Blacklisted

Holy crap. I was writing an email to some colleagues earlier today about a filter feature in our application. I wrote something like, "Should we use a blacklist or a whitelist?" These are common terms in application development. Filters in various contexts are often implemented as either a blacklist (a list of "bad" values, which are then blocked) or a whitelist (only the permissible values are in the list, and all others values are blocked).

Then it hit me like a frozen fish on the side of my head. These terms are really, fantastically, politically incorrect. Black is bad, white is good. Holy crap. It had never occurred to me.

I changed the email to read "'good' list" and "'bad' list". I'll go with those terms until I find a better alternative. Unfortunately, blacklist is pervasive today.

Am I overreacting? I was well into adulthood when I discovered that the phrase "that sucks" was once vulgar. In my youth, it may have had some spice, but it was never vulgar to me. By adulthood it was bland. I say it all the time and I'll keep saying it. I'm confident that most IT professionals use the term blacklist without the slightest thought of its potential for offensiveness, as did I before today.