As another black SWE, I'll add that I disagree with your perspective. I think the name change does more harm than good because it trivializes the movement. If the goal is to change minds and open hearts then where appropriate, we should endeavor to communicate in ways that will be well received by those who need to hear the message. Stuff like this is just preaching to the choir and alienating the rest, but also not actually changing anything that matters in the lives of black people.
>I think the name change does more harm than good because it trivializes the movement.
>If the goal is to change minds and open hearts then where appropriate, we should endeavor to communicate in ways that will be well received by those who need to hear the message. Stuff like this is just preaching to the choir and alienating the rest.
> Also not actually changing anything that matters in the lives of black people.
I couldn't have put this better myself. There are two issues
- What people want is justice, including economic justice, and progress. They want to stop being discriminated by gerrymandering politicians and trigger-happy cops. They want an economy that serves everyone and not just those on the very top, and that does not disproportionally discriminate those on the bottom and especially minority communities with a history of disadvantage. In this sense, changing master to main is nothing but a feel-good measure for privileged white people to feel good about themselves without actually having to put in any effort into tackling hard problems like improving democracy or improving the economic system.
- Besides this, it's actually a stupid move in a political, pragmatic sense. Like you're saying, it alienates precisely those you need to bring to your side ("it's pc gone mad!") and it's only going to be well received by those already pre-disposed to agree with you. It's actually my main criticism of the Left nowadays: we are shit at politics! You have to be pragmatic and somewhat calculating to actually get shit done. Many activists on the left today rather childishly think that simply being right is enough, as if you didn't have to be smart, convincing, use rhetoric, etc.
I think you overstate the level of lasting alienation and understate the cumulative impact that a bunch of small "trivial" changes could have over years.
For a hundred years after the Civil War, and then a solid 50 more after the Civil Rights movement, we had "white people doing nothing" plus "some still-racist white people actively trying to roll things back." Doing things, and keeping the issue in the forefront, even if the things sometime look silly to some people, is going to make us more progress than going back to doing nothing because some people think only the perfect things are worth doing.
(People getting affronted, offended, and alienated by actions that they think are "silly" is another problem entirely... You don't think it'll make a big difference? That's nice. Why are you making a big deal out of it, then? There's a virtue signalling of "look at how more evolved I am to not be fooled by your silly change, and still spot that the world still sucks after it!!")
As much as we pretend otherwise, people's attention and resources are limited. Time spent bikeshedding these inconsequential things is time not spent tackling more important issues. Each newsflash that opens with "pc culture gone mad! the word "blacklist" is being banned by radical leftists" is a newsflash that doesn't open with
"wages have been stagnant for the past 50 years despite gains in productivity"
"prices of tvs and smartphones falling, prices of housing and healthcare skyrocketing"
"statistical studies show voter preferences have near-zero correlation with effected legislation, while preferences of the wealthier 0.5% are very strongly correlated"
etc.
In short: you're alienating people that you could bring to your side, you're wasting time and effort in inconsequential changes, you're giving fuel to those who use these trivialities to distract the populace from the real issues. I see no upside here.
As a Native American this comes across to me the same as how the savior complex drives people to talk down to Native Americans about their persecution.
And that's pretty much what the OP article is complaining about, people with savior complexes doing performative things that don't really fix the problem on a larger scale.
If I may ask, (why) do you prefer Native American over Indian (assuming you're talking about being a United States native and not a native of other parts of America, ie. South America)?
I have no preference, so sometimes I will say Native American, sometimes its American Indian, sometimes its indigenous... No real preference other than I tend to use one or another based on context at times. Its more clear and not mildly politically loaded to say "Native American" in this context.
I do not really like using Indian to refer to Native Americans as I work with a lot of people from India. This is a personal preference, I don't correct people who say Indian to refer to Native Americans and I will often use it in a conversation where its already being used to avoid confusion or bad vibes.
An of course, there is the confusion you noted that can happen between the super-continent America and the country commonly called America.
Do USA schools teach that America is one continent divided in north, central and south America? Or is it America=USA ?
I'm from South America and we learn it's one continent
There are multiple, separate issues in the question.
As a matter of actual geological fact, North America and South America are separate continents (they have their own cratonic cores). Geographically they are considered distinct in the USA also. Central America is a cultural or political region refering to the isthmus -- it is not a continent in any sense.
Nationals of the USA are called "Americans" by USA nationals, and by people from other parts of the world, including Japan, Russia, etc (in their own phonologies). Canadians refer to USA nationals as Americans, and do not call themselves Americans.
Europeans frequently object to USA nationals calling themselves Americans, claiming that the word should refer people's of both North America and South America. People from South American nations seem to feel the same. Mexicans seem to me much more likely to refer to a USA national as "Americano" than they are "Estadounidense."
USA nationals will sometimes describe people from North and South American nations as be from "the Americas."
In my experience, a lot of people from the United States tend to conflate "America" and the "United States of America". It's a pet peeve of mine, so I sometimes correct them. But usually people just get annoyed with me. ;-)
This blows my mind, because it never occurred to me that this would actually be taught differently. But yes, afaik, in NA we're taught that North and South America are two separate continents. In Canada however, Americans are from the USA, but we don't generally refer to the USA as America. Only they do that. We refer to the middle nation in NA as The U.S.
It's hard to recall what I was taught about Central America, but I believe it was that it's sort of a region shared between both and only a colloquially separate entity.
So you learned "there are six continents"? That's really interesting. Growing up in the US, we always learned it as seven. I never really thought about that as something that was taught differently based on location.
(Unfortunately though, I think that ignorance is fairly common for a lot of aspects of life for people raised in the US.)
Side note: I was going to say "aspects of life for Americans", but realized Americans means more than just those in the US. So I propose a new term for "people from the US". USers. :)
At least from my experience, America is the US. If you want to refer to the giant landmass that makes up the majority of the land in the western hemisphere, you say "The Americas".
> you're wasting time and effort in inconsequential changes, you're giving fuel to those who use these trivialities to distract the populace from the real issues.
That's probably a valid perspective, but I see a lot of well-meaning comments like this, and this thread now has more comments on it, than github has employees. Perhaps the time "wasted" on this at github isn't as high as the time wasted discussing it.
As a software engineer, my workflow is forced to change all the time. As a software engineer, I don't complain. I've been praised for not complaining. I will work on Visual Basic code if you want me to.
Similarly, I'll change how I speak and work if it makes someone more comfortable, no problem.
I'm also desperate for there to be more conversations about unionizing, corporate lobbying, the outsized influence of the 1%.
Maybe if we both just shut up about this topic and get on with our other work, the world will be a better place?
With regards to "main" vs "master" I honestly don't care. It might make some people feel better, and it might not. Should I care, and comment here about it?
So let it happen quickly without complaining about it so that tomorrow we can be arguing about something else, instead of arguing about the same thing for ten straight years.
"People get pissed off even by small changes" is a MUCH bigger impediment towards real progress than "people are making small changes that won't fix the whole world" is.
I don't believe most of the people who say they're only problem is that the change is "too small." I think that's just an excuse of convenience to resist any change or challenge to the status quo. If your problem is that the change isn't big enough, the solution is to push for bigger ones yourself! But that's not usually what we see those people doing...
It's not the size of the change that's a problem, it's that the change doesn't address the problem at all, and that the only metric for success for these changes is how angry they make people (which, in the circles of the people proposing these changes, means the change is "working").
It's entirely possible to hire more engineers of color and pay them fairly, but it turns out that pitting workers against each other by introducing a handful of inconsequential process and standards changes is much cheaper and hinders the solidarity that enables coordinated advocacy for better working conditions.
Each newsflash could cover those things anyway, but they choose garbage wedge issues and will continue to foment them when they cant find any: biden's dog was a recent controversy because talking about systemic problems doesn't get clicks and doesn't make people upset in the same way this type of BS does.
I'd argue it doesn't just achieve nothing, it works against the cause in two ways:
* First, as others have said, it builds resentment in those that see it as not worthwhile compared to other things and who are negatively impacted like how you describe.
* Second, which I haven't really seen people bring up, by succeeding at a visible but inconsequential change, the activists who brought this about are less likely to bother with something that actually matters.
> I think you overstate the level of lasting alienation and understate the cumulative impact that a bunch of small "trivial" changes could have over years.
Not even close. Everyone I've talked to about it makes some mention about the left having lost its mind, myself included.
>I think you overstate the level of lasting alienation and understate the cumulative impact that a bunch of small "trivial" changes could have over years.
I'm a very liberal person, and have actively fought prejudice, especially the type of unconscious bias that is so difficult to stomp out, my entire professional career. I'm especially keen on the dynamics of power in conversation, it's crazy how often people from a less privilege group get interrupted, and people rarely realize the dynamic as its occurring.
