Context changes. There are various homophobic slurs that used to mean something else but now have a new, extremely hurtful meaning. And nobody tries to use the previous definition except in bad faith to be a pot-stirring asshole.
By the same token, nobody is talking about British chimney sweeps when they say blacklist. Unlike the first example, I don't think people are trying to be hurtful by using blacklist. But it's not hard to connect the dots of "black = bad, white = good" and see why people dislike it. It costs you nothing to switch terms to blocklist/allowlist. Or change your git default branch from master to main. Thinking about the feelings of someone other than yourself isn't being over-sensitive. It's being human.
The thing is, blacklist and whitelist have not gained any new meanings any time recently. (And I can't find anything about this supposed chimney meaning?) It was always about the actual colors.
At the company I work for, there is an internal effort to rename "Black Friday" to "Retail Friday".
Coming up with reasonable explanations to justify this stuff is starting to feel like when I was a child in religious education & would rack my brain to come up with my own explanations for the contradictory and implausible aspects of what I was being taught.
Isn't the right way to solve this hassle by banning the word "black" as reference to a race?!
Black isn't even a color :)
I'm still confused that so many people in the US complain about racism, but every form you fill out, e.g., at a doctor's office, asks you for your race.
