Black list and its opposite, white list, associate black with bad and white with good.
The usage of black in “black box” means opaque, not bad.
So these aren’t the same.
I had never thought about the connotations of blacklist and whitelist before it was pointed out to me. In retrospect, blacklist and whitelist are unnatural meanings of the words black and white, and blocklist and allowlist make much more sense.
Consequently, I changed the code I’m responsible for at my company to use block and allow.
I don’t see the association as particularly unnatural: black = dark = scary because we cannot see, and white = light = not scary because we can see. The use of the term ‘black’ as a negative modifier predates its use as a descriptor for race.
This is the problem. People will choose to ignore context and other grammatical history because of their own personal incorrect views.
It's not like the word "black" is just used with blacklist. We also use it in other places like black market, black hat, and black site. None of these are related to black people, but instead all relate to a shady dark/scary side of things like you mentioned.
When someone pictures a black market they are not thinking something that looks bright and colourful, they are thinking something that is dark and maybe grungy/sketchy looking.
The word policing is something I am really getting sick of.
> None of these are related to black people, but instead all relate to a shady dark/scary side of things like you mentioned.
Isn't it the other way around though? Black people skin is not of color black as in actual black. And white people skin is certainly not white.
It's the naming of skin tone that is sloppy and figurative. While the association of white with light/visibility and black with darkness/unknown is natural.
Yes, a lot of people would identify as a "black" person, but their skin colour would probably more accurately be called "brown". Personally I think the more correct term is African-American, but people choose to be offended by "black" when used in words even though it relates more to the colour than a skin colour like you said.
Overall I think the logic of opposing words like "blacklist" just falls apart logically in multiple areas and I think your explanation is a good example of why.
The oreo itself may not be racist, but it most definitely is associated with racism because of its colors. So I would caution you in using it as an analogy; it may be why your post was flagged.
What? I have never in my life heard of a damn cookie being called racist. That is insane. I am not going to be caution in the least with using that anaology. I am using a cookie to talk about how ridiculous things are and you're telling me a cookie is offensive. That is insane.
Please do not misconstrue what I have said. The term "oreo" has a long history of being used as a racist epithet. There is nothing wrong with using it as an analogy, but in a discussion on racism, it might be better to pick a cookie with a similar color scheme that does not already have racist connotations, such as a Moon Pie. You are, of course, free to use whatever analogy you feel best expresses your point.
Interesting, I will continue to use it as I think it still demonstrates the point. I have never in my life heard of a cookie being used in a racist way. I've heard crackers being used in racist ways though.
I use blacklist and whitelist. These ideas are a part of my consciousness. The definitions for these words as a result of this change are a conscious choice, not some accidental result of the nature of the words themselves.
I don't use it to mean "black" or "white." I use it to mean things that aren't black or white. Blocklist and allowlist don't exist because they are things. I don't think about the "Black" and "White" in these words. I think about what they mean to people. This is why you don't hear that many people complain that the use of these words in games has changed or changed. The people complaining, I think, are the people who have changed the way they think about these words.
I haven't read heavily into this debate so this comes from a position of ignorance of the arguments. Feel free to link me to a reference if this has been analyzed along these lines already, I would like to learn. The convention seem to me to follow several similar motifs from the sciences.
Black holes do not allow matter to escape and white holes are theoretical constructs that admit matter to the universe.
The color Black is the lack of visible light and white is considered to be the color of "all" light together.
In all cases discussed, black correlates to absence and white to admission or presence. Now I guess it could be asserted that these terms are also racially tinged but again I am not aware of any sources making those assertations. Feel free to link me.
I agree, if I was writing new software, I would probably use a more descriptive term if and where possible, e.g. blocklists instead of blacklists, it is a good practice to use descriptive names anyway.
I don't plan to edit and rename things within my existing software as it would add needless churn, risk, and the risk-benefit analysis just doesn't support it for me. Not saying that my analysis is the same for everyone else.