But all of the PC policing and the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric has really soured me on giving a shit about any of this. While I'm privileged by being white, I was born to a lower-middle class family in a rural area and don't feel particularly privileged. I went to a backwards high school where I was bullied for being a nerd, with curriculum from 60's( graduated in ~2010 and we didn't have a single CS class, and highest achievable GPA was 4.2, while people in neighboring districts could go to the GATE high school and graduated with a 5.0). I had undiagnosed/treated mental health problems which were significantly exacerbated by my family's inability to afford healthcare (we had insurance, but couldn't afford to actually see the doctor). Despite this we were too wealthy to qualify for any student aid and I was unable to win any substantial scholarships. I was mature enough at 20 to know I wasn't doing well enough nor did I have adequate direction in school to take tens of thousands in what I understood at the time to be an undischargeable debt on the gamble that it would pay off. I remember looking for help about how to do better at the community college I was attending and basically determined that I, as a straight white atheist, didn't really have allies as when I asked people where they got e.g. counseling, it was always through a channel i didn't have access to, whether it was a church group, a family friend or some support group for people who weren't me. My parents are both 40 years my senior and were so far out of the loop that they didn't even know that GPAs went higher than 4. I also didn't know that if I saw a psychiatrist I could turn everything around, and had no access to one, so I dropped out.
>Why are you making a big deal out of it, then?
Because I, personally, find all this woke shit about race and sex from bougie whites offensive, classist, and racist. I completely support it when it is coming from the (dis)affected community in question, but when there is a dogpile of privileged people virtue signaling in a way that completely negates the actual issues (like people not having equitable access to justice, healthcare, education and housing) I find affront. I would argue most of the problems that minority communities face are also shared by poor white communities, the only difference is that those communities have virtually no actual voice in modern discourse and have privileged whites talking on their behalf instead. Admittedly a common problem generally, but I don't want people with power, and make no mistake bougie tech workers have a lot more power than the poor do, to feel they've "done something" and pat themselves on the back until they actually make poor people's lives better, changing master/slave to main/source, or whatever the fuck language change you choose is literally doing nothing to make things better for anyone but github/micorsoft. It's paying lip service, full stop.
I also find some of talk about the historic enslavement of Blacks in the US kinda weird. I can track my lineage back thru 100s of years of serfdom, my ancestors literally fleeing Europe to America during Reconstruction in 19th century to escape brutal peonage and serfdom.. and nobody cares. I'm of the "priviledged class" because people who I have no relation to but shared my skin color were of the ruling class 250 years ago when we didn't respect human rights. Sounds racist as hell to me, all things considered. I just don't get it.
I agree with much of what you've said, especially the part about the shared problems that poor minority and poor White people face. Based on what you've said I wouldn't say you were very "privileged."
But responding to one of your points, and I don't think this is taught very well in schools, the specific discrimination that Black people faced went on for a long time after the end of slavery. For example, here in what is now considered progressive Oakland, CA, Black people were kept out of many jobs through the 1940s and 50s, including as streetcar drivers. Also, they were excluded from government subsidized mortgages through the 60s, which impeded their ability to build wealth and live in good conditions. These examples of explicit racial discrimination happened well within living memory.
Oh I understand that completely, which is why I state that I do have privilege as a white person. but the left has a messaging problem wherein too many of the bougie whites narcissisticaly believe all of their privileges are shared amongst whites.
Even apart from your examples, (you missed Japanese interment camps/stolen wealth, probably the worst thing the US did domestically in the 20th century) racial profiling is still extremely real in this country. Which is on everyone radar, but it's really put into focus the times I've traveled cross country and consistently see POC on the side of the interstate.
>These examples of explicit racial discrimination happened well within living memory.
I mean, the way I see it, explicit financial discrimination is still happening today. Its just called affirmative action.
> I mean, the way I see it, explicit financial discrimination is still happening today. Its just called affirmative action.
Nope. Redlining, the entire history of USDA subsidies in the 20th century, the GI bill etc are far more economically impacting than any meager adjustments to the dominance of white people in business and government. White people need to STFU about affirmative action as it has not meaningfully changed the shape of leadership in our workforce.
That was then, and this is now. To call the descendants of people who went through that period either "privileged" or "marginalized" is no different than visiting the sins of the father upon the son. It's morally reprehensible.
Thank you for taking the time to write this and for thinking the way you do. The most common trait among successful (not necessarily wealthy) people in my opinion transcends race, creed, religion, or sex; it's persistence.
>Besides this, it's actually a stupid move in a political, pragmatic sense. Like you're saying, it alienates precisely those you need to bring to your side ("it's pc gone mad!")
Alienates at best, emboldening the racists at worst. Clearly even the author was pissed by this change, not just because it's an empty gesture but also a change to workflow. I'm imagining some f̶a̶s̶h̶y̶ ̶e̶d̶g̶e̶l̶o̶r̶d̶ "Western Chauvinist" programmer throwing a fit every time they accidentally git checkout master, racism intensifies.
> "It's actually my main criticism of the Left nowadays: we are shit at politics!"
a good point in the making until this line, where you aligned yourself with a shallow identity. fuck left and right. stop trying to find a team to mindlessly root for. yes, it's hard, and yes, it means more mindshare devoted to evaluating what you think rather than who you want others to think you are in subservience to ideological hegemony. politics is shit because not enough of us do this, but rather settle on a tribe and leave our brains behind in the process.
the left isn't right, it's a coalition for power, which is for delivering advantage to some people at the exclusion of others. power doesn't value or uphold right and wrong, so you're premise is profoundly misguided here.
You're assuming too many things about me. "Left" is a term with centuries of history. I use it because it accurately describes my positions, and the traditions and schools of thought that most influenced my views.
Suppose that 80% of the population support something that me and my friends don't like. If we can divide this group into two, by finding things that they strongly disagree over, then we can guarantee that this 80% never gets to express its majority.
So if we can put 50% of these people in a group called "Left" and 50% of these people in a group called "Right", and then prevent direct democracy with something such as elected representatives, then neither the Left nor the Right ever has to vote on the issue, because instead they are fighting over the most important thing, e.g. abortion. When the Left are in power, they are focused on the things that the Right is trying to take away, and vice versa. There is an eternal struggle. As a result, the things that a majority agrees on never get voted on, and even if they did, whoever is not in power would vote against them.
This is not hypothetical. There are several major issues that have the support of the majority (sometimes as much as 80%) of the population, and yet they are never voted on.
"Now that … workers are superfluous, what do you do with them? First of all, you have to make sure they don’t notice that society is unfair and try to change that, and the best way to distract them is to get them to hate and fear one another."
The "us vs them"ing that's been happening here for the past several decades is more than concerning, it's shocking. The number of times per year that a Congressperson will side with the opposite party during a vote has been shrinking like a cannonball for decades, and it's so limited now it almost doesn't exist. In the 60s, this wasn't the case; voting with the opposite side on certain things was fairly common. There is no way that is not directed and intentional.
And the issues we are getting wrapped up in emotionally are either 1) focused on fear or 2) 'religious' issues for which we will almost never have common agreement, but which are not of actual vital importance at a national level.
But I'm not arguing to "divide" or anything ffs, I simply used the word to describe a broad range of political positions, whose people which defend them I think are often making those two mistakes.
This is what happens when “left” and “right” are two massive blocks. Your point is a very good demonstration of why a two-parties system is not much better than a single-party one.
There is an optimum in the middle. Governments lasting for a day like several European countries have had in the past is also harmful and alienating. But if there is nothing forcing people to compromise and collaborate, what you describe is the expected outcome: frequent swings from one side to the other, each time with a slim majority, and nothing good happening over the long term.
The problem is not left and right. The problem is that you cannot represent a full spectrum of ideologies with a binary choice.
> This is not hypothetical. There are several major issues that have the support of the majority (sometimes as much as 80%) of the population, and yet they are never voted on.
maybe there just isn't really much democracy in the united states.
“ In fact, the Data for Progress poll found H.R. 1—also known as the For the People Act—has broad public support. More than two-thirds of likely voters (68 percent) said they would back the proposal. Just 16 percent said they opposed it.
The support also transcended party lines, with 70 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independent or third-party voters and 57 percent of Republican voters expressing approval for the bill.”
Except all the left voted for it and all the right voted against it. You confuse and underestimate the impact of a minority party’s ability to maintain control via gerrymandering, wealthy election finding, voter suppression and an undemocratic Senate.
Show us the litany major issues 80% of citizens support that the left kneecaps.
You won't escape 90% of the party lines non-sense until you force bill discipline and kill riders. Until such time as representatives can vote on one issue withou getting blown out stackwise by having to wadethrough 6 distinct pieces of legislation all rolled into one, there will be defensive obstruction along party lines.
GP's point is also working as designed. The Founders envisioned a country with a minimum of lawmaking. The system was intended to only respond to a fairly unambiguous signal, and warned of the dangers of a Government that squandered it's credibility on laws it couldn't enforce, or frequent flip-floppery. It's just sad no one seems to have listened.
If left is a term that “goes back centuries”, then I don’t know what it means anymore. In the 18th century it was the group that sat on the other side of the room from the royalists.
Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base.
This can be contrasted with liberalism, which is the belief in a core platform of liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law. Though liberalism is often conflated with leftism, it's not, and neither is it the opposite of conservatism.
Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless. They still are relevant, people just aren't really understanding the political philosophy.
> Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base.
This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government.
> Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless.
They are certainly approaching that point if people don't mean remotely the same thing when using them.
The left-wing perspective on "power to the people" often means the use of state power on behalf of people to counteract private sources of power (eg commercial power).
The right-wing perspective often means the removal of state power in favor of private (ie, "personal") source of power (often in the form of commercial entities).
> This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government.
I wouldn't describe these aspects of Republican messaging as their core platform. They're just conservative standards, all conservatives tend to imagine themselves this way. Rugged individualists, callbacks to tradition, even "states rights", aren't particularly leftist in that they aren't calling for moving power anywhere, but rather keeping it where it is. You vote for Republicans if you like their messaging, it just so happens that how Republicans want to achieve these goals means the old white people are empowered to do things the old white way.
If you pierce through the dreck of the messaging, the platform's the same as any other conservative ideology. Law and order, another pillar of conservative rationale, is the name of an actual political party in Poland, guess what, they're actually the majority party.
There's just not that much special about American politics when you get right down to it. What's dangerous about it is that America has more money than the average European country, but our society is far less well-educated on humanities subjects. If you think that makes us prone to misinformation and propaganda, well, it does.
such concepts are not static across a population, nor through time. beyond the author(s) and early adherents, the population itself has a separate conception of such ideas that can be markedly different from the initial conception, and that also changes through time. it's certainly useful to understand this sort of history, but trying to stake a definition in time and defy the dynamism of these concepts is inherently political (e.g., originalism). sometimes that can be done deftly and sometimes hamfistedly.
in any case, the concepts can be relevant and meaningful and still not be useful as identity markers in any meaningful and relevant way. identification principally with a single school of thought is simply a mistake of rationality, and how we get unthinking tribalist extremism. it happens with any -ism: libertarianism, socialism, nihilism, capitalism, etc. the world works as a non-linear composition of all of these ideas and much more. not a single one can be considered "correct" in any meaningful sense.
They retain meaning across populations and through time. That's the whole point of philosophy. People's opinions on the matters change, but that doesn't change the matters.
Liberalism didn't change because people are using the term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it properly. Like a market, eventually the political landscape returns to rationality. At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism.
They don't get to rewrite the meanings of the words because they don't like the connotations. Many through history have used his playbook, and it all follows the same general arc.
> Liberalism didn't change because people are using the term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it properly.
Well...
Actually it has changed. Classical Liberalism[1] is primarily an economic belief system that advocates small, non-interventionist government. It evolved into Right-libertarianism in the 20th and 21st century.
"In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as possible to allow the exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form, neo-classical liberalism advocated social Darwinism. Right-libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical liberalism."
This odd positioning is most visible in Australia, where the conservative party is called "The Liberal party" after the mid-20th century view on this.
This is a long way from any modern understanding of Liberalism particularly within the US:
"Social liberalism, also known as left liberalism in Germany, modern liberalism in the United States[4] and new liberalism in the United Kingdom, is a political philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses a regulated market economy and the expansion of civil and political rights....
In the United States, the term social liberalism may sometimes refer to progressive stances on sociocultural issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage as opposed to social conservatism."[2]
All classical liberals are liberals, but not all liberals are classic liberals. Ditto for social liberals. When I defined liberalism, I outlined a core platform. There are many many many movements within liberalism that all share the same core platform. They have to.
You cannot have classical liberalism in a country that's not committed to the core liberal platform. A free market just doesn't work in a world where there's no equality of the law, no liberty, and no consent of the governed. If even one of these is missing, you really can't have classic liberalism either. A regime will invariably put their fingers on the scales of commerce.
Ditto for every single other political philosophy under the liberal banner. All of these things rest upon a belief in the population of those three bedrock principles.
This goes against any common, modern understanding of the plain unadorned term "liberal". For example, former (Republican) house speaker Paul Ryan has called himself a "classical liberal"[1]
I'd also note:
Core beliefs of classical liberals did not necessarily include democracy nor government by a majority vote by citizens[2]
I'm not sure why you're presenting this as an argument against me. Americans, by and large, are liberals, every last one of them. It's the ones ignorant of political philosophy who have turned it into a pejorative. Paul Ryan calling himself a classical liberal is him calling himself a liberal.
Allow me to restate. Liberalism involves a core belief in consent of the governed, liberty, and equality under the law. Classical liberalism is all of these things. They just believe certain aspects are more important than others.
Some American conservative might decide economic freedom (liberty) is the most important aspect of liberalism. That's fine, that's all well and good, under the banner of liberalism. If you suddenly took away this conservative's consent of the governed, or made someone unequal according to the law, they would object, assuming they're a true liberal, which they are, because these values are steeped into just about every American. Solve problems through the political process, not by subverting it. Very, very core America.
What's dangerous about Trump is he's seducing people away from liberalism and towards royalism. Royals are above the law and get to impose governance on the people regardless of their consent. Not even the British agree that the royal family can govern without the consent of the populace, they had many many civil battles eventually deciding the role of the monarchy. Trumpists imagine these things are true even though they're not. They want a monarchy which is above the rule of law. They decide what is true and nobody can use legal action to decide otherwise.
Liberalism is a core Anglo doctrine, every single citizen of Anglo countries is a liberal, and many Europeans as well. They may campaign on other platforms, but if the core liberal pillars of society are threatened, Americans will revert back to those pillars.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but conservatives were fine with Trump's shenanigans, up to a point. That point is essentially, where Trump started threatening core liberal institutions. Once that started happening, the establishment started backing away. Only once Trump waved his hands again after the insurrection, saying it was all for fun, all a show, "be peaceful", did they start to line up again. Trump understood that he had to thread a needle between his base and core America. He failed, because Americans aren't going to go along with a clear subversion of democracy. He thought they could be convinced to and was wrong. Republicans wanted, and still want, his political vitality, but not his tactics.
Conservatives went along with him until he really threatened to make free and fair elections a thing of the past. I'm not saying that the American right is good people, I'm saying that the core beliefs of liberalism are inherent in all of us. There has long long been a fascination with royalism, like every single other democratic nation, but when push comes to shove, those who have tasted Anglo popular sovereignty will choose to continue popular sovereignty. Royalists will always be the minority.
yah, that's a political (and politicized) assertion. you also don't get to define terms only to your convenience, without consideration for the long arc of history and the breadth of the world's imagination.
> "At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism."
impulsive statements like this reveal the limitations of that kind of rigid thinking. trump isn't a fascist, he's a self-centrist. he's one of the simplest human beings to understand because of this. politicized projections such as yours are overfitted at best, and completely unfitted in most cases, as in this case.
Those are the very same thing. A fascist does not care about anything other than personal power. All philosophies and ideology are superfluous. Fascists run on the very basic political premise of "you like me, elect me and let me run things because you like me and you'll like what I want to do." That's the core message, anything else is pointless to understanding. That's what fascism is. I'm not misunderstanding Trumpism, I'm giving it the same name everybody else who understands political history and theory gives it.
Everything people like about Trump, are the same things that cause people to put fascists in power. Have a look at this explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8
Fascism isn't some long slow slide down to Nazi Germany that Americans seem to think of when they consider the term. The Nazis are the most visible and publicly know version of fascism, but countless others throughout history, in Europe, Latin America, Africa, have managed to subvert the mechanisms of their republics using the tactics of populism to put themselves in power, unaccountable to any sort of checks.
How is liberalism not the opposite of conservatism? Conservatives wish to maintain the status quo, true? Liberals wish to change it....
Liberalism has had a horrendous crash lately, many internal contradictions and fallacies have become clear, but the I still adhere to those principals.
You're thinking of progressivism, not liberalism. The American right has turned "liberalism" into a pejorative despite mostly being liberal themselves. (Trump supporters aren't liberal, hard to be liberal when you support fascism)
The only two terms that are really opposites here are 'left' and 'right', because they literally mean which side of the aisle you're sitting on. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the extremes of both sides are going to line up around who belongs in power, the elites, or in publicly accountable institutions.
It’s been basically “power to the individuals” (one person, one vote, this sort of things), as opposed to “power to the elite” (long live the kings etc) since the beginning. The elite makes do without a king, but the aristocratic class reflex is still there.
This spectrum is limited and one-dimensional, but it still is meaningful. The people who claim it isn’t are usually con men after your vote. “The third way” always turned out to be a scam.
I think you’re overfitting history with your current perspective. It’s so limiting, and mostly a recent phenomenon, to look at the past and politics as just “deciding where the power goes”. Most humans even in the US today don’t care except in how it affects their lives. Peasants likely didn’t care who the king was, or had some deep desire to rule themselves, many were just concerned with crop yields, protecting their family, enjoying life, and so on. Colonists in the US barely cared that they were ruled by a king, at least until they got hit with burdensome taxes.
