It is the same reason that polite people don't continue to use the word, "niggardly".
White and black, light and darkness, yang and yin, on and off, one and zero. I'll bet that most people that have ever lived understand those parallels. Human melanin concentrations in skin don't enter into it. Attempting to control usage of a word as fundamental and common as "black" is an absurd overreach. It's nothing like "niggardly", which was barely in use anyway and brings to mind the same slur in the minds of just about any American alive today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...
>you really want to go out of your way to educate everyone on the etymology of a word because of an antiwoke crusade
What's wrong with people voicing their opinion in a debate fashion?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Musl...
Come on, everybody knows this is not true.
/mysides
Remember the whole ordeal with the "ok" hand sign? That's what happens when you let the minority control you, and that wasn't even a real case of racism.
You see, the thing about culture is that it's rapidly evolving and not necessarily rational (which is perfectly fine). If the word "mainline" would become associated with nazis commonly enough, I'd definitely want to avoid its usage despite of there being nothing wrong it, just like I'm not going to use swastikas just because it's an ancient symbol of well-being. So no, "blacklist" isn't racist, but if we can reduce the ugly associations that our language may be implying, then insisting on not doing that surely doesn't present you in a good light.
What's this "sizeable chunk"? Where do these people congregate?
In my books, these people aren't "radical", they're simply "wrong".
Calling them "radical" gives the impression that being mindful about the language we choose to accept socially is in general radical. Of course it isn't.
Let's have a go!
It is dark at night, and black is dark. The one thing that's clear is "white" human skin ain't white, and "black" ain't black either. So... saying black or white to categorize any member of the human race is incorrect, using "blacklist" for something that can't see the light is kinda correct.
In a comment advocating for getting to the bottom of things and first principles of "words and their meanings" of all things (whatever that means here, I don't know), you:
a) misinterpret what any current usage of radical would mean b) proceed to, from what I presume your idea of presume principles is, chain together a half hearted series of arbitrary connections c) continue to skip over any well understood meaning of whiee and black in the context of race for not being literal enough? d) but conclude that a very unusual, uncommon, tenuous metaphors about blacklists being for blocking light being more correct somehow?
There's just so much going on in such a short comment. I really hope it was on purpose, it's Terry Pratchett-esq.
Like isn't black a literal color first and foremost before being an allusion to darkness and light? Even if it's not the precise color, isn't that ... closer via whatever your first principles are here?
adjective main; principal. "the apartment's master bathroom has a free-standing oval bathtub"
"The phrase "master bedroom" first appeared in the 1926 Sears catalog, according to the real estate blog Trelora. It was a feature of a $4,398 Dutch colonial home, the most expensive in the catalog, referring to a large second floor bedroom with a private bathroom."
https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_971e3114fec2c583d17a32ac8c...
1926 was only 60 years after the civil war, an era where the evils of slavery will still felt by those, also a year that the KKK still had marches in DC.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b39318/
The KKK even had political influence:
"In the case of the Democratic Party, the key battleground was the 1924 Convention. The Klan endorsed William Gibbs McAdoo, the frontrunner for the nomination."
http://www1.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html
So the only question that remains was Sears and Roebuck racist? Some think they were, others point to the fact that they enabled blacks to still purchase from the Sears catalog.
Another option is that Sears was just marketing the house to the consumers that existed at the time. In 1926, what rich KKK sympathizer wouldn't like to sleep in the "Master Bedroom" gloriousness of the 1860's?
