That's not even the worse part. The refusal to make a change that costs you nothing in order to stick it to people you don't like is much worse and indicates all sorts of behaviors you do not want on your team.
I was mentally and physically abused as a child by my stepfather.
If, in the middle of him choking me unconscious someone had given me the choice between "lots of people tell him he's horrible" and "someone gets him off of me", which do you think I would choose?
Do you think those who are disadvantaged due to their race would rather you worry about helping them get on their feet or not hiring someone for not wanting to name a branch "main".
You add to the hurt of this world in the name of victims who would rather you do something more useful. This is about you, not about them.
> You add to the hurt of this world in the name of victims who would rather you do something more useful.
Wrong. Maybe try talking to people that don't want that kind of verbiage instead of making bad assumptions. Removing terminology associated with slavery has high support among those that actually were descendants of slaves.
> This is about you, not about them.
As such, this sounds like projection.
It's the assumption that I'm not a descendant of a slave and have no insight based purely on a post in which no mention of ancestry or race happened.
It's like the old meme about tying a buttered piece of toast to a cat, they spin in the air indefinitely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_cat_paradox
Am I hire-able? I aint white, so presumably you SHOULD hire me to help with racism. yet I rename my main branch to master on all personal projects.
So the question becomes, do the above posters hire me or not? Presumably no since I have the wrong opinion but if they refuse to hire me they're furthering racial inequities so then presumably yes.
Of course, this paradox goes away the second you acknowledge both are stupid reasons to hire or fire anyone.
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Here's the real problem with the other posters.
A complete and utter lack of respect for the effects of their decisions on the lives of other people.
It's why I'm such a fan of the following C.S Lewis quote
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/lewis...
> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
George Carlin had a word or two to say about this phenomenon: https://youtu.be/hSp8IyaKCs0
Also, changing language that explicitly says “white good”, “black bad” can’t really hurt. It takes very little effort and “allow list” is actually clearer anyway.
Unless of course the real motivation isn't to help but instead to demonstrate power and status...
That isn't what they say at all. The only way that argument holds any water is with profound ignorance.
It's the same line of thinking as saying that "red team" is offensive because "red" used to be a derogatory term for native Americans. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816
The word itself isn't negative. It's usage _may_ be negative, but if you think the word itself is negative then you're the racist one.
As if that's the point?
What do you think a hostile workplace is? Do you think being consistently subjected to verbiage that negatively impacts your mental health is a good thing?
Seems odd to me that so many people want to hold onto things that hurt other people and justify it by saying it doesn't solve anything despite the fact that those people are telling you that it will help them.
And acquiescing meekly to absurd demands is a much worse behavior for a team.
Even worse behavior in a teammate would be trying to browbeat their coworkers into wasting energy on performative nonsense to score social status points.
In a just world anyone who suggested this would be fired immediately.
Is there a better solution than updating some of the older projects and automation?
This isn't a technical problem that needs some complex processes and automation.
Sooner or later, y'all are going to be outdated.