[scrollaway]

Oh they're not alone in that absurdity. See for example symmetric BS in Django:

https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692

Welcome to the "fear of offence" culture. Should coin a term for that - offendiphobic?

Edit: I'd like to point out to the silent downvoters here that there's legitimate concerns being raised in this subthread about money being wasted on political correctness, which are not being addressed by any of you. If you are unable to give a counterpoint, you should rethink your position instead of downvoting based on emotions.

[hackuser]

I'm a downvoter: I find arguments like this one to be ideological rants and not valuable.

For every person and in every culture, offending people is considered wrong. To suggest that it doesn't matter is not a serious argument.

Apparently 'slave' doesn't offend you. It doesn't offend me either (I remember being a little uncomfortable with it long ago, when I first encountered it, but I don't notice it now). But for me to say that therefore it is not offensive to others would be ignorant and self-centered, as if the world revolves around my views and experiences. If others say they are offended then I respect that; I hope they would respect my concerns if I was offended.

Also, a common cause of discrimination is due to honest ignorance on the part of people in the dominant group. Like all humans, they are blind to things that they don't experience themselves; for example, consider law enforcement discrimination against minorities. It's happened for decades or centuries, but wasn't taken seriously until we actually had film of it due to the spread of cameras. That's another good reason to think that whether or not something bothers me is not evidence of whether it offends others.

Finally, the dominant culture in the U.S. was built at a time of widespread, accepted discrimination, and many artefacts of that time persist. People may get tired of seeing so much of it being challenged and changed, from school buildings named after slave holders; Confederate flags; and movie casts, company executives, etc. being almost all white and mostly male, etc. But being tired of the challenge and change, rather than of the discrimination, is a 'first world' problem, so to speak.

[dragonwriter]

> For every person and in every culture, offending people is considered wrong.

That's actually not at all true. For many people, and in many cultures, certain things are considered both wrong and proper subjects for offense, certain things are considered wrong when they are the subject of offense (and thus are also proper, while not necessary, subjects of offense), and other things are not considered wrong independently of whether some people find them offensive (and, in fact, being offended by them, or at least expressing such offense, may be considered wrong itself.)

The idea that anything that anyone finds offensive is, ipso facto, wrong is not a cultural universal, and AFAICT not held by many people at all (even people who seem in some contexts to appeal to that idea seem to find some instances of offense unjustified and unworthy of consideration.)

[scrollaway]

Thanks for speaking up. To answer your points: There's a line, and people are crossing it.

There are words in the english language which are offensive because they are specifically employed to be offensive. Swear words, words used in offensive (as in, literally offensive) contexts, verbal abuse etc.

We avoid using this words in civilized discourse not because we're afraid to offend, but because we have no need for them. We don't intend to offend. If we intend to offend, we use them - there is no political correctness involved in not using actual offensive terms.

Now when a word has a non-offensive meaning and actually offends people, it's important to look at why this happens. Does it only offend one person or does it offend many? Is it meant to offend, is it used in an actual offensive context? Is the person being offended themselves or by proxy?

This is a conversation I've had before when the Django PR came up, so I'll save you looking these up. You'll note that in that PR, almost everybody praising the PR was white, 18-30 years old. The people being offended are near-unanimously fighting a cause that isn't their own.

There's nothing wrong with that of course - I'm not gay, yet I fight for gay rights for example. But was this ever actually an issue for the black community?

Do you know why it's important to answer that question? Because if the answer is no, then you are fabricating problems for a community you are not even a part of. It is not harmless - it is actively harmful.

If a word, a technical word, was not a problem one day, and is a problem the next, you have now artificially widened the gap a certain minority needs to cross in order to be part of the programming community.

And if you look at it closely, you'll see this is exactly what happened. This issue got artificially popular with Django (just about a decade after the LA nonissue). Now it's causing problems in other parts of the technical community. Something which wasn't a problem a year ago, is now a problem - your FOSS project which was open to all, is now perceived as potentially racist.

I don't get pissed off at these things because I get a kick out of discrimination. I get pissed off because they make things worse.

[hackuser]

I agree that if it's not offensive to blacks (or maybe to someone I'm not thinking of) then it doesn't matter. But ...

1) You are saying that you don't know if it's offensive to blacks. Shouldn't we find out before condemning the change?

2) I think you are blowing out of proportion the consequences of erring on the side of not offending. I think they are minor. It's really about a bigger issue, which is why both of us are writing so many words about it.

