Even incremental progress is progress. And sometimes, incremental progress can happen at such an obtuse angle that it becomes completely unmergeable back to `main`. But you can always point to the spirit of the branch.
If we rename the branches beyond Github's UI lots of things will break. And will it really affect racist attitudes even marginally? I can't see it myself. In which case, rather than progress, it's a distraction from anything that otherwise could afford real progress.
Is this progress, or the appearance of progress (aka masturbation)?
This is Microsoft, a trillion dollar company that continuously lobbies the government on issues much less important to society than systemic inequality. They've decided the proper corporate action in the wake of new civil unrest over racism is to change a variable name in an esoteric professional tool. A tool used almost exclusively by people smart enough to recognize the lack of active malice in the current name.
The proper response to Microsoft by anyone who cares about racism should be to recognize the insult to their intelligence.