Re: USA dominion: Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 04:04:41PM -0700, Joseph Touch wrote:
> > For the mayority of writers and even more so readers of IETF documents,
> > english is not the first language. Even for any non-american native english
> > speaker, i wonder how much they feel that there is a need to update the language
> > used by the IETF for what arguably is primarily a US social problem: Dealing with 
> > a still seemingly not well enough handled history of afro-american racism and slavery. 
> 
> I tried to point out in my examples that this goes far beyond a US problem or the specific problem of slavery.

If the process is being let run by the people who started it, then it
will not result in any word change outside of their their area of interest.

Ho about my proposal for a language steering group constituted from members
from all type of language backgrounds. you did not comment about that.

> It might also be useful to keep in mind that slavery had existed for thousands of years before there ever was a US.

Sure.  Whats your point ?

> Yes, because we write our docs in English, many terms are particular to the English language, but not just US-English either.
> 
> If the worldwide community thinks that being respectful of others is a bad thing, then so be it.

Software components are not humans. Giving role names to technical constructs that
are considered to have negative connotations when applied to humans imho in
no way means to endorse or even trivialize the human application IMHO.

And i am not saying we should use such terms, i am just rejecting your claim
that its use implies respectlessness to others.

Of course, the wider the audience is you want to reach and the younger it may be
be the more difficult it is to use word where you need to make such distinctions
between human and other situations.  I personally do not think this is an
actual issue for IETF output.

If we had a steering group with really diverse backgrounds (as i proposed),
such as also from africa and parts of asia, where there is real slavery, and
such a steering group would suggest such language  changes in the IETF, i think that
would carry a lot more weight for the IETF community than the USA centric effort
that we see happening now.

Cheers
    Toerless

> Joe