[Spice-devel] Identifying and removing potentially divisive language

[Kevin Pouget]

Hello Michal,

On Wed, Jul 1, 2020 at 8:23 PM Michal Suchánek <msuchanek at suse.de> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jul 01, 2020 at 10:03:10AM +0200, Kevin Pouget wrote:
> > Hello SPICE community,
> >
> > following Chris Wright (Red Hat CTO) blog post on "Making open source
> > more inclusive by eradicating problematic language" [1], I would like
> > to suggest that we have a look at SPICE source code to find out if/where
> > such language is used and how to remove it.
> >
> > To illustrate the motivations of this move, consider the phrase "the
> > final solution". I am quite sure you would agree that these words
> > cannot be used inside a project. You would agree because the WWII
> > events are still in minds and not so ancient yet.
> > Git "master", or the "master/slave" pattern may not trigger similar
> > thoughts if your ancestors didn't suffer slavery;
> > "whitelist/blacklist" neither, if the color of your skin doesn't get
> > you into trouble (white=allow, black=deny).
> > Overall, I would advise, when thinking about these questions, not to
> > forget on which side your history/country/skin color/sexual
> > orientation sits you. If it's the oppressor side, you're not at the
> > right place to say it's not relevant.
> First off, I would object to 'oppressor side'. That is pretty divisive
> language. And even very imprecise. Most of the world should be
> considered 'unaffected' in the sense they do not live in the US or
> select African countries with relatively recent history of slavery where
> the actual terms 'slave' and 'master' might bear some connection to the
> practice.
> Even if someones grand-grand-grand-farther was a slaver putting them on
> an 'oppressor side' is very discriminatory in my view.


I agree that "unaffected" fits better, as it includes a broader group,
but I think it's still worth keeping in mind where your shared history
puts you, as it may introduce biases in the way you look at events.


> Secondly, if you do not think that people not from the affected group
> are qualified to reject such change what is your qualification to
> propose it?
>
> See also
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAAOnFsNUB_+NZMGnu2yasL8tk_KTfqPY6JiHOpvYHiyY_Lytrw@mail.gmail.com/

>> "Reading a thread of white people, including the CEO of GitHub,
>> advocating changing the name of the ‘Master’ branch to make black devs
>> more comfortable...
>> is the most racially uncomfortable I've ever felt about GitHub."



You don't have to be affected to be concerned. And contrary to GitHub
CEO (at least per this quote), I don't do it for them, I do it for
me. I don't want my child to play master&slave, nor final solution
games. I find it disrespectful with regards to the number of people who
suffered these events in recent history, and I'll teach it to
him. So I do not want to use this vocabulary in (my) code either.

And I do it for you (impersonal you, don't get me wrong). In the
narrow bubble I live in, it's mostly homophobia and toxic masculinity
that I hear: how can you feel safe being gay when it is used as an
insult or as a joke, everyday? how can you be confident with feminine
traits of yourself, when people constantly depict it as negative
attributes? Words are weapons, and if you're unaware of it, you fire
blindly. So here I want to make sure we do not banally use words
linked with past tragedies or modern oppression.

I see three broad categories of problematic words or phrases:

1. negative connotation (eg, `blacklist/whitelist`)
2. reuse of past event's vocabulary (eg, `master/slave` pattern)
3. indirect reference to point 1 or 2 (eg, git's `master`)

I think this gives an order of priority for what should be tackled.


thanks,

Kevin


> >
> > ---
> >
> > I had a quick `grep` look at SPICE code base, searching for
> > `blacklist/whitelist/slave` and I could only find very few occurrences
> > of these words, which is nice. Can you find other problem words?
> >
> > `master` is used for git default's branch, but not much
> > elsewhere. Let's discuss if we could get rid of this one, for instance
> > changing it to `main` (just a suggestion). I don't think that it can
> That is also reportedly offensive - see
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/20200616210701.22924-1-zeevriend@gmail.com/
> > break that many things (only the CI comes to my mind, where the
> > `master` branch may be treated differently) as git name default
> > branch's name is often omitted in the usual workflows.
> >
> > Please share your thoughts about this
>
> Thanks
>
> Michal
>