How Slackware is Healing the Planet from Terrorism and Racism
 

KISS Design.

It is said that English is a difficult foreign language to master. Perhaps it is because of all the various combinations of letters that make the same phoenetic sound--like c, k, ck, and ch all with instances of the same "hard k" utterances: is it enough to cause someone to snap and want to harm regions that speak English natively? Perhaps.

Luckily, learning English opens up the english-dominant gnu linux computational stacks, including Slackware. Compared to the other variants, Slackware's KISS design is so refreshing, after having just learned English, that the near-snapping urges dissipate into happy butterflies!

Therefore, we can logically conclude that slackware, more than any other linux distro, keeps us safe from terrorists.

OK, so that was tounge-and-cheek, but here's the serious vein: screens program the people... programmers program the screens... programming languages program the programmers... since English dominates many of the programming languages, these languages are subject to some of the curses of the English language, such as imbedded racism: should programming languages still contain terms such as "blacklist" or "whitelist"?

We are all editors of our traditions... imbedded into our traditions are diseases, there before any living were born...

While programmers digitalize tradition, we have opportunity to heal some of these deeply imbedded tumors.

Slackware is already leading the way by keeping the layout of the cockpit understandable and consistent. For the consideration of all of its developers and especially of course our "BDFL," I humbly propose that, for reasons shared above, that /etc/slackpkg/blacklist be renamed /etc/slackpkg/exemptions... and so on...

Health == Attitude

I would not consider 'blacklist' and 'whitelist' racist terms. Same with the argument about master/slave - they are not tied to racism either despite cries to the contrary.
Your wokeness can easily go too far. The worst thing people do these days is try to bury history or even rewrite it.
As a society we can only learn from our mistakes if we actually remember them. Otherwise history keeps repeating itself.

Dude... <edited removed offensive language> How can any sane person relate "blacklist" to racism? Why don't we ban the words "black" and "white" instead if we are going this route...

One of the mistakes is blindly following the authority of tradition: if we don't challenge authority of tradition, history is bound to repeat itself...

Master / Slave is another great example, and I thank Windu for bringing it up; and I agree that they have completely different connotations in computer science than in history... but with a simple renaming, the new name more closely embodies the computer science meaning

semantics and behavior are linked... when a child is straying towards the road, it is preferable for the parent to utter "stay in the yard" than "don't go in the road". It describes what's supposed to happen.

How we word things sets a tone. Given that exclusions/inclusions or primary/secondary offers the same compuational meanings as blacklist/whitelist or master/slave, and given that I have the freedom to choose symbol names when coding, I don't see why I wouldn't choose the former. I don't think old coding books should be re-written. But new code doesn't have to remain tainted.

It has been proven that people subconsciously associate white=good and black=bad. I don't know if that is racist or not but it does imply IMHO an implicit bias.

Sorry, I don't see this thread going anywhere positive and therefore it is being closed.