On the use of inclusive langague

During my last few years at Amazon, there's been a growing consideration for DEI in the workplace, but also in a lot of internal- and external-facing documents (marketing material, product documentation, APIs, ...).

This put emphasis on certain widely used terms in the Computer Science field which are increasingly considered problematic due to racist connotations they convey, and called for the use of more inclusive substitutes.

This includes terms such as (this list does not even attempt to be exhaustive):

During my time at Amazon, I volunteered as an Inclusion Ambassador, meaning that I was passionate about the subject of Diversity & Inclusion, and as such I ended up being fairly vocal on the topic. I firmly believe that more diversity is always a net positive, and there appears to be countless evidence of this being the case... but how to achieve this is always the more difficult part.

When discussing problematic terminology with folks, it would appear that people outside of the USA (where the conversation about inclusive phrasings has largely originated) – and more generally people who are typically not part of under-represented groups (and even mroe so, folks who aren't people of color) – would often push back with one of the following arguments:

• These are just words and people are trying to make them mean stuff they've never been meaning until recently;
• These phrasings have been used pervasively in Computer Science and are demmed standard terminology with well accepted definitions, so they cannot be replaced that easily;
• This term (e.g, blacklist) predates the root of racist connotations by at least a century, so the claim of racist smell is invalid.

It's interesting that these push-backs always come from folks who typically are not susceptible to be victims of racism in the sense that we mean it today, especially (but not only) in the USA. And for this reason, it's usually a waste of energy to try and provide arguments specifically aimed at debunking some of these claims.

For example, the term blacklist is ethymologically derived from the term black book, which has been in use since the 1400's... So this is in fact accurate that the term itself predates the racism it is claimed to be connotated with today (ref.). That fact is however in and of itself not sufficient to actually void the racist connotation! Indeed, the fact the words were used outside of a racist context does not prove that they were not later (ab)used to exercise racism.

The term brown bag (colloqually referring to a meeting held at or close to lunch time, during which people are allowed or encouraged to have lunch) refers to the brown-colored paper bags in which folks may bring their lunch. It was however also used as a complexion reference in racist America — if your skin was darker than the bag, you were denied entry (ref.).

So instead of entering the sterile argument game, I find it is a lot more effective to question what exactly is the difficulty with replacing occurrences of certain words with another... As this usually amounts to a trivial search-and-replace operation that can often be done in a matter of a couple of minutes. And with respects to well-accepted definitions, it sometimes is very stright forward... The first time I received a calendar invite for a "brown bag", I had to ask "what the hell is this?"... Now... a lunch and learn? I immediately get the idea that I'll be having lunch while at the same time learning something new (what's not to love about that?).

At the core, it matters not whether I relate or agree with the perceptions of other humans who think master has racist connotations (in particular when not paired with slave)... I am not part of a group that has historically been victim of slavery or racist slurs... As a member of a pretty wildly privileged group (cis-gender white dudes), I think it is my duty to act on behalf of those with less privilege, and so I will always side with the victims, and insist inclusive terminology is used... After all, it is a trivial price to pay.