Re: [Tech-board-discuss] [PATCH] CodingStyle: Inclusive Terminology

From: Laura Abbott <laura@labbott.name>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
	Chris Mason <clm@fb.clm>,
	tech-board-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [Tech-board-discuss] [PATCH] CodingStyle: Inclusive Terminology
Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2020 07:59:16 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <295f6d65-be75-db5b-eebb-399917f93a07@labbott.name> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAHk-=whJYFgbjPqp8XMTyX7ic2x_N3coHc-5fFHV27PuNJRBdw@mail.gmail.com>

On 7/4/20 6:19 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 2:25 PM James Bottomley
> <James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com> wrote:
>>
>> Could we just lose this entire document?
> 
> I have to agree. I see no value to it except as a source of heated
> discussion and non-productive flame wars.
> 
> We all know not to use "slave" any  more. And we know that there are
> technologies where it's part of the technology (i2c, pts, whatever).
>  > I realize that people think "blacklist" is a bad word (it certainly
> has nasty historical examples, but they tend to be about politics and
> unionizing etc, not about racial issues). So the "black" there seems
> to have nothing to do with race. Neither in the origin of the word, or
> in the later implementations.
> 
> Should I avoid the word "jealousy", because the Swedish word for it is
> "black-sick"? Trust me, that has nothing to do with slavery, the same
> way somebody being in a "dark mood" has nothing to do with race.
> 
> People are fundamentally afraid of the dark, and "black" vs "white" is
> not always about race like some people seem to make it out to be.
> 
> We can't start denying colours. What's next? Yellow and red and brown
> not being acceptable either?
> 
> Red-black trees really must be the worst kinds of data structures,
> because in addition to the dangerous color mentions, the "trees" they
> talk about might be all about the historical lynchings of
> african-americans and native americans?
> 
> Which I obviously bring up entirely because it's an example of just
> stupid things to argue about, rather than anything productive.
> Obviously rbtrees are nothing of the sort, and anybody who thinks they
> are should simply not be doing kernel development.
> 
I think it's a misunderstanding to assume that just because we
are changing a few terms that all terms must be thrown out as well.
Someone recently resigned from Black Hat over naming and trying to
what he thought was the right thing. It was not well received by because
he didn't ask the people he was supposedly trying to speak for.
Should we have a discussion about Black Hat/White Hat? Maybe but
speaking over groups doesn't actually help.

Master/slave and blacklist/whitelist are examples of terms that
the Black community has identified as being harmful. If we actually
want to build a better kernel community we should be listening
to them as experts in what is bad terminology for their community.
I haven't heard any discussion of red-black trees so there's no
reason to change it. If I'm wrong about that, then I take
responsibility for not knowing about it and we can work on changing it.

> At some point, maybe we should admit that we are inclusive, but also
> just admit that we don't want to have the kinds of people who instead
> of doing kernel development, waste everybody's time with talking about
> the meaning of the word "black".

Part of being inclusive means listening to under represented groups.
If those groups are saying that we have a language problem then I
don't think we can say we're actually inclusive to those groups.
And yes, there is no council we can go to say "we are inclusive"
and there's always going to be disagreement among under representative
groups. The kernel community works on trust and part of that trust is
figuring out which voices in the community you need to listen to.
Changing terms is arguably one of the least important parts of
building an inclusive community but it is part of it. Community building
is kernel development because if we don't have developers there is no
kernel. Those mythical maintainers have to come from somewhere.

Thanks,
Laura