It seems we are using black for bad and white for good in English, which is strange since we had never used them before. Also, I feel like blocking and allowing makes sense when it comes to language, because bad and white mean the same. But when it comes to code, which the rest of the world uses black to mean bad and white to mean good, I don't know if that makes sense.
I think that language goes back eons. I think the black/white metaphor is employed in the book of Genesis/B'reshith for instance. People have been scared of the dark for more of human history than not. Nighttime is black, when things putrefy they turn black. Uncorrupted snow is white. The examples from nature are legion. What’s weird is using these terms for people.
Maybe the more sensible way to address the language issue is to stop calling people “black” and “white”. Why don’t we focus the scorching blast of social condemnation in that direction? The colors are silly classifications for people’s heredity or skin tone. Seems like the more elegant fix. Even today using the terms black and white can be “problematic” - some people don’t like being referred to as a black man by the wrong person, many white people consider “white boy” to be a racial epithet. So if we’re doing language surgery, let’s just ditch that part of the language and stop obsessing over the natural metaphors from time immemorial.
There was actually debate about this in the black activist community in the mid-late 60s. The more common term was 'negro' then, you can see it in earlier MLK writings, League of Negro Voters, etc. Stokely Carmichael was a leading voice in advocating for 'black'.
The only comment in this entire thread that actually attacks the root of the problem and offers THE solution.
A nonsensical "racial" hierarchy based on nominal colours is the SOURCE of the problem.
For what it's worth, the labels "white" and "black" were NOT chosen randomly by the architects of racial hierarchy (see Bacon's rebellion).
It was a very effective use of symbolism, to assign and label one part of humanity as the untermensch, and thus justify their enslavement and exploitation.
Changing branch names and policing language is akin to bandaid on a festering wound.
> It reminded me of an iconic BBC interview with Muhammad Ali in 1971 where he recalled that all the positive things he grew up with were white, from White Cloud tissue paper to the White House, while all the negative things, from the bad luck of a black cat to the term blackmail, were black. Nearly 50 years later, that linguistic measuring stick is alive and well.
He's right. Lots of English therms equate black with bad and white with good. Blacklist and whitelist fit into that pattern, and changing it takes a small step in the other direction.
Blacklist's etymology isn't racist, but if black folks prefer that we use something else, and something as similar as blocklist is there and easy to use, it seems like an easy fix.
> Blacklist's etymology isn't racist, but if black folks prefer that we use something else, and something as similar as blocklist is there and easy to use, it seems like an easy fix.
Which black “folks” prefer the term “blocklist”? Black people are not a monolith. It seems like you’re just injecting an assumption of what certain people prefer.
Having been at now 3 different orgs implementing the [blacklist->blocklist, slave->replica, etc] routine, it’s always done for the same reason: the unquestionable brand of modern identity politics, diversity & inclusion, whatever you want to call it that is infecting pretty much every tech company (and indeed pretty much every company in general).
It’s an ideology that treats races as monolithic and only recognizes a certain set of opinions as valid. Racial blindness is implicit racism, we need to implement affirmative action policies over the dimensions of the 4-tuple (sexuality, cis/trans, rage, gender) - these are the types of beliefs they enforce.
I'm going to be blunt - these types of anecdotes are just plain stupid. It's people picking and choosing examples to support their desired narrative, and just ignoring anything that contradicts it. There are just as many "bad" things in English that are also white - white elephant, white ant, whitewash, white whale. Why didn't he mention those?
The colour comparisons are also dumb, because "black" skin is actually more like dark brown and "white" skin isn't white at all, unless you're albino or incredibly sick (which again, points to how stupid it is to make comparisons like "white==good").
No, of course not. Look at his list. A "white whale" is something you especially DO want. "White washing" is making something bad look good by covering it in white. A white elephant is something so precious that it's inconvenient. The only word on that list that makes a white thing actively bad is obscure Australian political slang: white ant.