Politics isn’t about power except secondarily, it’s about determining ones way of life. I don’t think anyone would care if they were ruled by a dictator, as long as that dictator didn’t interfere with how they live their life.
This is important because it seems like you walk away with the idea that conservatives are always about concentrating power and progressives are all about diffusing it. That’s just incorrect. Both have different ways they want to live their life and their policies are a reflection of attempts to change the environment around them to fulfill that vision. If progressive policy didn’t affect conservatives way of life, conservatives wouldn’t care about progressives. The reverse is true.
This framework fits every instance in history and everywhere on Earth for why politics happen: because people want to live their envisioned life.
Left has a long history, yes. But there is so much diversity within the groups that identify as leftist. And some people you might call leftist (like the folks at raddle.me) reject the term wholeheartedly. They are committed to thorough antiracism, but do not want to be associated with communist or socialist regimes or ideologies.
'left' (and 'right') is a term to subvert thinking in ways that advantage the already powerful, and short-circuit the formation of coalitions that can bring about real prosperity and equity to more people.
No one is arguing about right/wrong, he is simply saying the term has an accepted definition (especially in historical context, zooming out past the modern US political media landscape)
the issue is that once you stake your identity on a singular position, you've lost objectivity. that's when it becomes political, not personal.
further, as argued elsewhere, there is no singular correct ("accepted") definition of "left" that isn't a political insistence rather than objective and unyielding fact.
if you believe in "power to the people" or "equal rights" then state that explicitly. don't hide under the highly amorphous tent of "left", which invariably can be contrived into any extant principles that suits the propounder in the moment. spell out what you mean, not your professed identity and (wrongly) assume everyone shares a singular definition of that identity.
coalitions can form without being braindead. it's about being cognizant of the mechanisms of control that are impinging on us and resisting those so we can have meaningful dialog on issues that matter, not this bullshit.
The world is only changed by individual people. Alliances, parties, movements, schools of thought, etc., are just mobs who have adopted the ideas of particular individuals.
Single men do nothing. They still need others to do the hard work. The people who were truly successful did so by managing large organisations. Also, blind luck and circumstances.
Single men perpetrate every single act of injustice under the sun. It’s a single person who discriminates in interviews, discriminates, or Beat someone because of their skin color.
They also make every act of kindness, justice, and compassion, so I am not sure what point you are making. We were writing about single-handedly changing history.
In their present condition men are like bees which have just swarmed and are hanging down a limb in a cluster. The position of the bees on the limb is temporary, and must inevitably be changed. They must rise and find a new home for themselves. Every one of the bees knows that and wishes to change its position and that of the others, but not one is able to do so before the others are going to do so. They cannot rise all at once, because one hangs down from the other, keeping it from separating itself from the swarm, and so all continue to hang. It would seem that the bees could not get out of this state, just as it seems to worldly men who are entangled in the snare of the social world-conception. But there would be no way out for the bees, if each of the bees were not separately a living being, endowed with wings. So there would also be no way out for men, if each of them were not a separate living being, endowed with the ability of acquiring the Christian concept of life.
If every bee which can fly did not fly, the rest, too, would not move, and the swarm would never change its position. And as one bee need but open its wings, rise up, and fly away, and after it a second, third, tenth, hundredth, in order that the immovable cluster may become a freely flying swarm of bees, so one man need but understand life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, and begin to live accordingly, and a second, third, hundredth, to do so after him, in order that the magic circle of the social life, from which there seemed to be no way out, be destroyed.
But people think that the liberation of all men in this manner is too slow, and that it is necessary to find and use another such a means, so as to free all at once; something like what the bees would do, if, wishing to rise and fly away, they should find that it was too long for them to wait for the whole swarm to rise one after another, and should try to find a way where every individual bee would not have to unfold its wings and fly away, but the whole swarm could fly at once wherever it wanted. But that is impossible: so long as the first, second, third, hundredth bee does not unfold its wings and fly, the swarm, too, will not fly away or find the new life. So long as every individual man does not make the Christian life-conception his own, and does not live in accordance with it, the contradiction of the human life will not be solved and the new form of life will not be established.
My note: Tolstoy's Christian concept of life is quite different from what most people think of Christianity. He places emphasis on Jesus' teaching of non-resistance to evil by force and was against organized religion.
At least that's the narrative. People like to rally around a single person pushing a single idea, it's a powerful image of a heroic figure who had nothing but a vision.
Almost always, these "single" people are individuals with considerable clout and influence before they become figureheads. They usually rely on armies of subordinates and lots of other resources to do the actual work.
There was a study done that asked people on the left and right to try to imagine what the views and feeling of the other side were. People on the right were able to do a reasonable job of identifying the positions of the left. People on the left were almost completely unable to identify the goals and values of those on the right. I think that’s a big part of the problem. The left doesn’t understand what the right wants and until they do, they will not be successful in engaging the other side.
There was a study done that asked people on the right and left to try to imagine what the views and feeling of the other side were. People on the left were able to do a reasonable job of identifying the positions of the right. People on the right were almost completely unable to identify the goals and values of those on the left. I think that’s a big part of the problem. The right doesn’t understand what the left wants and until they do, they will not be successful in engaging the other side.
I agree completely. I fully expect to see an article by an affluent white woman writing from her reclaimed wine cork desk telling me to boycott Nintendo until they change the name of the Master Sword.
A (black) engineer colleague of mine told me about his team's effort to change master to main. The whole initiative was started by a rainbow colored hair (white) PM and since it was what they believed to be a highly visible and easy fix, grew to a team of 5. All non-technical PMs of course.
They ended up producing a "manifesto of inclusive software" where they listed every word they considered offensive and what it should be replaced with and made a very public announcement regarding the change.
The only response to their email was my (black) colleague asking if the branch renaming could be postponed to after a release because he didn't know what it could break in the build and release automation in case "master" is hard-coded somewhere.
This apparently started a lengthy thread between him and the 5 PMs where they explained to him that the reason he wasn't supportive of the change was because of the "systemic and cultural racism" he apparently internalized.
What happened then? Maybe in response, he said "no, I didn't internalize any racism, and here's a list of reasons why that logically isn't racist at all", and they said "Oh, never mind then".
Or maybe not. If accusing people of internalizing systemic racism didn't work, nobody would do it. We have a system where accusing a person of racism is an instant win and cannot be argued with, and as long as it is an instant win, it's going to be used, even against actual black people.
> What happened then? Maybe in response, he said "no, I didn't internalize any racism, and here's a list of reasons why that logically isn't racist at all", and they said "Oh, never mind then".
Shouldn't the black engineer's white colleagues "do their own work" instead of forcing him to do it for them?
> This apparently started a lengthy thread between him and the 5 PMs where they explained to him that the reason he wasn't supportive of the change was because of the "systemic and cultural racism" he apparently internalized.
If you feel that the master branch is a symptom of systemic and cultural racism then sure, feel free to make your case. I am interested in what you have to say and will do my best to consider what you have to say as best as I can.
But once people start making these kind of arguments it's clear to me I'm dealing with someone in simplex transmit-only mode and not receiving anything I have to say.
I really hate these kind of arguments. It's just gaslighting and handwaving away of whatever people are saying. "Your argument is invalid because you are subconsciously racist". Right, what makes you such an expert on my subconscious, hm? This is where I lose interest in talking to people.
I'm about as liberal as they come, but in the last few years I've mostly lost interest in social justice cause not because I think the cause is bad, because there are too many people involved that are just thoroughly unpleasant to deal with. It's high time the community ejects some of its more toxic elements, which will benefit everyone, but thus far they're mostly protected, defended, and even celebrated because "they're on our team". But that's not how it works. Assholes are assholes, no matter which team they're on.
A PM working in government (happened to be a white woman) once asked me how I (a black engineer, early 30s) escaped the inner city and became successful. I thought about it and answered, "I decided to stop participating in activities that got the police involved in my life."
Are you even from the "inner city"? Trying to figure out how dumb this interaction was haha.
I have a totally opposite experience, I'm white trailer trash that managed to get a math PhD from a fairly high ranking school. People just assume I grew up upper middle class.
Wow how ironic... in their attempt to stop something that isn't even racist to begin with they actually became racists. It'd be funny if this cult like thinking wasn't infecting our entire country.
Thank God the white people were there to tell the black man how to think and feel about himself. After all they're incapable of self care and rational thought... /s
in their attempt to stop something that isn't even racist to begin with they actually became racists.
No, they were racists all along. They merely over-played their hands and revealed it. But actually they reveal it in other ways if you care to look: the hair and the pronouns in bio are giveaway clues. They "colonised" our industry and now it's time they got decolonised themselves.
This comment is getting downvoted, but the point it makes is validated by my own experience as a black engineer over about 30 years. My "internalized racism" has been explained to me many times by women who share many (if not all) of the same attributes.
