo". This
| shit aint for us, it never was.
|
| This, a thousand times. It was never about black people, it was
| always about wealthy, largely white progressives comforting
| themselves with the narrative that they're valiant defenders of
| black folks (namely from those horrible oppressors, middle- and
| lower-class whites) _without having to do anything_. This is why
| "defund the police" is supported by a majority of wealthy
| progressives but a small minority of black Americans.
| neronero wrote:
| EDIT: For comparison:
|
| * "Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers" (5hrs ago, 110
| points, 30 comments) -> rank 2
|
| * this post (2hrs ago, 1000 points, 500 comments) -> rank 20
|
| Why is this post being penalized? Too many black folks commenting
| and up voting? (/s)
|
| -----
|
| Amazingly well written. I'm going to say some things. You'd guess
| wrongly if you infer that I'm bitter - since I'm personally very
| lucky. Having been born in a not so privileged family (more
| common than not in the world), by the luck of the draw I am today
| very privileged because I work in tech (in itself not that
| common).
|
| The actual problem that is at the core of all of this is -
| incredible disconnectedness from the plight of even regular
| people by the world's tech bubbles. On average, people of color
| have it (!!!) _even worse_ (!!!), but it seems that these SV
| /NY/LDN/etc. tech bros are completely devoid of any conception of
| how difficult any average Joe has it.
|
| To illustrate disconnectedness: there was an interview with a YC
| partner a few years back that went like this:
|
| INTERVIEWER: "What would you advise to the young folks interested
| in startups?"
|
| YC-PARTNER: "I would tell them to be ambitious, try their best,
| work hard and if it doesn't succeed - it doesn't succeed. You
| should _take a vacation_ and try again. " (the emphasis and the
| exact phrasing of the vacuous advice are mine)
|
| How the fuck does one _TAKE A VACATION_ after your startup
| fails?!
|
| It goes without saying that the YC partner and their brother
| received tech stocks from their grandparents for one of their
| teen-birthdays.
|
| Here's a litmus test to know whether you're likely disconnected:
| As a techie/doctor/engineer did you become by far the highest
| paid person in your wider family by your mid 20s? If the answer
| is "NO", then you would be disconnected by default - unless you
| consciously invested effort to educate yourself.
| dang wrote:
| > Why is this post being penalized? Too many black folks
| commenting and up voting? (/s)
|
| That's a nasty swipe, "/s" or no "/s". Your question is
| answered twice in HN's FAQ: once at the top and once again
| ("Why is A ranked below B even though A has more points and is
| newer?") for people who don't realize that it was already
| answered at the top. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
|
| Matter of fact, this thread has been carefully _un_ penalized
| by moderators who work tirelessly to support substantive,
| thoughtful discussion on HN.
| neronero wrote:
| My bad. The emotions were high. I wanted to remove it, but I
| can edit the post anymore.
| dang wrote:
| Much appreciated! I wouldn't worry about removing it -
| we're all learning this stuff together and examples are
| good for that.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Here's a litmus test to know whether you're likely
| disconnected: As a techie/doctor/engineer did you become by far
| the highest paid person in your wider family by your mid 20s?
| If the answer is "NO", then you would be disconnected by
| default - unless you consciously invested effort to educate
| yourself.
|
| As the article hints at, many people who come from er, non-
| traditional tech backgrounds, enter the tech industry later in
| life. Your test of "by your mid 20's" would hoover them up
| along with the people you're trying to point to.
|
| Let's just not group people together indiscriminately, shall
| we? That should be a rule of thumb that might work once in a
| while.
| neronero wrote:
| I think you're using "indiscriminately" as if it meant "if I
| personally don't like it".
|
| But you're right, my litmus test is very sloppy and it could
| be phrased much more precisely. I hope most people will
| understand the spirit of it though.
| munchbunny wrote:
| I think the spirit of it is pretty clear.
|
| If you grew up with access to upper middle class (or
| higher) wealth, which is what your parents would need to be
| to match today's early career Silicon Valley software
| engineer incomes, you probably don't know what it's like to
| not have access to many of the institutionalized resources
| you grew up with, because you probably never lived that
| experience.
|
| That might be an overly broad test, but the underlying
| point is pretty clear.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| I understand your anger, but that piece of advice was meant for
| the kind of people that CAN afford a vacation after a startup
| failure. Is something wrong with that? If you can afford a
| vacation, you take it. If you can't, you don't.
