#WordsMatter : why it’s important to end “master” and “slave” usage in computers, among others

I’ve been surprised by both the decision of Github to replace some words like “master”, “whitelist”, “blacklist” by other terms, and by the reactions I read on reddit about this.

You know the expression “boxing with words” ? Well, we’ve been doing it in a weird and subtile way for ages, and it has to stop

I know it might mean nothing to most of people, especially white ones I guess. But words matter. I’ll try to keep it short and explain why it’s important (to me at least) :

• Yes, the use of black and white opposition is older than slavery itself, and is more about light vs. darkness, as some comments argued.
• No, “master” in git isn’t related to any “slave”.

But speaking more generally, I think the use of such words has led to two ideas we need to change :

• that black was kinda bad, and white was ok
• that cooperation between multiple persons or machines involves authority and domination of one of them on the other

These two ideas have been rooted in both our language and work culture. Because, guess what, language and culture are deeply linked together! And now, “white” is the default for good.

Muhammad Ali stated this with a lot of humour :

Side question : ask yourself why do people in the USA use the term “African American” to avoid using “black” and “negro” words, but they never call white people “European American” ?

We must grow up as a Humanity

Now that darkness is not a threat anymore (at last!), and that it’s not an excuse anymore, it’s time to change our mindset, and therefore our language.

• We must end the idea that something or someone should be a master above others like white over others, men over women, experienced over rookie, the one who has the information above the one who hasn’t, etc.
• And we must stop using terms like “master/slave”, “whitelist/blacklist”, “male/female” for other terms like “main/secondary”, “goodlist/badlist”, “ok/nok”, “positive/negative” or whatever would be more neutral and than the current words we’re using.

Our language is obsolete : let’s update it

A lot of things follow this way (like decentralized computing, changes in marriage laws formerly giving more power to the man, etc), and our language is getting obsolete. Let’s update it !

There no shame to drop some old ringard words and invent some new ones, as we do for technologies.

And I would go further, as a non-white, and say : if you’re white think it’s stupid, well, it’s not totally your right to decide.