As near as I can tell, their need to explain my condition is triggered by independent thinking on my part.
One of the worst forms of racism is often perpetuated by the coastal elites. I'm not saying it starts with a nefarious intent like other forms, but it's rampant. I've brought it up before to some and it's like a light bulb went off, yet they don't want to believe they're a part of it so they try and rationalize.
It's where they change how they treat someone based on the color of their skin while alleging they're an ally.
They think they need to save or help them because they think they're incapable of doing things like getting ID at the DMV, voting or using the internet. They're the ones that use terms like African American and have never had real talk with some black friends, if they have any at all.
They say they're for equality but they don't treat other races or ethnicities as equals. Maybe it just makes themselves feel good, maybe they have a lot of guilt, maybe they feel like they're part of the solution.
And certainly, some people could use more help than others, but it's dangerous, unhealthy and unfair to start with the assumption that someone is incapable of something or treat them like a victim to feed their own savior complex or agenda.
People who are physically handicapped don't even want people coddling their life. Why do some people assume they need and want their help with everything?
Maybe it just makes themselves feel good, maybe they have a lot of guilt, maybe they feel like they're part of the solution.
White saviour complex, is what it is. They soon turn nasty if they don’t think you’re grateful or deferential enough, same as male feminists do with women. But like I say you can easily spot them.
> If the goal is to change minds and open hearts then where appropriate, we should endeavor to communicate in ways that will be well received by those who need to hear the message.
As another black SWE - I have to ask which hearts are we trying to open? Some are far too gone and it would be a waste of time to try to convince them to let go of their bigotry. The very same will feign engagement and argue in bad faith while being energy vampires. Why should I supplicate racists before I have my dignity as a human? Fuck "hearts and minds" - I have no way of definitively knowing those - I'll take changed behavior instead, that's all I truly care about. If I ever have kids, I can't have them live like this.
> we should endeavor to communicate in ways that will be well received by those who need to hear the message
I agree, but you need to consciously consider who these people are - if it's everyone, then the battle is already lost.
>I have to ask which hearts are we trying to open? Some are far too gone and it would be a waste of time to try to convince them to let go of their bigotry
Any that can be opened. The ones that are "too far gone" are moot by definition, so we should keep in mind those who might see things differently if we communicate in a way that reaches them rather than puts up roadblocks.
> The very same will feign engagement and argue in bad faith while being energy vampires
Yes, there are many of these people, but my argument is that actions like this empower bad faith actors.
> Why should I supplicate racists before I have my dignity as a human?
We fundamentally disagree that use of the word "master" in a technical context is racist or a denial of human dignity. Using the word "main" instead of "master" doesn't improve economic, social, or political outcomes for black people, it doesn't do anything except create fodder for the bad faith actors.
> Fuck "hearts and minds"
I think this approach hurts the cause. I don't see how our children grow up in a better world if we abandon all hope of reasoning with our fellow citizens. However, as my comment stated, my advice only make sense if the goal is to change hearts and minds, if you don't care about that then my reasoning does not apply.
> but you need to consciously consider who these people are
As you already pointed out, we can't know who they are, thus I think it is prudent to craft broad messaging in a manner that is suitable for those who can be convinced, not those who are already convinced, or those who cannot ever be convinced. I also want to highlight that my comment includes the caveat "where appropriate", that is to say, we should be strident in the face of discrimination and bigotry, but I don't agree that the status quo for git branch names are an example of such problems.
> Yes, there are many of these people, but my argument is that actions like this empower bad faith actors.
My POV is that bad actors should never be a consideration - they are never going to be helpful whether you "empower" them or not. They should be removed from the equation entirely.
> We fundamentally disagree that use of the word "master" in a technical context is racist or a denial of human dignity.
I never claimed naming a default branch "master" is racist - changing it is petty and performative, and doesn't change anything overall. That said, the people who get outraged over this, claiming "PC culture has gone mad" or "'Wokism' is destroying the world" raise a red flag for me, and I immediately suspect them of being culture warriors. I didn't see the same levels of indignation when the kilobyte and megabyte were redefined from 1024 to 1000, but technically the changes are similar (minor annoyance that might break your code/build, but can be fixed with a search-and-replace).
> I don't see how our children grow up in a better world if we abandon all hope of reasoning with our fellow citizens.
Oh, I think reasoning with our fellow citizens is a wonderful thing, but it should not be a prerequisite for a subset of the citizenry to obtain what ought to be inalienable rights - it shouldn't be a negotiation. At times, well-meaning criticism from moderates/the squishy center - who are not as invested - can slow down the movement: I think MLK's "Letter from Birmingham"[1] addresses this more eloquently than I can. Additionally, other movements who are (or feel) oppressed are not relegated to starting from a point of appealing to fellow-citizens: not the Pro-life, or the Pro-choice, or the Pro-2A contingents do this. Why is there a difference?
>Additionally, other movements who are (or feel) oppressed are not relegated to starting from a point of appealing to fellow-citizens: not the Pro-life, or the Pro-choice, or the Pro-2A contingents do this.
You'd actually be surprised. Most Pro-2A folks have given up on any hope for actually having the Supreme Court pick up a case, never mind coming to a positive judgement that makes the regulatory framework less fickle and perilous. Screw up with a gun, have a bad lawyer, and poof, everything becomes a felony. You lose voting rights, and your firearm. (Actually I think felonies are woefully overused as criminal punishments nowadays, period)
You can be turned into a felon in waiting overnight if the ATF deems it so. Few hopes at legislation are realistically attainable (silencers becoming non-NFA because of the hysteria around them, to the benefit of many enthusiast's ears) and other perfectly reasonable legislation everyone wants gets poisoned the minute another rider taking another chunk out of the 2nd Amendment gets attached. Most pro-2A groups have tried to build grass root support through friends and family to dispel the fear and mania around firearm ownership.
There are a lot of subgroups and interests all competing for limited legislative and public awareness resources; everything comes with a poignant attrition cost. Completely pointless changes for change sake like the branch name change are the worst type of wasteful expenditure of human organization. It doesn't get an actual physical result. It doesn't cut prison populations. It doesn't get kids in disadvantaged or resource poor districts a shot at better education or exposure to something new. It just lets someone uncomfortable with the world as they perceive it cathart through (in a tragedy of the common sense) being able to point at something and say, "Look, I did something!" Damned be the consequences or naysayers.
> I didn't see the same levels of indignation when the kilobyte and megabyte were redefined from 1024 to 1000, but technically the changes are similar
The changes are similar but they reasoning behind them isn't.
Personally I'm annoyed about the change to the point of refusing to use Github, as a protest. To me it strikes as being overly politically correct. The whole master/slave and white/blacklist thing is an insane stretch of wokeism. If anything I'll start using more of these "controversial" terms if it actually ticks these kinds of people off.
> My POV is that bad actors should never be a consideration - they are never going to be helpful whether you "empower" them or not. They should be removed from the equation entirely.
We disagree on strategy here. Bad faith actors have the power to damage the movement, and we should not give them opportunities to do so if it can be avoided. I want to be clear that I'm not saying we should diminish the fervor of the fight for social justice to accommodate racists, what I'm saying is that we shouldn't waste political capital on efforts that give us nothing in return; fanfare over git branch names gives us nothing, but gives them a talking point. To clarify even further, I'm not saying changing the name is wrong, I'm saying that elevating such trivialities into the wider conversation of social justice is harmful to the cause.
> I never claimed naming a default branch "master" is racist - changing it is petty, and doesn't change anything overall
So what were you referring to when you asked why we should supplicate racists before earning a chance at human dignity?
> People who get outraged over this claiming "PC gone mad" or "'Wokism' is destroying the world" raise a red flag for me and I immediately suspect them of being a culture warrior.
We are in total agreement here. My point is that an 800lb gorilla like github declaring such trivialities as progress towards social justice offers the culture warriors a brightly painted catalyst for delivery of their propaganda that they wouldn't otherwise have. If github were doing something meaningful then this would be a completely different situation because the positive changes they were enacting would outweigh any bleating of the bad faith actors, but since this isn't something useful, the sum total of the act is to harm the movement.
> Oh, I think reasoning with our fellow citizens is a wonderful thing
Your statement of "fuck hearts and minds" doesn't seem to reflect that belief, but I'm happy to take your word for it.
> it should not be a prerequisite for a subset of the citizenry to get what ought to be inalienable rights
I never made that argument. I was discussing the trivialities which were the topic of this article, not inalienable rights.
> I think MLK's "Letter from Birmingham"[1] addresses this more eloquently than I can.
An excellent read of which I am very familiar, but I hope I've made it clear that on the topic of discussion (git branch names), the inalienable rights of oppressed peoples is not the subjective of my criticism.
Additionally, we're probably having slightly different conversations - you appear specifically focused on only Github's renaming of the default branch, and I on the more general "hearts and mind" argument - I used Github's action and the criticism thereof as a launchpad to a more general problem - perhaps I failed to communicate that clearly.