|
| I myself have a failed startup that I ran in 2018-2019. Could I
| afford a vacation afterwards? Nope. Can I afford another
| entrepreneurial run now? Nope. Am I bitter about it? Nope.
|
| Also, you mention "incredible disconnectedness from the plight
| of even regular people by the world's tech bubbles", but then
| you talk about starting a STARTUP. Regular people don't start
| companies.
| neronero wrote:
| > but that piece of advice was meant for the kind of people
| that CAN afford a vacation after a startup failure. Is
| something wrong with that? If you can afford a vacation, you
| take it. If you can't, you don't.
|
| If they really intended that advice for the audience of 5,
| they could've sent them an email (or a Clubhouse invite /s)
| and not put it in an interview on YT. The rest of the
| audience is just facepalming while listening to this.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| >Regular people don't start companies
|
| They do, they're called small businesses instead of startups
| most often times though. I worked at businesses throughout my
| adolescence which were created and run by "regular people" -
| people of color, without generational wealth, who were
| raising children, and were primary caretakers for elderly
| family at the time of the company's creation.
|
| In the same vein, I've met a lot of "regular people" in the
| same situation who've kicked off startups. Do you really
| think only those with the privilege of being sufficiently
| disconnected from impoverished communities end up having the
| opportunity to create a startup, or is there some
| reinterpretation/disconnect of the previous paragraphs going
| on?
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Unfortunately in many countries progressive taxation means
| people likely to start business are unable to save and
| invest in it for long before they have no choice but take a
| bank loan or look for VC money. It is rarely possible to
| start a business only with your own money that you saved. I
| think that's bad, and is often overlooked by people
| supporting high progressive tax. We are cutting the wings
| of people who are more likely to succeed and provide jobs
| and force them to share their business with the rich who
| likely never worked hard in their lives.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| >It is rarely possible to start a business only with your
| own money that you saved.
|
| People outside of the upper middle class strata usually
| don't have the opportunity to save significantly anyways
| after CoL is included in the US, and usually require a
| loan to start a business (or at least in every case of
| non-upper middle class business founder I've worked for).
|
| Regular people would personally carry a relatively lower
| tax burden than a flat tax would require for them
| actually, and a progressive corporate tax in the US would
| likely result in them being more likely to be successful
| once they start their business.
|
| Given that many pro-business states in the US have
| progressive income taxes to actually encourage
| reinvestments into small businesses (Carolina, Georgia,
| Alabama, Mississippi, etc..) and appear to be succeeding
| quite well in that regard, is there any specific reason
| you think a progressive income tax system that reduces
| the burden on regular people relative to a flat tax is a
| significant blocker for regular people to create
| businesses?
|
| Looking at your description of the problem, it almost
| seems like you should be advocating for a *more*
| progressive tax system where burden is placed further up
| the chain with regular people maintaining even less of a
| burden.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| I consider myself as a regular person and I am hit by the
| highest bracket and my take home is like 55% of what I
| make. This severly inhibits the projects I develop. It is
| supposed to make the rich pay more but they have ways
| around it and most pay themselves in dividends which are
| taxed differently (surprise surprise) or just use
| offshore cards.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Well, if you're actually not upper middle class and at
| the top of the bracket then I'm wondering how you came to
| the conclusion a more regressive tax graduation would
| help more regular people, rather than a more progressive
| scheme and closing tax avoidance loop holes like you seem
| to describe as the problem.
|
| That being said, it sounds like you're the upper "middle
| class" everyone here is describing since it's really the
| very rich that have the option to pay themselves in
| things like dividends in most countries (though this may
| be a miscommunication).
|
| 55% isn't bad most places outside of the US actually,
| where do you live precisely?
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| It just demonstrates the disconnect. These people are not
| fathoming a scenario where people can't afford a vacation and
| that seems indicative of these issues. Its how you try to fix
| racism and just end up renaming the master branch.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| > How the fuck does one TAKE A VACATION after your startup
| fails?!
|
| That's hilarious.
|
| But hey, you could technically do that in France without
| swimming in money: you legally can keep your position in a
| company on-hold while creating a startup, for 1-2 years (3 if
| you do tricks with your right to a sabbatical year). If it
| fails after that, you just go back to work. [0]
|
| The holidays you might have saved before leaving are deferred
| until you join again, so you can literally have paid holidays
| after your project fails.
|
| [0] https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2382
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| Same in Sweden and some basic easy to get by programs apart
| from the more traditional grants.
