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L.A. County Bans Use Of "Master/Slave" Term

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sub-instead-taxpayer-scum/righteous-despot dept.

SlashChick writes "In an interesting twist on political correctness, L.A. County has banned the use of the terms 'Master/Slave' (commonly used to denote hard drive arrangements.) According to Snopes.com, 'someone within the County bureaucracy... had taken offense at "master/slave" references and complained to the board.' L.A. County now requires that vendors working with the county remove all 'master/slave' references. Incredible. Read the full story."

10 of 2,143 comments (clear)

  1. For the love of all that's good and holy by __aavhli5779 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Funny that my first instinct was to check Snopes, and what do you know but that's the provided link. Shows how patently ridiculous this story seemed at first.

    Hasn't this obsession with sanitizing speech become a total farce? What's next? Will we not be able to have male and female ends on our 1/4" audio cable for fear of offending the transgendered? How the hell am I supposed to shop for wires now?

    1. Re:For the love of all that's good and holy by goodie3shoes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is linguistic revisionism, and it has dangers. If you eliminate terms from the language because they make someone uncomfortable, you allow the public to forget or erase history. I think this ultimately does a disservice to those who were oppressed.

      --
      BSA: "Would you like a free Software Audit"? me: "No, thanks. My software is all Free".
    2. Re:For the love of all that's good and holy by bludger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As a non-American, it didn't even occur to me that the problem they had with the master-slave couplet had anything to do with blacks and whites. I just thought that they were offended by the concept of slavery. If it is true that they see the master-slave relationship as being non other than the white-black relationship, then these people are truly racist.

  2. First things first by orthogonal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    LA County has banned the use of the terms 'Master/Slave'

    Is this the same LA County that has rampant police corruption and brutality problems?

    The one in the state, California, that is facing a massive deficit?

    Glad to know they have their priorities right.

    --
    Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
  3. Request or require? by noname3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "L.A. County Bans use of Master/Slave Term. ...
    LA County now requires that vendors working with the county remove all 'master/slave' references."

    Contrast this to the snopes article, which says: The County of Los Angeles has requested that equipment vendors avoid using the industry term "Master/Slave" in product descriptions and labelling.

    There's a big difference between request and require. And banned? Hardly. I doubt anyone's going to get fined or sued over this.

  4. Re:No Master/Slave? by FryGuy1013 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except that the primary/secondary notation is already used for the cable arrangment. Currently it's the:

    Primary Master
    Primary Slave
    Seconndary Master
    Secondary Slave
    Tertiary Master ...

    So we should be calling them the Primary Primary drive?

    --
    bananas like monkeys.
  5. slavery and racism are not synonymous by polished+look+2 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The term "slave" is commonly used in the scriptures, e.g.
    When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (Rom 6:20-22)
    In these cases its about being enslaved to something or someone (the master) and has nothing whatsoever to do with the color of a person's skin.
  6. Tee hee! by theonetruekeebler · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Okay. So, when I was working for Georgia Public Health on some clinic management software, we decided that reindexing all those Clipper .NTX files should be a distributed task. One machine was set up as the controller, and other PCs on the LAN asked it which table to reindex next. During the implementation discussions, we always referred to the machine doing the telling as the master and the machines doing the work as the slaves.

    The team on this project was about half black and half white. I was having an animated discussion with another of the (white) programmers when a couple of the (black) programmers came in. They watched the discussion for a little while. I looked up at them, and one said, "Don't say slave."

    "No?" I asked.

    "Nuh uh," he replied, with just slightly too straight a face.

    So I bet my career: I turned to the other (white) programmer and said, "Fine. So the Massah machine needs to hold record counts in the array so it can..." and everybody cracked up. We discussed terminology a bit, and decided to call the controlling box the "controller" and the indexing boxes the "indexers." About 70% of the folks actually using our application were black, we figured, and not too savvy on computer terminology, so fuck it: we caved, just to be on the polite side.

    Moral: we all had a good laugh. Here in Atlanta proper, there are more white than blacks. In state government, there is plenty of minority representation. And we all get along pretty damned well---I was voted the second whitest white boy in the office by the (mostly black) administrative staff (and damn was the whitest white boy pissed).

    I'm increasingly convinced that the people we're trying desperately not to piss off are not minorities, but liberal white jackasses who think they're under some sort of obligation to rescue all those poor defenseless minorities from oppressive words. Most actual black people can look after themselves, and, having better things to worry about, tend not to give a damn.

    --
    This is not my sandwich.
  7. How Asinine. by Venner · · Score: 5, Insightful
    the grain of salt for those which are simply ridiculous

    As is web weaver for god's sake. A good change? Ha. A master does not imply evil doings. A martial arts master or a master carpenter generally don't have slaves. Master implies that they the best at what they do. Yes, it also implies authority, but not cruel domination. Gah. People drive me insane. Some of these offended groups are probably the same ones that burn 'inappropriate books.' Pooh on them.

    I'd rather have lived a hundred years ago. Except of course, for all my grumbling about rampant political correctness and other hogwash, I'd be much more pissed about the lack of women's suffrage, real racial inequality, and the other issues of the day. The moral? There isn't one really.
    --
    A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
  8. Re:Singular They - Insightful my ass by gilroy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Blockquoth the poster:

    'They' must refer to more than one person, or you're wrong.

    True in formal writing or speech... for now. Check back in a century and I'd bet you'll see the singular "they" accepted. It's easier than formulating a new, concise, elegant approach to "he/she". And rant all you want, but the world is never going back to the default "he".

    Nor, IMHO, should it. Language evolves and no language does it better than English. The language expresses the needs of the culture -- if the culture as a whole (or even in large part) decides the old way is inadequate, the language will change accordingly.

    Or, to put it succintly, the only languages spoken "perfectly" are dead ones.
    --
    The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach