Thoughts on "De-blackization"

The "black live matters" movement has been in full swing recently. When the English site is opened, many slogans of support are displayed on the homepage. Black background, strong contrasting colors and huge unparalleled text. To be honest, from a visual experience, it is ugly, and it is very different from the popular web typography today. But when it comes to publicity, being ugly can also have a stronger impact, and you have to pay attention to the words to know that there is such a movement going on.

Being in the mainland, I actually don’t have much enthusiasm for this sport, except to like a few related news on twitter. Recently I found a message from the twitter development team. It is said that they plan to replace some words used in software projects that are not friendly to black brothers, such as blacklist, into neutral words, such as denylist. Some people call this "de-blackization", which I find very figurative.

This caught my attention, because I am a software maker myself. If "de-blackization" becomes the consensus of the software industry, then the familiar technical terms, documents, and even key instructions in the software may all be changed. into another name. To avoid some software glitches caused by this, you have to prepare in advance. Update knowledge, documentation, and corresponding software code.

Therefore, I originally only looked at the sport as an outsider, with the most likes and no comments. But now, it seems to be forced to "join" the sport.

I don't really want to comment on whether "de-blackization" is the right thing to do. Some people feel that as long as there is no discriminatory sense, there is no need to change. But whether it means discrimination is difficult to define. The father said yes, the mother said no, it is easy to argue. So in most cases, try to avoid using these controversial words.

But I'm a little worried about how far "de-blackization" will eventually spread. Today, it is the software industry. What about tomorrow? I haven't counted how many commonly used words use "black" to describe negative impressions, but there must be no less. If you have to change it, is it finished? Are those important books that mention "black" also revised?

Of course, "de-blacking" is not the goal, it's just a small goal on the way to the final goal, maybe not even a goal. But this small goal may bring many unexpected results.