3) I take your word for it that this isn't the case for you, but for many people this issue is a proxy - a dog-whistle[1] - for change to the status quo dominant culture. It's like people who objected to or advocated school busing when really it was about desegregation, or people fighting over Syrian refugees when it's really about Muslim immigrants (at least Trump was honest).

Anyway, the essential thing is to get these issues out in the open and learn from each other. Good talking to you.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

[scrollaway]

> You are saying that you don't know if it's offensive to blacks.

I was very careful not to say anything on what I know. But since you bring it up, what I know is that the original issue in the tracker was created in bad faith and people hopped on the bandwagon. Addressing this is another discussion entirely.

> I think you are blowing out of proportion the consequences of erring on the side of not offending.

I'm open to hear arguments as to why what I'm saying is "blowing things out of proportions", when all I'm claiming is that the direct results of these actions are producing the exact negative of the effects they intend to. So really, my argument's proportion is relative to how large of an issue you think the original premise is.

Another consequence of course is opening your project up to abuse. If people see that you'll cave in to any form of "political correctness" pressure, they'll double down and find more faults, and if there are no more faults they'll create them for you. I'm speaking from experience - This is something we see a lot in the game development community.

[hackuser]

> what I know is that the original issue in the tracker was created in bad faith

I think it's unfair to the Django people to make that allegation without substantiating it. Otherwise it's just a mean rumor.

> all I'm claiming is that the direct results of these actions are producing the exact negative of the effects they intend to. ... If people see that you'll cave in to any form of "political correctness" pressure, they'll double down and find more faults, and if there are no more faults they'll create them for you.

It's hard to tell if you are making a prediction or saying it has happened. Could you provide evidence of these consequences happening to the Django project? Also, perhaps those additional faults are real to others but not to you - returning us to the orginal discussion of how one judges what is 'offensive'.

> "political correctness" pressure

I think today's "political correctness" is to criticize people pointing out any kind of prejudice. They are automatically assumed to be in bad faith and attacked, with the same criticisms almost every time, regardless of the content or merits of their complaint. It's an attempt to intimidate into silence anyone thinking about complaining, which I think is unhealthy and disrespectful.

[foota]

Can I ask how the issue was created in bad faith?

[jldugger]

"The black community hasn't told us it's a problem" isn't a very convincing argument when the intersection of your community and theirs is empty.

> If a word, a technical word, was not a problem one day, and is a problem the next, you have now artificially widened the gap a certain minority needs to cross in order to be part of the programming community.

This is a stretch. Substituting careless technical writing for equally clear and meaningful terminology doesn't harm anyone's ability to stand up continuous integration.

[scrollaway]

> Substituting careless technical writing for equally clear and meaningful terminology doesn't harm anyone's ability to stand up continuous integration

You are misinterpreting what I'm saying. Substituting one word for another is not harmful in and of itself. The context around it makes it harmful.

For the sake of the argument, let's go to a parallel universe in which a group (any group) decides that the word "lambda" is offensive to them. Like very offensive, heavily politicized etc. It's not a very common word overall in English, but used quite a bit in specific domains.

Now let's say some small parts of the programming community gets together and agrees that "lambda" is offensive and changes it to a less-offensive equivalent. Is the programming community now more or less welcoming overall?

If there was a real problem with the word, the outcome is slightly positive. But if there wasn't, the outcome is extremely negative: Something which didn't use to be a problem, is now a problem. The community appears less inclusive.

Back to our universe now. Do you still think it's wise to carelessly change words whenever someone claims they're offended without actually verifying those claims? Is it still wise to bundle up to an issue you're not affected by when it's more than likely created by people who aren't affected by it either?

I do hope at least some people realize that this is widely open to abuse, as well.

[hackuser]

> if there wasn't [a real problem with the word], the outcome is extremely negative: Something which didn't use to be a problem, is now a problem. The community appears less inclusive.

Here's where I lose you. I don't see how it's more than very slightly negative. To whom is the community less inclusive? People who like to use the word "slave"? People who think this issue is a waste of time? You can find people like that for every issue; if that minor detail turns them away, they weren't going to stay long. People who ideologically object to the attention paid to prejudice or actually are prejudicial? The latter are an easy case; the former - anyone working on a team must learn to respect others' views and accept being outvoted, with regularity.

[scrollaway]

Fabricated issues add up. You're no longer just a minority, you're a minority that wants to change which words others use, that wants others to adapt to them, etc. Even when you're just someone who happens to be black/female/whatever and would really like others to shut the hell up about sex or color.

The majority of people don't have a problem - you're creating a problem for them.

[marbletiles]

You are being silently down voted because nobody wants to engage the sea-lion.

