| > changing whitelist / blacklist or master / slave isn't really helping to the cause. These terms amongst hundreds of others build up a mental association between blackness and wrongness. The word "black", just by itself - look a dictionary definition. In addition to the raw color is used to connote a sad event, anger, or just evil ("it was a black day", "full of anger or hatred", "very evil or wicked"). On the flipside white is used to connote purity and goodness. In the context of America we're talking about a country which favored bleached white foods to anything else for the same reason. I just don't get how people can't see the harm that is accrued from not the single example but the hundreds collectively. Also, for the record, I think changing the name of the project verges on absurd. |
It would be easier to stop calling brown skin black than to make people not associate black with darkness, uncertainty and danger. Associating darkness (which is pretty much black) with death is much, much older than the US, believe it or not.
People aren't racist because they read about the Black Death and figure "yeah, I guess black people are evil, look what they did to Europe in the 14th century", and you won't make them less racist if you remove the word black from language.