Lynching, police brutality, racial bias, prejudice. These words are in direct conflict with the high ideals of our constitution, yet permeate our country’s history and present day. Protests, honest dialog, and internal scrutiny are in progress here in the United States (and ripple around the world as a challenge to any injustice). What can we do to tackle the racial bias that many of us are guilty of, without even realizing it?
At a recent professional writers forum, we discussed some of the terms used in the computer industry (and therefore in our writing) that sound racially bias. For example, a system architecture might be based on a Master-Slave model, where one machine is in control (Master), and other machines carry out tasks (Slave). When we initiate something for processing, we Submit it to the control of the processor (couldn’t we just Send it). When we want to allow or block access to a URL, we whitelist those we want to include and blacklist those we do not (using white to indicate that something is “good”, and black to indicate it is “bad”).
These words and concepts may not be intended as racial terms (research the etymology of words to decide for yourself), but they may cause pain to someone who has experienced racism directly or subtly. Words and language evolve all the time. Why don’t we speed it along by cleaning up our own language. Changing the language used in our industry may seem like a small change, but collectively small changes could stimulate radical change. Be a change agent!
Steps (the blog) 