So I was watching an archeological video today, and to the narrator's credit, he called the Chaco peoples the Anasazi but he noted that was considered as offensive because the native translation of that was something like "alien enemy". Maybe it is a little more rude in the original language, I don't know, I don't care. So now they we are expected to call them "ancestral pueblans". So much easier to say and remember. Whatever.
People get offended by words so easily.
In Computer Science the terms "Master" and "Slave" as well as "whitelist" and "blacklist" have been forcibly removed from books, code, and anything related to software. So ridiculous. Master and Slave are just words that mean things like primary and secondary. It was a term used in software development and hardware development for something like 40 to 50 YEARS before "oh my! those are offensive words!!"
They are NOT offensive, they describe a RELATIONSHIP between hardware components. They are descriptive terms used to inform us on the state of hardware components (disks for example) and give a better explanation of their roles than "primary/secondary" (as an example).
Bunch of bullshit. Pardon my French.
Now let us address the terms white list and black list. People think it has something to do with racism. It does not. It actually comes from a practice of voting, such as in Freemasonry. People are given two stones, or marbles, one white, one black. White means assent, black meant dissent. This was done for clarity. You could open the voting box and immediately see if there was a contrasting marble or stone. If a black marble was found, it was called (in reference to adding a NEW MEMBER to the ranks) black listing because that name would be added to a list for controlling membership. White list... well those were the people voted to be able to join.
In software a white list is a group of values that are compared against input as favorable, and a black list is a series of values that should be excluded from input. Perfect words for what it is used for.
People need to STOP BEING OFFENDED by EVERY OTHER WORD or soon there will be no words left in the English language and we will become a nation of mutes.