Meanwhile, I can just go black sheep, black magic, black market, black mark, blackmail, black hand, blackball, black mood...
> A "white whale" is something you especially DO want. "White washing" is making something bad look good by covering it in white. A white elephant is something so precious that it's inconvenient. The only word on that list that makes a white thing actively bad is obscure Australian political slang: white ant.
The white whale was an aberration, a freak of nature (just like a black sheep). White-washing has indisputably negative connotations. A white elephant is something that is incredibly expensive but fails to deliver any value.
> Meanwhile, I can just go black sheep, black magic, black market, black mark, blackmail, black hand, blackball, black mood...
I can play this game all day, too. "White as a sheet", "deathly white", "bleed someone white", "wave a white flag", "white feather". But again, none of this has any relevance whatsoever because white people aren't literally white and black people aren't literally black. We know racism exists, you don't need to manufacture some supposed linguistic association to prove it.
Yes, master could mean master copy, but that analogy falls apart quickly. Obviously it's not master/slave (I don't even know what a slave branch would mean). But that doesn't mean it's a good name. And not being a good name doesn't mean we should change it everywhere (because change has a cost that must be weighed).
Blacklist and Whitelist are not 'unnatural' just the opposite, that's why we use terms, because they are natural. 'Darkness' is after all 'opaque', at night we can't see, 'light' is one of the most ancient metaphors for knowledge etc..
It just so happens that it might not map to skin colour very well, but I don't think it's appropriate to change them because there is no connotation.
I buy that in some cases, there is language that can affect people and perception, just not in this case.
> It just so happens that it might not map to skin colour very well
Personally I think it's the skintone names that are weird. White to mean a certain shade of pinkish beige... Black to mean a whole range from beige to brown to dark blueish brown.
Our brains are very good at differenciating skintones, unlike shades of cyan for example. But for some reason the skin tones names are caricatures.
Blocklist to me means a list of blocks, like blocks on a disk. I am not a fan of using it as a replacement for blacklist.
I am in favor of denylist, though. I have never liked blacklist as far as I remember. I could never remember whether black means let it through or stop it.
I get similarly confused with "in the red" and "in the black" - which one means I'm losing money?
Don't even get me started on the CIA's black phones (which are green) and red phones (which are black). At least I think I got that right.
>I had never thought about the connotations of blacklist and whitelist before it was pointed out to me. In retrospect, blacklist and whitelist are unnatural meanings of the words black and white, and blocklist and allowlist make much more sense.
This is everyone's story with these words. This movement was not driven by POC taking issue with the word "blacklist". It started with some white dude's shower thought that because "blacklist" was a negative thing, and because "black" also can refer to skin color, that the term was thus racist [1]. Then a bunch of other white dudes ([2]) were like "oh yeah for sure that makes so much sense" and here we are--everyone goes along with it because they (rather patronizingly) think that someone else will be offended.
The word "blacklist" is many hundreds of years old. It does not have a racial origin. It's just a word. Nobody actually makes the association between "blacklist" and "black people" unless you tell them to! Our brains aren't nearly so stupid!
In China, the color white represents death. Policing language like this is insane. Maybe just stop using colors to refer to people. I don’t see Asians standing up for the color yellow or asking for yellow traffic lights to be changed because of negative connotations with driving (that’s probably going to end up in a comedian’s routine by EOY - I release it under GPL ;).
Point being, what’s easier to fix?? Color associations with people or overturning thousands of timeless metaphors across many cultures?
A lot of words that we use are arbitrary anyway. I respect people's preferences for their style of communication, but let's stop pretending that things like blacklist and whitelist are difficult to understand.
The usage of black in “black box” means opaque, not bad.
So these aren’t the same.
I had never thought about the connotations of blacklist and whitelist before it was pointed out to me. In retrospect, blacklist and whitelist are unnatural meanings of the words black and white, and blocklist and allowlist make much more sense.
Consequently, I changed the code I’m responsible for at my company to use block and allow.