[bdcravens]

In discussions about this on social media, there's significant push back from those who are actually affected by the issues BLM is fighting for, who feel moves like this are more white guilt with no real change for what really matters. I'm sure an at-risk youth, when pulled over by two white police officers, is grateful that a bunch of highly paid programmers aren't subjected to politically incorrect variable names.

(edited: I referred to this group as "BLM core", but I realize that's confusing to some)

[Jabbles]

Please provide a link to support your assertion that "the BLM core" is giving "significant push back".

[neltnerb]

Why would anyone waste time complaining about this, especially BLM organizers?

[bdcravens]

The feeling of shallowness. It's the equivalence of a corporation showing their support for DREAMers by adding tex-mex options in the company cafeteria.

[bonoetmalo]

I think maybe a better question/support would be evidence that anybody besides corporate diversity teams have said this is a problem.

To be clear- I also think the terms are problematic and my company is also pushing for it. But I think it's worth asking whether we're speaking over actual black people. It does give off pretty heavy white guilt vibes.

Edit: I think a good example of this is the fact that my company is pushing for this change but still doesn't have a single black person at the VP+ levels. It's pandering, and distracting from the core problem.

[ogre_codes]

> I think maybe a better question/support would be evidence that anybody besides corporate diversity teams have said this is a problem.

Black programmers have been asking and pushing for this change for some time and many open source projects (which lack "corporate diversity teams") have acted independently to address this because it's an issue that's been raised by black programmers.

[eesmith]

There is plenty of evidence that people other than those on corporate diversity teams have said this is a problem, going back to at least 2003 with https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/masterslave/ (emphasis mine):

> To verify that this [request 'that equipment vendors avoid using the industry term “Master/Slave” in product descriptions and labeling'] wasn’t a hoax or an internal joke which mistakenly escaped to the wider world of the Internet, we called the Purchasing and Contract Services division for the County of Los Angeles, and they informed us that yes, they did issue this message, and yes, it was meant seriously. In May 2003, a black employee of the county’s Probation Department filed a discrimination complaint with the Office of Affirmative Action Compliance after spotting “master” and “slave” labels on a videotape machine, whereupon the Internal Services Department was obligated to issue notification requesting that vendors refrain from using the master/slave terminology.

So yes, at least one. (FWIW, I think claims of "white guilt" give off a pretty heavy attempt at encouraging white silence.)

Just looking at HN you'll see other evidence, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7806066 :

> Have you ever taught African-American kids about database replication? I'm guessing "no", because the master/slave terminology actively interferes with the learning environment — more so than adopting this less common terminology would.

Or in this HN comment from two years ago, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17930085 :

> A few years ago I was in a meeting talking about database options, hitherto I had used "master/slave" to describe this database topology. In that meeting was an African American co-worker ("Frank") and as the words left my mouth I realized that completely irrespective of my intent I brought into the room the spectre of times past. I've no idea how Frank felt about it - but all of a sudden I had lost all ability to continue my point. I paused and said something that amounted to: "you know,... that phrase is fucked up - let's not use it - what words should we use?" and Frank suggested we look at what terms Amazon uses; they used "source and read replica" and that's what we went with. I've never regretted recoding my use of words on that one.

Or another from 8 years ago, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4617174 :

> A coworker and I were de-duping records in a database. One of us said while pairing on the script "well, every slave needs a master."

> An african american woman in the office turned to us and said "maybe it's the master who needs the slave?"

> She wasn't really offend or anything and she said it with a sincere smile. She was just calling out our idiotic computer lingo for what it was.

> After apologizing feeling like complete idiots we quickly changed our terminology both in words and in the script to parent/child.

Or from 7 years ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5423626 referenced Matthew Haughey/mathowie's comment at https://www.metafilter.com/126184/Furore-over-sexism-being-c... :

> All this talk about forking being offensive-or-no reminds me of a few years ago when someone pointed out to me that the whole hard drive relationship talk in IT circles of "Master" and "Slave" drives was offensive to them, being that they were black.

If you can't get the small problems fixed, can you really fix the large ones? What are the relevant core problems in your company which this distracts from, who is arguing that this change is something other than a no-brainer change, and what is their reason?

[bdcravens]

By "core" I'm not talking about self-appointed leadership; I'm talking about the BLM advocates who are directly affected by the issue (ie, PoCs). There is plenty of grassroots discussion on social media amongst those who feel changes the the Githubs and Redhats of the world will have zero impact on their plight.

[ogre_codes]

> I'm sure an at-risk youth, when pulled over by two white police officers, is grateful that a bunch of highly paid programmers aren't subjected to politically incorrect variable names.

Why would this affect anyone getting pulled over by the police? Neither the police, nor the motorist are going to be looking over source code.

This is 100% about black developers. Have you bothered asking black developers how they feel about this?