API method name changes in ClassGraph-4.8.86

[Luke Hutchison]

In solidarity with worldwide protests demanding an end to racial injustice and racism, all methods of ClassGraph containing the words "whitelist" and "blacklist" have been renamed to instead use the words "accept" and "reject" respectively. (The old methods are still in place for compatibility, but they have been marked as deprecated.)

Some may object to this change as an over-sensitization or racialization of terms that were never inherently racial in nature. The terms "whitelist" or "blacklist" may not bring to mind racially-oriented connotations to many people. However, these terms originated in a time when the very words "white" and "black" had even stronger discriminatory connotations than they have now:

From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/ :

In this context, it is worth examining the origins of the term “blacklist” from the Douglas Harper Etymology Dictionary, which states that its origin and history is:

n.

also black-list, black list, “list of persons who have incurred suspicion,” 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.). Specifically of employers’ list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activity) is from 1888. As a verb, from 1718. Related: Blacklisted; blacklisting.

It is notable that the first recorded use of the term occurs at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas.

May we soon see concrete progress towards a world free of racism, prejudice and injustice.

-- Luke Hutchison (ClassGraph creator and maintainer)

[Marc Magon]

sigh.... 

pretty soon we won't be able to use a verbal language properly at all

[Luke Hutchison]

Understand. I wouldn't have made the change just for usage of the word "black" or "white", if they referred to colors of objects in a generic way (eg. red-black tree). That would be over the top. "Blacklist" and "whitelist" are specifically rooted in the historical context of the slave trade, which makes these words different. I do think it is appropriate for statues of slave traders to be removed from public spaces, or at the very least least moved to history museums (to avoid efforts to rewrite or erase history). "Blacklist/whitelist" have the same origin, whether we knew it or not. (I didn't.)

Similarly, almost all database projects and products have renamed "master/slave" to "primary/secondary" in recent years. This was extremely surprising to me, since I never think of the use of these words in technology systems as connected to human slavery. However, other people feel differently, and I'm happy to avoid certain terms if it helps someone avoid painful reminders of a long history of discrimination and exploitation.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ClassGraph-Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to classgraph-use...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/classgraph-users/af6777a7-dd56-4a00-a447-ba68b2d29a1do%40googlegroups.com.

[Luke Hutchison]

Seems like the software world is going through a collective consciousness moment. This was uncoordinated.

https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/github-to-replace-master-with-alternative-term-to-avoid-slavery-references