[aksss]

> we had never used them before

I think that language goes back eons. I think the black/white metaphor is employed in the book of Genesis/B'reshith for instance. People have been scared of the dark for more of human history than not. Nighttime is black, when things putrefy they turn black. Uncorrupted snow is white. The examples from nature are legion. What’s weird is using these terms for people.

Maybe the more sensible way to address the language issue is to stop calling people “black” and “white”. Why don’t we focus the scorching blast of social condemnation in that direction? The colors are silly classifications for people’s heredity or skin tone. Seems like the more elegant fix. Even today using the terms black and white can be “problematic” - some people don’t like being referred to as a black man by the wrong person, many white people consider “white boy” to be a racial epithet. So if we’re doing language surgery, let’s just ditch that part of the language and stop obsessing over the natural metaphors from time immemorial.

[refenestrator]

There was actually debate about this in the black activist community in the mid-late 60s. The more common term was 'negro' then, you can see it in earlier MLK writings, League of Negro Voters, etc. Stokely Carmichael was a leading voice in advocating for 'black'.

"According to a 1968 Newsweek poll, more than two-thirds of black Americans still preferred Negro, but black had become the majority preference by 1974." https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2010/octo...

[ptr2voidStar]

The only comment in this entire thread that actually attacks the root of the problem and offers THE solution.

A nonsensical "racial" hierarchy based on nominal colours is the SOURCE of the problem.

For what it's worth, the labels "white" and "black" were NOT chosen randomly by the architects of racial hierarchy (see Bacon's rebellion).

It was a very effective use of symbolism, to assign and label one part of humanity as the untermensch, and thus justify their enslavement and exploitation.

Changing branch names and policing language is akin to bandaid on a festering wound.