Re[2]: Master/Slave

["Walker, Arlen P" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

      If you don't, you're no better than the redneck who
      insists on teaching his 3 year old to use the N-word.  You're
      perpetuating useless garbage for another generation.

Well, we've almost killed this thread, we've had the obligatory Hitler
reference (thereby trivializing the deaths of millions, but that didn't
seem to bother the sensitive person who brought it up) and now we have yet
another sensitive person jumping on rednecks. Isn't it ironic how many we
can offend in the name of not offending?

I'll make one last attempt to open some closed minds before moving on.

People, the issue isn't "do we care if we offend someone?" no matter how
much some of you hope it is. Nor is anyone asserting words don't have
connotations, as some other black-and-white poster stated. Those are simply
attempts to change the venue to another court.

The issue *is* communications efficiency. Some people apparently think we
have to throw away a word because a single individual is made uncomfortable
by it. I  would encourage the person who responded to Mr. Orr to drop me a
line -- off list if you like -- regarding the degree of "offense" he[?]
felt. Enough to never use the product being discussed again? Enough to
search through the drive documentation and return the hard drive if it used
those terms? Enough to never use a computer which used "slave processes" or
supported "slave terminals?"

These are not frivilous questions. In many case we're dealing with a
terminology that's not only entrenched, but is also the most accurate and
accessible description of the function in question. We would have to impose
upon the industry a new, less accurate and less efficient naming convention
in the name of not disturbing a segment of the population. Before
undertaking something like that we owe the industry non-anecdotal evidence
of just how big a segment that is and how bad a problem it is for them.

No one is defending the practice of unnecesarily offending anyone. But as
has been pointed out, writing anything sunstantive so that you offend no
one at all is an impossible task. How many and how much are questions that
need to be answered. If we cease to bother .1% of the readers and increase
confusion for 50% of the readers, is that a worthy trade? I don't think so.

There's a second issue buried in this as well:

I wonder if the same folks who argue so hard against "slave" would argue
that we need to change the name of tools, like the "bastard file?" Have the
events in Bosnia rendered it difficult to speak of "cleansing" anything?
Because the Nazis called gas chambers the "final solution" are chemists to
be forced to call a mixture of liquids and solids by a new name? Where do
we stop in our attempts to filter offense?

People who commit atrocities will always try to hide behind bland words.
It's a hopeless task; they can never effectively do it because words don't
have that kind of power. But if we remove the words from common use every
time they are used to describe offensive behavior, we'll run out of words
very rapidly.

We need to come to grips with the idea that we (as a species) have done
many horrible things to other members of our species, and that these
horrible things all have names and contexts that should be remembered so
that we not allow them to be repeated. But that there are also contexts
unrelated to these particular events which are most accurately described
using the same terms. (An example might be the difference between "a
holocaust" and "The
Holocaust.")

      I don't think slave has ever developed any useful modern connotation.
      It's just a historical word whose time has passed.  Let it rest in
      peace.

This comment just makes it appear that the writer hasn't read most of the
other posts on this topic, which makes me wonder: Is it worth
recapitulating the dictionary definition that specifically doesn't apply to
people? In the mechanical fields there are several areas where the term is
quite useful and concisely descriptive. Other areas where it finds
appropriate usess are in computers and electronics.

I could be persuaded in specific places that its use is ill-advised,
because it doesn't do its job, which is to describe the function concisely.
(That comes under trading some clarity for innocence. In those cases we're
trading a minor bit of confusion for a clearer term *and* less offense;
clearly a good trade.) But there are also areas where the description is
completely appropriate, and in those areas we're trading a lot of clarity
for how much less offense? That's the unanswered question, isn't it?


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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