Hey all, I'm in the IT field. Our company just sent down this crazy directive to remove all instances of “whitelist,” “blacklist,” “whitebox,” and “blackbox” from all our documentation, everywhere. Terms that have been used in cybersecurity/IT for 30+ years are now suddenly racist because they imply white = good and black = bad. And they want to break that stereotype.
Uh….not everywhere does white = good and black = bad. In martial arts, there are white belts and black belts.
And now how far does this logic go? We usually have sheets that show different statuses of projects. Do we need to stop the red/yellow/green status to be sensitive to Native American and Asian populations? Because we don't want to propagate that red = bad and yellow = caution or warning?
Look, I'm all for respect for all ethnicities but now I feel like we are reaching too far. Can I get a sanity check? Its been a hellacious effort to replace everything with white/black to “permit” and “block.” We're talking hundreds and maybe thousands of instances we need to rewrite.