There are not "legitimate concerns being raised", it's just you, complaining that money is being spent on "political correctness", as if it's somehow bad for a non-profit to spend money to try and improve the world.

Your other points are no more legitimate than "gay used to be a perfectly good word meaning happy how can we express happiness without it" or "people don't object to me when I call them [racial slur] so it must be fine" have ever been. Addressing them directly is exactly the sort of fruitless conversation derail nobody wants.

[scrollaway]

I have no idea what you're going on about, your post is all over the place. I'll try to answer as best I can.

> There are not "legitimate concerns being raised", it's just you, complaining that money is being spent on "political correctness", as if it's somehow bad for a non-profit to spend money to try and improve the world.

OK so first of all, a significant amount of my donation money goes to Mozilla - so this is not me complaining where "money is being spent", it's me being concerned my money is not being spent efficiently.

Second, "to try and improve the world", sorry, what? Grepping out technical terms from documentation is "improving the world" now? You have one low bar for improvements. Mozilla's mission is to keep the web open and free (or so they claim), and political correctness has nothing to do with it. Even if it were a worthy goal to reword such docs (it's really not, and I explained why), it is not Mozilla's job. They're not good at that task nor are they a company you donate to to get such tasks done.

As for what you're going on about with the word "gay" or racial slurs... I'm honestly speechless if you're equating them together, let alone equating them to the word "slave" which is used non-offensively in several communities. If you up and decided that slave is a racial slur now, maybe I should just up and decide that your posts offend me and that they should be replaced with rainbows.

[marbletiles]

First: yes, this is about you. But you were trying to present it as if there was a contingent with you. There doesn't appear to be.

Second: "political correctness" is easily semantically replaced with "trying to avoid excluding people". Trying to avoid excluding people is a basic way to improve the world, and should be applied across all fields, including software engineering.

Third, I am pointing out that your point about language is without merit. There are all sorts of words which were considered one way by reasonable people at one time which no longer are. No matter how in the right you feel you are about the purity of using master/slave, the tide is against you. Just like analogously it was with those who thought certain racial slurs were purely descriptive.

[scrollaway]

In the country I currently live in, the "tide" is to close all borders and consider all muslims terrorists. How's that for excluding people? Should I hop on to that tide too?

If you think the tide is always right, you got another think coming. Your mentality seems to be "I'll be part of the tide to make sure I'm not racist". That is the mentality of someone who cannot form opinions of their own.

I'll make a sidenote here and remind you that that tide you're going on about is extreme american culture. In Europe, you bring this idiocy up and you will be laughed out of the front door. Amusingly, if you look at the upvote/downvote history on the posts here, you'll find that they coincide with active hours in the US. As a night owl, this is something I see a lot on HN and Reddit alike.

[marbletiles]

Sorry, I'm in Europe and disagree. This sort of thing is even less contentious here — this particular change went through a number of offices I know with barely a murmur.

You shouldn't surf blindly. Naturally you choose the tide you want to surf. Do you want to ride the waves toward hatred, oppression and exclusion, or do you want to swim towards inclusion and togetherness? I choose the latter, even if it means seeming precious to some.

[scrollaway]

You forgot option 3: Ride a wave of pretend inclusivity. Which is exactly what's happening here. You'll note that the one thing you can't find here (and you'd be lucky to find it anywhere) is "I'm part of a marginalized group and the word "slave" is deeply offending to me, removing it is a great step towards being more inclusive".

But I'm quite tired of this; there's clearly no way to explain to you that this is a fabricated issue which is damaging to both the minority group and the community. So by all means, keep riding the pretend wave - don't be surprised when it just makes things worse.

[spikels]

It is no secret that both Mozilla and Django have a strong politically correct / social justice culture. This makes the two organizations more compatible.

[huxley]

If a "fear of offence" culture exists, aren't you're part of it?

You've spent a lot of time here being offended by political correctness, "wasted money" and alleged political motivations.

Can you think of why one sentence in a successful Buildbot grant proposal would get you so upset that you'd write thousands of words, many of which slander Mozilla, Django and Buildbot community members?

It wasn't logic that got you there, it was an emotional overreaction to something that really doesn't concern you at all except that it offends your politics.

[scrollaway]

That I choose to defend my point of view, no matter how insignificant, is of little relevance to the point at hand. I enjoy a debate.

And am I "offended" now? I'm not offended, I'm sad. I'm sad common sense is out of the window when it comes to treating minorities with respect and dignity.

This little thread is very representative of the circus of political correctness: A bunch of people not part of a minority, speaking and acting on behalf of a minority that did not have a problem in the first place.

Offending my politics. Good one.