|
| I'd still pick sf and infinite funding for every silly
| project but for the small business rather than startup it's
| pretty sweet.
| Kydlaw wrote:
| No you can't. There are requirements that you are not
| displaying here, because you are using a source article in a
| language that probably 5% of the HN community can read. You
| are gaming the system and profit of social advantages offered
| by the nation for your personal interest. I hope people like
| you get caught and that you will pay every cent you owe.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| > No you can't.
|
| The link says otherwise.
|
| > There are requirements that you are not displaying here,
| because you are using a source article in a language that
| probably 5% of the HN community can read
|
| 100% of the HN community knows how to use a translator if
| they're interested. Yeah, you need to be for at least 2
| years in the company, and there are deadlines for requests,
| approvals and so on. Obviously you can't just say "hey, not
| coming tomorrow, plz keep my job for a while" overnight.
|
| Anyone that wants to know the precise terms can translate
| them, they're right in the link.
|
| > You are gaming the system and profit of social advantages
| offered by the nation for your personal interest.
|
| No, I use the established procedure in law to follow
| through with what the government has tried to incentivize.
|
| > I hope people like you get caught and that you will pay
| every cent you owe.
|
| That's funny, because you don't get paid during those 1-2
| years, so it roughly amounts to 0.
|
| Why do you accuse random strangers of violating a law that
| you seem not to be familiar with?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| indeed, the thing that struck me was how much of a middle class
| sausage factory SV-tech is.
|
| I had worked in VFX/media for a long time, and we at least knew
| that we were mostly rich middle class fops. Having heard all
| the noise about how upset the tech bros were when diversity
| increased at FAANG, when I got here I expected to have some,
| well diversity.
|
| I went from a team that had 8/30 female-male, which the company
| felt was too small, to a team inside FAANG which is all male.
| Every. fucking. team that I've been in contact, bar one, is an
| entire sausage factory.
| nicbou wrote:
| The problem is further upstream. This is the people who
| graduate. This is the people who enrol. This is the people
| who fall in love with computers.
|
| At some point, we lose everyone else, and I wish I knew why.
| I have theories sure, but I don't actually know why.
| bregma wrote:
| Some years back I hiked the Inca Trail in Peru. The second
| day started with a long trek up the side of a mountain,
| covering a vertical distance of about 1500 m in about 4
| hours. You could see the trail ahead pretty much the whole
| time, including the people on it. It was incredibly
| challenging to keep going as you were exhausted by altitude
| and effort and could see it was only going to get more
| difficult as the day progressed, and still you could see
| the people who were already on the trail ahead of you. This
| was the point where many hikers turned back.
|
| What I learned was challenges that defeat you are never
| what's behind you, only what's in front of you. When it's
| an uphill climb, the people at the top are causing more of
| a challenge than what you left or even where you are.
|
| I frequently encounter the position that "we shouldn't do
| anything at my level because the problem is further down
| the system" just like the parent comment says. Yes, it
| makes you feel better to deny you're part of the problem.
| Unfortunately it's not true in a way that makes the problem
| worse. It's a close cousin to "she shouldn't have dressed
| like that" or "she shouldn't have gone out alone". Or maybe
| "I was just following orders".
| rhines wrote:
| I don't know, I think it's worth trying to at least
| understand where the challenge lies. Maybe it is some
| linear progression where every person starts out with the
| same motivation to be a developer, and faces increasingly
| more hurdles till they either choose something else or
| succeed. Or maybe it's pretty easy to get to a certain
| point, but then there's some filter hurdle like toxic
| workplaces or university experiences that changes things.
| Or maybe some people just naturally have more interest in
| other things.
|
| The better we understand the situation, the better we can
| allocate resources to address any inequities that do
| exist.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What if it was a hike that got less steep toward the top?
| The lesson you learned would completely fall apart.
|
| I don't think you can apply a blanket logic to this. It's
| possible for problems to be all over, or clustered near
| the start or middle or end. It depends on the actual
| scenario.
|
| It seems quite likely that being pushed out as a child is
| the biggest problem, and that's not because the kids are
| peering forward to look at job specifics, it's because of
| harmful stereotypes about boys vs. girls.
| nicbou wrote:
| The problem with tackling diversity at the hiring level
| is that there's a finite supply of candidates. If you a
| proportional number of each group, you'll still end up
| with a large number of white men. What then?
|
| > It's a close cousin to "she shouldn't have dressed like
| that" or "she shouldn't have gone out alone". Or maybe "I
| was just following orders".
