[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.

[marbletiles]

Look at your GitHub link. The thread has plenty of people of colour on it thanking them for the change. Also, this trend started with a complaint from a black man. In 2003. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp

By the way, I didn't address it, but your idea that changing it could be damaging to a minority group is flatly idiotic. Even if you were right and this was terminology that wasn't truly offensive, it wouldn't render it offensive and thus create exclusion in other unchanged places where none had existed before. People understand that changes take time to propagate. The only theoretical danger would be the sort of devs who Take A Stand and wilfully continue to use the old language to make a point, regardless of who they offend. And, yes, those men would then be exclusionary. As you want to be.