Bobbyaro wrote:
asfish wrote:
Good example of PC gone mad
"In 2003, Dennis Tafoya, director of the LA County affirmative action office, issued a memo describing an “exhaustive search” for any computer equipment labeled “master” and “slave”. He also stated that all offending labels should be replaced with more appropriate terminology. Purchasing officials subsequently requested that all suppliers cease using labels deemed “unacceptable and offensive”—the first step of a creeping labeling ban. The county began their investigation after ONE worker saw a videotape machine bearing the labels and filed a discrimination complaint with the Office of Affirmative Action Compliance. However, “master” and “slave” are common terms for primary and secondary hard drives in the computer industry, and have been used without complaint for decades. Due to overwhelming negative publicity and a near revolt from suppliers, LA County’s Division Manager of Purchasing and Contract Services promised there would be no ban on computer equipment based on current labeling practices."
We actually encountered this at work, we had a detector that was labelled master and another as slave; a black colleague pointed out that there were negative connotations with the nomenclature - something his white colleagues had not thought about. They are now called primary and secondary; no one got upset with this change, and a few people gained a bit of knowledge and insight.
*or as myp likes to call it, "had our privileges checked"
It is not "PC gone mad", it is adjusting your sights based upon increased perception.
Unfortunately I'm very busy today so don't have much time (believe me, I'd much rather be having interesting discussions, but the bills have to be paid
)
Briefly, though, what you've just said, Bobby, entirely contradicts what JBR said earlier about asfish's example just being down to one busybody or whatever. According to you, this is actually a good thing, and "insightful" that we all learned that we mustn't call fucking
computer hard disks "master" and "slave" units. I see this contradiction from the Left at all times; indeed on this very forum, we've gone from Political Correctness doesn't exist, it does exist but only in the sense it's good manners; it does exist but it's just the odd 'busybody' giving everyone a bad name; it does exist and it's entirely a good thing too (you bastard).
To a fair chunk of the 'normal' population outside of the London Chattering Classes, it's a combination of the bewildering and the absurd, this 'master and slave' hard disk being but one of many, many examples. We look on in abject horror and incredulity at the 'Twitstorms' on Twitter and social media, where someone - quite often even someone from the luvvie set - saying the wrong thing or the wrong word - and then it's 'pile on' and they're dog meat.
The thing to remember is, many of us who criticise the absurd overreactions of others are every bit as anti REAL bigotry, racism, homophobia etc. as anyone else; we don't sit misty-eyed over video recordings of Jim Davidson's 80s stand up or episodes of
Love Thy Neighbour. No, apart from the de facto, very real MASS GROUP CENSORSHIP and gagging that Political Correctness has very much become, and is (obviously a bad thing), the more oft overlooked aspect, I suggest, is this: these ABSURD objections like we're discussing here actually bring REAL, LEGITIMATE objections about real racism, bigotry
into disrepute. I mean seriously, like I've said, to a normal, sensible person the very notion of not being able to refer to an inanimate hard drive as a "master" unit of whatever is going to immediately give rise to a
"bloody PC tosser" type reaction, and if they hear this stuff often enough, or worse, are forced to change their behaviors over such petty, manifestly stupid reasons, the chances are they could really start to resent
all attempts, including justified and legitimate ones, to modify people's behaviors. That's not good, and could conceivably and ultimately lead to an unhelpful and unpleasant backlash that could set us all back years.
_________________
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Of course, he's normally wrong but
interestingly wrong