|
| I really struggle to see how.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| The reason why is right in plain sight: because most women
| aren't actually interested in tech jobs. And before you
| start fuming and downvote me, go look at Scandinavian
| countries (countries that have the most gender equality in
| the world) and look at the gender disparities in
| tech/nursing/schoolteacher jobs. It's not the 50/50 utopian
| vision you think it is.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I'm not asking for 50/50, I'm asking for equal
| opportunity.
|
| At the moment its not equal. There are many societal
| issues that affect this. They even still affect Sweden et
| al.
|
| I'm not asking for controversial things, like quotas, I'm
| just asking for companies to use the training schemes
| they have to get local talent thats representative of the
| cohort taking up CS subjects at 16.
|
| Currently, having a 50:1 ratio is not anything like good
| enough. especially as its something like 25:75 split at
| 16
| nicbou wrote:
| > because most women aren't actually interested in tech
| jobs
|
| Why? Is it written in their genes, or is it something we
| discourage them from? Is it perhaps something else?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| yes, that is a problem, one we can't fix directly.
|
| But, with apprenticeships we can grab them before they get
| put off by a-levels. (this again is UK specific). This
| means we can skip a layer off loss and get much better
| candidates in the process. (A lot of CS degrees are highly
| suspect...)
| secondcoming wrote:
| So you're male working in tech complaining about males
| working in tech?
|
| Did you step aside to make way for a female hire?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I'm struggling to understand your point here.
|
| Are you saying that there aren't enough jobs to go around?
| because that's patently not the case.
|
| We need more engineers, to do that we need to train them.
| Instead of overfishing the standard places, we need to look
| elsewhere. If you want a purely business case, it cheaper
| to hire women, they are more loyal and don't ask for
| payrises[1]. not only that training in the UK is
| effectively free.
|
| if you want a moral case: I want my daughter to work in my
| role (or what it evolves into.) at the moment she's going
| to have a shit time
|
| [1]gross over simplification here.
| garmaine wrote:
| Not middle class. That include plumbers, mechanics, and other
| skilled technicians that really do have to work hard for
| their living.
|
| SV is stuffed full of upper-middle-class, a category that is
| more different than the name would imply. These folks
| (including me) had the luxury of "not knowing what I want to
| do in college" (or even attending college in the first place)
| and getting to bounce around until we find something that
| sticks. Or go to medical/law/graduate school and take on
| hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt then work a free
| internship or residency before being able to command a salary
| that pays off that debt.
|
| It's a different world from the middle class.
| notacoward wrote:
| > getting to bounce around until we find something that
| sticks
|
| This is an under-appreciated dividing line between the
| somewhat-rich and the somewhat-poor. Being able to choose a
| career that you can stick with and even be passionate about
| will put you in a _much_ better situation 20+ years later
| than having to take the first work that comes along out of
| sheer necessity (often repeatedly and employers get more
| skeptical each time). Many people never escape that trap;
| even those that do find themselves many years behind their
| age-peers financially.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Sorry I should have been more specific.
|
| In the UK developers are overwhelmingly middle-middle
| class. If you were privately educated then you are much
| more likely to be on the business side. There are "lower
| middleclass" developers, but its much more rare in bigger
| businesses something like 20/80 split. (not as rare as
| women though..)
|
| In the UK, the "trades" are seen as working class-lower
| middle class. Which is why the education system didn't
| bother catering to any kind of practical skill for trades.
| because Karen didn't want little Andrew to learn a trade.
|
| Whats interesting is that yes, in the US its far more
| rarefied/isolationist.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| Maybe referring to people by genitalia as their primary
| characteristic is part of the problem?
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| When I entered engineering in the early 2010s, I quickly
| started earning more than my parents and their parents did
| combined at their peak incomes. Hearing my background, most of
| my peers who weren't immigrants from south/near asia, africa,
| or latin america seemed surprised that life in the USA could be
| so "third world" in their words.
|
| I always get a chuckle reading things by these VC types who
| grew up in upper middle class homes very far from impoverished
| people and their views on both the problems communities they've
| never interacted with will face and/or how to solve those
| problems, as recent as yesterday's post by sama on how
| innovation will end poverty.
|
| Based on my experiences with people's depth on the subject, I
| think you have a half decent litmus test.
| adamjb wrote:
| >Why is this post being penalized?
|
| HN has an anti-flamewar mechanism that kicks in when posts get
| too active.
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