I was recently asked to change the reference to a "whitelist" in a PRD I wrote, and use "allow list" instead. The suggestions made sense to me at the outset, I made the change, and will stick to this terminology going forward. I later found more context and discussion to better understand this request -- the UK NCSC deciding to stop using "whitelist" and "blacklist" due to stigma and racial stereotyping surrounding the two terms in in this article, similar decisions from Google Chrome and Android teams, and a related Twitter discussion.
Some of the pushback on this online has been that since these words have no racial bias in their origins then wouldn't changing them be meaningless and inconsequential? I land on no, and that we should advocate making these changes as teams and individuals in external and internal usage, because -
- the replacement words are strictly better (not longer and explicitly convey the meaning across cultures)
- while the direct impact might be low, the effort required is also relatively low
- sets the bar really low for what we as a company or society will tolerate
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