>> Oh, I think reasoning with our fellow citizens is a wonderful thing
> Your statement of "fuck hearts and minds" doesn't seem to reflect that belief, but I'm happy to take your word for it.
The phrase you quoted better captures my thinking when it's not truncated halfway; the second half of the sentence you elided is the more important half.
Yes, this is a good summary of what these changes do. They allow white people to pat themselves on the back, without actually doing anything material to help break down racism.
I think it also burns a certain amount of political capital and good will. People only have so much "give a fuck" to spare, and if you force them to use it in meaningless ways, it's a waste.
Absolutely, this is another thing I feel strongly about. People have limited energy, attention, resources. Every news segment that opens with
"pc gone mad! radical leftists want to ban the word "blacklist"!"
is a news segment that doesn't open with
"wages have been stagnant for the past 50 years despite gains in productivity"
"prices of tvs and smartphones falling, prices of housing and healthcare skyrocketing"
"statistical studies show voter preferences have near-zero correlation with effected legislation, while preferences of the wealthier 0.5% are very strongly correlated"
"hey have you noticed that the EU is hilariously undemocratic"
Generating controversy in support of your cause is generally thought of as building political capital, not spending it. You want to focus energy on what people on your side will agree with, and, crucially, can have a personal impact towards.
You can see this dynamic in Republican posturing in the Biden era. Biden is a much harder topic for Republicans to attack. His Covid relief bill has broad bipartisan support and he's an old white guy just like Republicans like to see in office. So instead of wasting time and effort on trying to attack Biden or Covid relief, they spent the last few weeks attacking cancel culture and Dr. Seuss.
This move is the opposite, it lets those interested in social justice and equality participate in a political action. Any time you can energize your base around something, that's a great boon to your side.
More generally speaking, political battles are fought by people who care, not by people who don't. Actions taken that cause the uncaring to care even less are fine so long as they can get some people to care more.
For no better an illustration of this look to PETA. The only reason we still know who they are is because they've taken this as a holy dictate. We still know who they are because they're fantastically successful at creating absolute zealots.
> I think it also burns a certain amount of political capital and good will. People only have so much "give a fuck" to spare, and if you force them to use it in meaningless ways, it's a waste.
Is that what you think is happening here? People are fighting against this change out of concern that if they support it, they won't be able to care about other, more important things down the line?
Oh it's worse than just pats on the back. It's ACTUAL racism. They think they have the right to tell minorities how to think and feel. They think they know what's best and you can't have them thinking for themselves.
I witnessed a white woman exclaim she was revoking someone's Mexican card the other day because he voted for Trump. Supposedly the Mexican is the racist according to this ideology....
There is a testimony floating around from a black Portland cop, complaining that every time he wanted to talk to a black BLM protestor there was a white protestor trying to prevent the black one from speaking with the police.
Totally agree. Had they made a real change that actually mattered, all this time spent on discussing this rename, could have been put into better use. They created buzz, changed nothing.
I tend to agree with triviality. But I’m white and can’t vocalize that opinion IRL. However I do feel like people of my pigment also do these things as risk mitigation. Eg. Most of the world was caught off guard by the Dr Seuss thing. It seems quite obvious to me the family proactively took the books out of print because the fallout from being targeted by SJW or whoever would be huge. People are out there looking for things to be offended by, brands to attack, etc and if you’re a big company you don’t want to be caught in those crosshairs.
That said, I do recall getting “pat us on the back” vibes from GitHub but just wanted to throw this alternate justification out into the discussion.
Can I just briefly highlight that this wasn't "a thing" per se? This was a company privately deciding to pull some poorly selling publications from active publishing and adding a positive PR spin by calling out some questionable decisions in the art.
This was made into "an issue" by some pretty rabid media outlets rebranding it as government censorship while the decision was entirely privately made. That's a pretty terrible mis-categorization.
These sorts of controversies, from both the right and the left, sell news papers and that's the reason why media latches onto them so aggressively.
It sort of was a thing, but it was never new. Geisel spent decades in discourse with people regarding racism and sexism in his works. He earnestly made many changes over the years, for example changing the look of the Chinese character in Mulberry St. Outside the Dr. Suess books, he even sometimes flipped some of his earlier racist tropes to make progressive, anti-racist statements. But he adamantly refused to make some other changes, such using more gender neutral pronouns beyond the substitutions he already made. This latest round of changes and exclusions were the ones he adamantly refused to make. Much worse, he's now portrayed in the media as being blithely or even stubbornly ignorant of his own prejudices, when nothing could be further from the truth. Whether you agree or disagree with him, he engaged with these issues and admitted to many faults.
I don't disagree - and that's part of the reason (other than generally disliking the act of whitewashing our history) that I'm happy that this take down wasn't activist driven - but it certainly is portrayed in some media outlets as being an attack by the left.
I've seen some of his WW2 propaganda and saw a lot of the contemporary artwork from other artists while I was in school - buck-toothed squinty asians in rice hats abound - and he very rightfully walked that back and acted in a reasonable manner. I don't think this has particularly tarnished his image but I also avoid twitter and facebook zealously so I tend to be outside of most of the outrage bubbles.
I do hope that his image continues to do well since he was ahead of the curve on a number of issues near and dear to my heart.
They jumped on it. Ebay and Amazon jumped on the misinterpretation and that is squarely their mistake.
The Dr Seuss estate wasn't afraid of SJW's randomly cancelling them. And neither was Ebay or Amazon, which were instead signalling support for a society retcon that nobody - not even Dr Seuss' estate - asked for. Those latter companies are staffed by people experiencing the same cognitive dissonance in this comment thread.
For whatever hysterical reason those books are now selling for ridiculous prices.
Media made a big deal out of "canceling" Dr. Seuss and those books weirdly became an icon of free speech for some folks and now we've arrived at a place where secondary markets are being forced to take a stance on the issue.
Books get pulled from publication all the time - books even get pulled from publication for really extremist content (or are refused by publishers in the first place). This is only a circus now because some media outlets stirred it up. It is occasionally the case that some folks on the internet find something offensive and try and get it canceled with a petition - I loathe this process for a number of reasons - but this isn't what happened here, some media outlets took a nothingburger and turned it into a four course meal.
If you hike in the woods you'll pass by bee-hives all the time, that doesn't mean you always go out in heavy clothing - but if someone ahead of you on the trail kicked a hive repeatedly then you'll put on the clothing if you've got it. All the "thing" here is just reactionary to there being so much arbitrary attention directed at it in the first place.
ebay have been randomly censoring stuff for stupid reasons for a while (e.g. they (approximately, details best double checked) won't sell historical records involving slavery much to the annoyance of historians).
I'm minimally troubled by the discontinuation of what I'm fairly sure actually -were- underperforming titles while also extremely pissed with ebay.
> media outlets rebranding it as government censorship
I must have missed that. All the criticism I've seen about the action was just that -- criticism of the private action, basically criticizing the editorial decision.
I haven't seen anyone confuse it with government regulation.
Bunch of republican politicians tried to claim it was "Biden's fault" and Ted Cruz is now selling autographed copies of Green Eggs and Ham ... which continued to sell just fine and there's no reason to think will be discontinued any time in the forseeable future.
No, a straw man is taking a deliberately weak version of an argument and then attacking it.
I pointed out that Ted Cruz had made such attacks and was also trying to make money off it.
Googling for "cruz tweet seuss" will provide you with plenty of first hand information about Cruz' actions; McCarthy also beclowned himself over the issue. If you prefer to disbelieve 'a bunch' that's up to you.
what consequences do you think you would encounter IRL, compared to a non-white person vocalizing that opinion IRL?
there is another comment talking about a black engineer not prioritizing this in their team and being told by the rainbow haired PMs that they were internalizing systemic racism.
do you think you would get unceremoniously cancelled instead instead of simply silenced like the black person thats assumed to be "the poor victim with no independent agency"? are you sure that is a valid fear?
As a Black data scientist I will say that words have power. That naming things has power. That acknowledging the depth of white supremacy, its depravity, and need to utterly and completely remove it and all of its vestiges is the most important work that can be undertaken.
There used to be a Confederate statue in the town square where I live. Many Black people worked over decades to point out what the statue symbolized, how the Klan had revised history in building that statue. Some white people wanted it gone. Finally a lot of white people wanted it gone. Then these same people
began calling for reparations. A local college instituted reparations. There are calls to engage with land back movements.
I’ve lived through many backlash cycles. Locally we’re still dealing with egregious health disparities that are costing Black lives daily. There is gentrification. The city’s just lived through a night in which white supremacy took the lives of several Asian women.
But something has changed.
Words matter. We have to keep chipping away at this monster.
In tech, though, asians often outnumber whites at US FAANG companies. Foreigners are vastly overrepresented, jews are overrepresented, blacks are underrepresented, spanish are underrepresented.
In American politics/history I totally hear you. But maybe tech is a slightly different animal? 'White supremacy' is a tough sell when <40% are domestic-born christian white.
