Meta post I’ve decided to make. I enjoyed the unixporn subreddit a lot when I used reddit more. I enjoy customizing my linux de as much as the next nerd.
But you definitely shouldn’t use racist slang to refer to the process.
To be clear, I didn’t know the origin of the term ‘ricing’ until fairly recently. I was chattimg with my friend and used it to describe my de setup. They informed me that apparently it’s from car customization, and is a pejorative against generally asian men who customize their car to look like a racecar.
After learning this I was sad to realize just how engrained it is in linux de customization culture. I personally have stopped using the term, and I would ask everyone here stop as well.
TIL the origin of the word.
But I am confused. Anyone offended for using the word?
When repos changed to main from master, I got problems.
People are hypersensitive over these words now.
Well that’s easy to say when you are not part of the affected group.
But …
I am an Asian living in Asia. And I wouldn’t know the racism encountered by someone over other continents. Hence the question.
Peter Russell makes fun of India people.
Jo Koy makes fun of Phillipine people.
Jing Yang makes fun of Chinese people.
Fluffy makes fun of Mexican people.
Colored people can call each other N words.
Even white comedians joke that the people most sensitive are the people who are not in the affected groups.
I;m not gonna discuss your point about comedians because honestly that sounds nonsense to me, however the only reason I’m replying to you is because there is a keypoint in your comment:
This very much is why you may not see why this is an issue, if you truly are an Asian living in Asia you didn’t grow up not have experienced life as a minority group, let me tell you that despite whatever origins a person may have I’m pretty sure that every Asian person that lives in a western country could relate with the underlying racism towards them ingrained in a way that every time they try to bring this issues up they are dismissed as they were not possible of being victims of racism because a lot of Asians are successful or they skin light or whatever bullshit reason.
There is whole problematic and systematic about this and although I have my own opinion and experiences I will not expand further as I am also not an academic, I can only speak for myself.
I live in an Asian country where racism is not well known or may be people are not aware of the issue.
I hear about the issue though internet, experience shared by friends who had been to western countries, and so on.
I asked the question because I wanted to know.
I grew up in a good community in the US, and never really knew any racism. Experiencing real racism for the first time after I moved away is still one of the most painful experiences in my life.
Imagine that you’re out celebrating a national holiday with friends and family, happy and content, except that around you there are hundreds of people screaming and jeering that independence day is for Americans, and you should go home. But you are home. You were born within this state even, just up this same river you’re all sharing together right now. This is a real thing I experienced in parts of rural America.
You can call me oversensitive to racism, and I’d agree that I can be hyperaware of it. But it’s a response to the deep trauma that even just a few experiences with racism has caused me. I just want to live peacefully in the country I was born, but that’s not possible if the people around me hate my very presence in their midst.
I am sorry that you have to endure such bad experience. I will have to endure if I were in your place.
Someone pointed out that I have a racist mind. May be I might have.
But I wanted to know was if I say I rice my DE the reader of my sentence got offended or not. The answer is yes, they are.
I thought I used the word as Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhanced. I didn’t directed the sentence specifically to Asian users. Also rice word is in my opinion not a racist slang. Malcolm Gladwell book Outliers has a chapter relating rice and we eat rice everyday. The rice word has more good associations to me.
Also most of the cars in my counties are Asian made (and Toyota is prestigious for JIT manufacturing). Again “ricing a car” word do not appear racist to me.
Same thing with the master word. We use the master word for other things. PATA cable and HDD configuration was done in master and slave drives. Good copy of cassette is called master tape. Key that can open many locks is called master key. Around my society we do not insult other people calling slave.
I assume I am new to racism than I am a racist.
Now I know more and I will avoid the usage.
I’m glad you never experienced this yourself, and hope you never will. It’s perfectly understandable that you don’t know something like this that you haven’t seen before, but I’m glad that now that you’re aware of the context, you’re willing to adjust your worldview to accommodate the new knowledge.
This entire conversation is honestly very Western centric, but I hope it can be useful to you in other ways as we continue adjusting the English terminology we use around technology going forward.
Yeah, I don’t understand why people would start malding when repos changed from master to main. They’re just words after all.
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Yeah, I remember thinking all of these terms were strange and creepy back when I first learnt them as a kid for goodness’ sake. They’ve always been bad and I’m very glad they’re finally going away.
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This is indeed the silliest debate.
I used the term master for years, never really thought about it. I think I assumed it was referring to a master key (from which other keys are copied), rather than anything to do with ownership of people.
Then some people felt offended by it because they interpreted it differently than I did.
So… I changed the word I used. Like, it was the easiest thing in the world to do. “Main” is fine too, rolls right off the tongue, and if it happens to make a group of people feel less discriminated against than that’s all the motivating I need.
I also changed my repos as I updated them. It was like two commands and maybe a couple of lines in a CI config file. Trivial, even for dozens of them.
Today I wonder what the big deal is. If it really is “just a word”, well… so is main. Both words. If the one we’re using isn’t actually important then why resist changing it?
Seems to me like active resistance is kind of an indicator that maybe it really was about the word all along.
Tbh - leader / follower is usually a better description vs master / slave.
Parent / child vs master / sub.
Main or final vs master
I don’t get all pissy about it but I was never comfortable with master & slave.
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I don’t agree. I work for a very large company with an ungodly number of repos and a huge CI build pipeline; today they have all been converted to “main”. It wasn’t that hard.
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Not OP, but… Looking for things to be outraged about is not good for a healthy community.
I grew up with a racist uncle that rode a Harley, so hearing rice used like that is eyebrow raising for me. Everyone will have a different perspective though.
I’m Asian American. I’m offended by this word. In my experience, it has always been a racist perjorative every time it’s been used.
Like you mentioned in your other comment, you don’t have the American racial experiences with how this is used to understand why this hurts me, so I’d like to clarify that it does.
No Asians are.
This is more about power and control than racism.
One of the top-rated replies so far is an Asian who expresses they are offended, so that can’t be right.
What power and control does this even give someone?
ACKTCHYUALLY, the people whom this issue affects don’t even care, it’s only white liberals making a big deal out of it!!
It’s fucked that they have to stand up and announce “yes I vouch that the Asian community is offended by this word”. It’s like having to ask a child to put their clothes in the hamper every single day after they get home from school. Can’t you just grow up and do it without having to be asked?
I’m white, and it’s a slur. I want it gone too. Can we just quietly put our slurs away without being asked already?
bravely commenting your garbage opinion on a burner~<3
the refuge of every bigot: "the people I’m being bigoted towards want power and control over me. it’s pure projection.
Hi. Asian American here. I’m honestly offended by this term, and deeply offended by you assuming you can speak for me on this topic.
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