[reversecs]

I don't know, I can see why words which have absolutely no intent of being racist are associated with racism. Is it any more offensive than calling a node with no parent (which is going to be garbage collected) an orphan node? Or using 'kill' to end a process or (to be ridiculous) separating things by "Class", and calling things equal (instead of different or not different)

Intent is everything and giving into pressure like this just reinforces consideration of every word you speak or write and in what possible dimension it can be deemed offensive. In your life you can contort your language and behavior to please everybody but at some point you are no longer behaving for yourself but for everyone else. You have to pretend like you want to speak different pronouns, you have to pretend that calling someone black is much more offensive than calling them African American. You have to make sure that you specifically don't interrupt women, you have to double check (and counter) your implicit bias towards women and minorities when you think they didn't do a good job in the interview.

Some of these things are hyperbole and some of them are not. I know the standard response is that I'm over exaggerating but its par for the course to get diversity training, to have quarterly updates on how more women are being hired! (as if the company were actually eliminating discrimination instead of just bumping numbers up). This is all new and its moving faster and faster.