[phatskat]

The words in context have no racist history, but consider a young black student interested in network engineering. They start learning that “good services go on the whitelist” and “bad services go on the blacklist”. I can see a potential for that to rub them the wrong way, and while it is a small thing they would likely shrug off, it may also get filed into the box of a million other things that they have to be aware of that are racist in meaning. It’s one more thing that could reinforce the ideals that systemic racism drives into their life.

A case could also be made for people who aren’t aware of the context: are they confused because the terms aren’t familiar? Does their own bias influence them to understand the meaning and infer white = good, black = bad? If so, is that not more reason to change the words? Shouldn’t we move away from language that associates good and bad with colors that are often used as tools of division?

[meindnoch]

Do you seriously think black students would be that inept?

[phatskat]

No, I’m saying brains - especially young brains - filter and see the world differently. They make assumptions or correlations that may not be accurate.

Regardless of who the audience is, the terms equate a color to either being good or bad and it’s kind of silly when terms like allowlist and blocklist are immediately parseable into what they mean.

I don’t particularly care other than if there’s some tiny segment who feels the terms could be even remotely offensive, and we can all agree that regardless there are better terms, why not use them?