(none of the above comment is intended as a value statement on various ethnicities doing well/poorly, just an observation of how well they're doing).
I'd extend these virtue signaling "moments" to stuff like changing the names of sports teams and bases and all of the attempts to scrub "offensive" things from our lexicon.
It's not just limited to "black" but also American Indians, gay people, trans, etc.
These all strike me as Priviledged people being offended for others and trying to scream "LOOK AT ME I'M FIXING THINGS!!!" with stuff that matters to no one... and in the end, they widen the divide and make everything 100x worse with all the policies to "fix" racism/sexism/all'the'other'isms but making everything about race/sex/etc.
So divisive and counter productive uses of time that solve nothing.
But master can mean many different things other than “a white man owning black slaves in 19^th century US” – and was not created with this name in mind; whereas the sport team name was unambiguously chosen and featured a caricature of the very thing they chose their name after on their logo.
It's a 'caricature' in that choosing societies renown for being valiant warriors erases much complexity (how much nuance and complexity were you expecting from a sports mascot?). Anyway, if this were a sincere movement, it would similarly object to equivalent depictions of the Irish, Vikings, Romans, Spartans, Trojans, etc.
I see your point, but even still no one objects to the Fighting Irish or Boston Celtics logos despite being every bit the caricature. Are we doing this out of respect for Native Americans, or is it to make ourselves feel noble while we (myself included) make no progress on their material concerns?
Changing sports team names does reduce the number of people prancing around in fake headdresses and doing the "Tomahawk chop"...
I would love to spend more time on economic and tax code reform so as to make the United States more equitable. Would you like to join me? There is not a lot of benefit in arguing, "This is not the thing I think is most important for you to do, so you shouldn't do it" -- let people work on what they want to work on, and put your energy into making substantive change that you believe in.
i'm with you. it's shocking how much attention this bullshit is getting, while there are a million more imortant issues to tackle. this is misdirection at its worst.
Part of the point is to create jobs for political apparatchiks. We've trained tons of witches with degrees in whateverstudies and not much else to show for it. Ever wonder why they set up political DIE commissar's offices and demand people to get training? It's to parasitize actually productive things.
The parent post is saying that it's pointless to call this bullshit and complain about what other people are upset about. It's also saying that changing team names reduces racism as it stops people from performing racist actions that have been built into showing team support.
It's not misdirection. It's just that these are issues you personally don't care about.
"racist actions" but a vast VAST majority of Indians don't find it racist.
When everything is racist? nothing is.
That's the key problem with all of these diatribe's. Anything you disagree with is "racist actions" and thus real racist actions are lost in the sea of BS about team names and Aunt Jemima syrup.
the misdirection isn't the name change itself, which is trivial in every sense of the word, it's the bullshit discussion around it. to continue focusing on it after the fact is the misdirection, keeping us from discussing substantive issues, like actual systemic, structural barriers to prosperity and equality of opportunity.
names don't hurt. how we respond is what can hurt, how we allow words to infect us. but we have brains that can rationalize that away, make us defiant and resilient against it. we're literally talking about the trivialities of 5 year olds when we talk so incessantly about names.
what really hurts is, for instance, decades of redlining and systemic bias in politics, economics, education, nutrition, medicine, and a myriad of other daily, real issues that affect the lives of millions of americans, and billions of people worldwide.
this discussion is bullshit because we are not talking about those things. it's a misdirection.
Plenty of people are talking about those things. It's not either or.
Names do hurt. Does blackface hurt? That's essentially what having a team called the Redskins is. It's important to talk about how mass media and the mainstream will accept openly racist symbols. In the case of Native Americans it's also important to talk about how they went through a barely recognized genocide and have been systematically discriminated against in a major way.
It's important to learn about it, but being completely obsessed about the issue and view everything from its perspective is counter-productive. It's really an American thing, because many European nations went through similar experiences multiple times.
The sports team thing is really offensive though. They're literally using Native Americans as team mascots. Especially given the genocide that occurred. There's no reason to use any race of human, especially those who were struck with some of the worst systemic violence in history, as a mascot for a sports team.
I have a lot of Native American friends, they grouse about losing the Redskins team. I think the white SJWs don’t really understand the dynamic. Not claiming I do either but point being a lot of people took pride in that team for its name and representation, it wasn’t a joke. One of the side effects of this purge/righteous cleansing is that it’s also scrubbing out representation. Land-o-lakes being another example.
I think the Redskins example is not great, as I also know plenty of folks who support the renaming; there is plenty of division among Native folks around this name. Land O'Lakes, though, is a much more interesting example -- Patrick DesJarlait, the artist, was Ojibwe, and his son wrote a very interesting article about this for the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/29/my-ojibwe...
I'm honestly still amazed sometimes that the Fighting Irish mascot of Notre Dame is still a thing. It seems inevitable that it gets relegated to the scrap heap of history at some point, but I guess people don't care as much since the Irish, at least in the U.S., mostly ended up catching a break and didn't become a permanent underclass all but obliterated from existence by military might like Native Americans were.
As someone who is 1/4 Irish, I'd say it's because we just don't care. The Notre Dame mascot is completely inconsequential. It's a mascot. Nothing more. Nothing less.
It's a privilege to not care. I feel sorry for everyone from other groups that are forced to care about inconsequential things because in aggregate all these inconsequential things that people demand that you care about end up being a denial of service attack, leaving you with less bandwidth to think about things that actually matter like working hard and working smart and building wealth.
If some group that was not Irish kept trying to get me and other people of Irish descent to waste brain cycles on such trivial non-consequential things, I'd ignore them and instruct others to ignore them.
It honestly boggles my mind that our culture has optimized for amplifying the voices of such people as it's so counter-productive.
I'm also 1/32 Native American and feel the same way about those mascots too.
It's honestly all so tiresome and wasteful of brain cycles. Heck, look how many smart people have commented on this story and all because these non-issues have been elevated to the point we're we are forced to waste brain cycles on this because it became intrusive and broke our work flows. Many activists in history have been great but much of what passes for "activism" today is not just useless, but actively counter-productive.
> I'm also 1/32 Native American and feel the same way about those mascots too.
Just because you don't take issue with it, doesn't mean it's not offensive and a big deal to other people (who are often more than 1/32 Native American). The Redskins is a racist name, anyway you slice it. Try to replace red with brown or yellow and it's immediately obvious. I don't think every single case is as cut and dry as that one, but it's not fair to call these issues inconsequential.
There is no third party deciding these things. People who have experienced racism are offended when it continues to happen. They can then advocate for a change and hopefully broader awareness.
It's offensive. I'm actually pretty sad that people here are so reactionary to the change. I don't understand why people would be angry, particularly because changing the name wasn't some initiative created by a giant corporation. It seems like common decency to me.
The major injustices and crimes of history were profitable because a targeted group was dehumanised for the gain of others. The economic victimisation of black people in the US continues to be profitable.
> it trivializes the movement
As a developer, I am comfortable with the change in terminology. As a human... My phenotypes are different from yours and OP's, but I am certain that if we do not bring the critique to bear against systemic enslavement of people (regardless of "targeted" phenotypes), we have all missed the point and really changed nothing. Who is blacker or whiter or truer to the tribe... these are serviceable distractions.
Slavery is abhorrent to any enlightened human. But slavery existed and continues to exist because those who profit like it that way.
But what does this have to do with using the concept of master / slave as an apt technical analogy? How does changing technical terminology help close racial gaps in opportunity or change outdated attitudes on race? It seems to me (a white guy) that this accomplishes nothing compared to other uses of the time, energy, and $ that this wastes.
If I were at the head of the org I would take the time & $ that would be wasted on this effort and invest it into underserved black schools. (of which there are many in the US)
It's really not an apt technical analogy. The most significant aspects of the master/slave relationship (ownership) are not present in the technical version.
I think thats true for git, (altho the master branch could also refer to a master record), but there are a lot of uses of master/slave terminology in computer tech that are more apt.
Pretty much none of those have the key ownership feature that is the most significant aspect of the master/slave relationship.
Most of the relationships in that list would be more accurately described as lead/follower (followers copy or join in with the actions of a leader), boss/worker (workers work on tasks given them by a boss).
In centralized coordination protocols, the follower or worker nodes do not have autonomy. That said, the master/boss/leader nodes also do not have autonomy (in the sense that they are all bound to the protocol: none of the nodes can choose to quit and get ice cream, for example). However, in human social terms, it can seem like the central coordination node has more autonomy relative to the worker nodes, but that's an illusion.
In protocols, work provider --(activates)--> work performer. None of nodes have autonomy, so any pair of terms that overlaps with (provider, performer) are equivalent.
> any pair of terms that overlaps with (provider, performer) are equivalent.
Well, some terms are more accurate and some terms have greater baggage. If we're talking about a relationship where one node gives work and another node does the work, this is the kind of relationship we see everywhere in manager/employee relationships without unnecessary and inaccurate baggage about ownership or autonomy.
