Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 18, 2020 16:57 UTC (Thu) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
In reply to: Loaded terms in free software by Rudd-O
Parent article: Loaded terms in free software

Everyone comments on the slavery, but this was just one part of the bigger picture. Colonial empires exported racism all over the world and this is why racism is a global issue to this day. That was my point: this is *still* an issue and is not erased by the fact that some countries fixed what they should not have been doing in the first place, and conveniently absolved themselves of any responsibility for the damage they caused around the world. The least you can do is admit the legacy of your past.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 13:28 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (6 responses)

Rewriting the language is not admitting anything, it’s putting things under the carpet so you can pretend the past did not exist and you are not racist today because you are not using past racist language (making you free to invent modern racism at modern targets with modern language).

Much better to keep language as it is, admit racism did exist, does exist, and will exist, and make sure not to perpetuate it yourself instead of using tartuffian fig leafs. Statues glorifying racism are one thing, everyday’s language is another.

I had the chance to visit Egyptian temples. Seeing Millenia-old monuments, depicting bloody pharaonic victories over various tribes (represented in abject objectively racist poses), defaced Millenia ago by early Christians, before more racist history rewriting by Arab Muslim conquerors, whose descendants complain today or European racism (while continuing to treat the Christian minority like dirt, and looking down on “dark” Sudanese) really drives home the utter futility of making things “good” by rewriting the past.

Rewriting the past won’t make you good. Rewriting the past won’t make you right. The only thing that will make you good and right and thoughtful is behaving good and right and thoughtful.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 14:44 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (4 responses)

No; rewriting the language we use is not about brushing things under the carpet. It's about separating inoffensive terminology (like that used for a read-only server that maintains a full copy of a writeable server's database) from offensive terminology (like that used to describe humans treated as commodity machinery), so that the only uses left of the words in question relate to the offensive uses.

That way, you (for example) know that when someone's talking in English about a slave, they're talking about a human being treated as a commodity, and not about a computer system; there's no chance of someone who's deliberately trying to cause upset claiming after the fact that they weren't referring to humans, but to computers, if the only use left is about humans or historic jargon.

It's similar to the modern loss of the 20th century American slang phrase "nigger in the woodpile". Relegating that particular way of saying "there are important facts being hidden here behind other important facts" to historic uses only is part of making it harder for people who choose to use words to cause upset to then pretend that they didn't mean it as offensive, they were just using a common phrase. We're not rewriting the past by stopping the use of that phrase - we are simply ensuring that it's harder for a racist to pretend that they didn't mean to be rude, they were just using a common phrase that causes upset.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 15:06 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (3 responses)

You thoroughly underestimate the flexibility of human language and how it is dead-easy to construct coded and loaded sentences from common words.

Politicians and markeeting people do it all the time.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 15:24 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

And you (a) assume things about me that aren't true, and (b) thoroughly overestimate the value of coded and loaded sentences for recruiting people who do not currently agree with you.

Bringing your co-believers along with you is easy; keeping the ideology going and recruiting new people is hard, and if you're in a position of having to say "we have a minority view, because we can't talk about it openly", you turn off far more people by having to say "well, we're an unpopular minority with our views" than you gain by the feeling of being part of a secret organisation.

It's why politicians like to talk about the "silent majority" - the idea is that people who aren't actively opposing you probably agree, but don't dare say it. If everyone's actively opposing, it becomes harder to make that argument.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 17:56 UTC (Fri) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

You don’t need to work hard to recruit racist people. Racism has existed pretty much through all human history, it’s probably some leftover from earlier stages of human evolution. People do not use loaded sentences to recruit more racist people, they use loaded sentences to express their own racist views.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 19, 2020 21:55 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> it’s probably some leftover from earlier stages of human evolution

Everyone needs an "us" and "them". In nature, species (and groups, and tribes) all want "Lebensraum". And unfortunately, skin colour, or accent, or any other distinguishable feature, rapidly becomes a basis for said "us" and "them". Isn't that how Peacocks grew such long tails?

Cheers,
Wol

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 20, 2020 6:56 UTC (Sat) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

I'm not calling to rewrite the past. In fact I'm one of those people who are deeply uncomfortable with squash-rebase merges (they erase history in *two* ways, not just one!) ;) It's about rewriting the *future*. And my comment was not about changing words anyway, it was about people who deny change is needed because they already "fixed" the problem but are still profiting from the wealth they gained from exploitation of other people and are doing nothing to pay off this debt.