This is actively harmful to improving the material conditions of Black and other disadvantaged and marginalized groups. It's unquestioned that computer science is a field overwhelmingly dominated by white and Asian (incl. Indian, Middle Eastern, etc.) men. Both Black and Latino people, and women, are extremely disproportionately underrepresented in computer science (
citation,
citation), and this is something that we should all strive to improve.
The fact is, however, that changing whitelist to allowlist does not do that. I can promise you, with 100% certainty, that there has
never in the history of the world, ever, been a black person who genuinely, unironically said "I would become a computer science major, if only they'd stop using the term whitelist". There are about a million complicated sociological and economic factors that explain the disparity, and we ought to strive to do our best to combat them. Here are a couple of
genuine ways that you could combat them with far more substantive and material impacts:
- Donate (or feature) any one of the dozens of charities that work to improve STEM education in low-income and marginalized communities, like (VoSNL)[https://www.vosnl.org/].
- Join a protest
- Participate in a mutual aid group
- Learn if there is a rent strike or a tenants union in your city
- Read a book by a black author
And dozens more.
Even just including a statement at the top of the README or on the website saying "Rust stands with people of color and all victims of oppression." with a link to the BLM webpage would do more material good than this PR.
And yet, despite not making
any material improvements to anyone's lives, this PR plays directly into the hands of the alt-right. This only further cements the belief that the "SJWs are speech policing", which is precisely the first step in the alt-right pipeline! Additionally, this furthers the frankly harmful misunderstanding that racial equality is merely removing offensive phrases or whatever, ignoring the far more insidious social factors that play into it.