It's not even necessarily the case in a human master/slave relationship that the master gives work to the slaves, the key aspect is that the slave's work is done for the benefit of the master, but the actual assigning, coordinating and supervision of the work is not a core aspect of a masters role, and being itself work, would often be delegated to someone else.
I agree with everything you wrote except for the unstated implication that the use of the word master to refer to a git branch reflects a history of slavery. If you believe this, then I think understanding why we see this differently is the path forward to a productive discussion on this issue.
> I agree with everything you wrote except for the unstated implication
I don't think language is innocent, but language is also not statically linked to history. I believe that changes to software terms do not solve any problem that the poor are facing.
Such changes make the preservers of hierarchy comfortable. That is all.
Honest question, my initial response is that it only trivializes the movement if "see, we changed something" is used as an excuse to stop there. But if it isn't... what's the harm?
Most of this family of points seems to equate 1) being in favor of changing master to main; and 2) being in favor of stopping there.
Well for one thing it teaches people to be confused about the idea that meaning depends on context. Look at the dictionary definition of 'master' and you'll see that it doesn't exclusively represent the idea of a person who enslaves people. Consider:
* master of disguise
* grand master
* master's degree
* master tape
I would say that "master" as used in git is closest to the "master tape" definition: "an original movie, recording, or document from which copies can be made". That isn't quite what a master branch is, but "common name given to the main branch of a Merkle tree" probably isn't going to show up in your average dictionary.
It also creates conflict for no good reason between people who are comfortable with multiple meanings of words and people who view any objection to their interpretation of the English language as evidence of racism.
Well, what else has been accomplished? What policies are being passed that are helping materially black people? Sure, some cities have passed legislation to defund their police, and consequently murder rates are sky-rocketing (and probably not so much in wealthy white neighborhoods of those same cities nor in other more conservative jurisdictions). There are some colorblind reforms that something like 90% of Americans supported in one form or another; hardly anything controversial, but this is the most substantial thing that I can think of that can be credited as a consequence of the movement, but it's far too soon to figure out whether that will have an impact on any disparities. What am I missing? I'm guessing there are some negative effects that no one is bothering to measure, like the extent to which these vapid measures nudge people to the right or make them unsympathetic to the movement.
> What policies are being passed that are helping materially black people?
Mostly nothing. Corporations can largely only avoid harming various groups, and engaging in fair business practices. They're not set up, by their incentive structure, to do work that reforms society at large.
Even non-profits need to focus on a specific mission, and they're usually most successful by putting people in touch with each other.
Because, especially if you look at it through the lens of "material" help, the further an action is from the control of the individual being helped, the amount of good that can be done per unit effort drops off dramatically.
We normally view individualism as a normative claim, that "the rugged individual" ought to help himself. But you can cast it as an observation: most help in your life is only effective (again, in terms of return for the effort involved) if it comes from you personally or someone quite close to you.
Political capital has proven to be finite, it is similar to time being zero sum. Using political capital in a non-smart way is equivalent to wasting time.
I believe it trivializes the movement because it injects unimportant issues like git branch names into the realm of conversations about racism, police violence, harmful stereotypes, discrimination etc. It also gives ammunition to those who seek to discredit the movement for social justice. This isn't a situation like e.g. affirmative action, which demonstrably creates opportunities for minorities at the cost of some resentment from people who feel like affirmative action is unfair. In the case of "master" to "main", nobody gains anything, all it does is act is a flashpoint for bad faith actors.
I keep looking at it all and thinking "the cost of all the developer hours both inside and outside github to make this change is a depressing amount of money considering how many non-profits working for real change could've done with extra funding".
What's the harm? Read 1984 to see how the 'end state' might look like. As other commenter said, words have power. And who have power over words, rules.
The whole "this is pointless", "that is stupid" movement has definitely thrown up a "fuck it then" anti-signal in my mind.
If most things we can do is pointless, fuck it, everything we do is probably pointless.
I'm actively fighting against my own mindset to keep looking for things I can do that will make an effect. Most probably won't. I get it's just virtue signalling or whatever phrase of the week we're calling it but it's also inertia. Yes this one is pointless, but maybe the next step isn't.
Anyone that's ever been told what they're doing is useless will never know.
Shamefully I didn't give any consideration to anyone but myself, keeping my existing mindset everyone on the internet was a white guy like me with all the privileges I have. GitHub changing master to main might have been a joke to you, fair enough, but it opened my eyes.
I worry that by picking context that have zero or close to zero racist connotations like the master branch, now you are adding racism into the world by adding racist connotations to the master branch.
This seems pretty close to just saying, “If we can’t change the world, let us change nothing at all.”
Sure, it’s trivial. It doesn’t, in any significant way, actually do anything. But I find a lot of time when reviewing code — if there are code badly formatted or variables misspelled, I have a hard time looking at the actually problems in the code until those superficial things are fixed.
But changing master to main doesn't fix anything, nor did the author find it a problem to begin with. I think the point is to focus on real change and not fake change, because the former is what's important and the latter is a distraction.
> This seems pretty close to just saying, “If we can’t change the world, let us change nothing at all.”
I don't see it that way. In my view, this change is worse than "nothing at all" because it doesn't represent any substantive change, but it does create fodder for bad faith actors to portray the movement for social justice as trivial.
On the other hand, now that the name change is done, if there are more protests then nobody will waste time talking about whether Github should change the branch name. This time, people were talking about it even before Github did anything, so it was going to be a distraction regardless. Github doing this ought to be considered just closing the book on this discussion IMO.
Sure. The change itself means nothing to me, I don't think "master" or "main" makes any difference, it's the use of github's corporate megaphone to project this triviality onto the wider discussion about social justice that I take issue with.
No, this is saying "If we can not change the world, let's do other productive things instead of meaningless distractions to feel good about changing the world."
I think the main goal for this kind of symbolic actions is to raise awareness. Only the fact that we are now here discussing about the problem, is a big success, imho.
Should they also do, not only symbolic but also considerable actions? The hell they should.
But that doesn’t make the first point moot.
They’re actually alienating the choir, with actions like that.
I’m a white person who has performed in a professional production of The Black Nativity. I was literally part of the choir celebrating black traditions in the US.
I now work in software and think less of any racialized group using historic struggles as a tool of power, control, and oppression in the here and now.
Historic wrongs are not an excuse for present wrongs.
I am genuinely curious: the LibreOffice team changed the file blacklist to excludelist. Do you believe this was just tokenism? I personally thought it was a great thing. But I am interested in hearing your perspective.
In my view, if the goal is productive discourse, every contentious social justice scenario demands a nuanced parsing of the facts.
I'm not familiar with the LibreOffice change, but from what I can tell, it doesn't seem like this change was delivered with any fanfare or something like an official blogpost targeting the general public and presented as an effort towards inclusion and social justice. Instead, it seems to be treated by the developers in a manner that reflects exactly what it is, a trivial relabeling, perhaps in a positive direction, but one that doesn't merit injection into the wider discourse over racial justice. The developers made this change based on their personal values and in a way that doesn't interrupt the natural workflow of the users which inevitably draws scrutiny and creates contention. I'm all for developers using whatever labels align with their values, where I have a problem is the pronouncement of such trivialities as if they represent something meaningful.
Imho meaningless lip service: master branch -> main branch
Also imho the most insulting towards PoC and everyone else for that matter is to patronisingly assume people can't comprehend context, as OP's article points it out.
I believe that usage of 'master' in git was copied from bitkeeper which did reference the master/slave relationship.
Whereas blacklist in its original forms was used outside of a racial context. I think it'll be pretty hard to try to break the association between black (the color) and night, hiddenness, unknown, sin, fear, etc. All of which are pretty negative, but not originally racial.
I find it difficult to distinguish one of these changes from the other in terms of usefulness.
I also don't hold much truck with the 'insulting' and 'patronising' thing. It's perfectly possible for a white person to prefer to remove inappropriate and confusing terminology that trivialised historical injustices and/or glorified things they disagree with regardless of whether or not non-white people are offended by such usage. There seems to be an underlying view that a white person could only want to change such usage for inauthentic reasons. If we want to find things patronising, I find that patronising. Just because you're white doesn't mean you can't hold an authentic position of your own on these topics.
> I believe that usage of 'master' in git was copied from bitkeeper which did reference the master/slave relationship.
The (likely) basis for this belief, the GNOME mailing list post[0] that reignited this discussion in 2019, was retracted the next year[1].
I wrote a summary of the history[2] for Git Rev News, the git developers newsletter. In short, the usage didn't come from BitKeeper, and was intended to mean 'master copy'.
After the article was published, Aaron Kushner from BitKeeper reached out and gave me some more history on the usage of 'slave repository' in that one particular spot in BitKeeper[3]: it was a presentation for a client that was already using master/slave terminology and so the same terms were used in the presentation.
The worst I have seen is the media's failure to cover that Google - and probably Microsoft too - blacklisted historic black universities for over a decade. This a juke, a pump fake - not something substantial.
