On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Noel J. Bergman wrote:
> Personally, I view Political Correctness as being closer to Orwellian
> thought control than a sincere attempt to instill appreciation for, and
> tolerance of, diversity.
And I think "Political Correctness" is a term invented by the right to
pretend that they shouldn't have to care about the history and legacy of
others in the world, that their own ignorance is a virtue rather than a
vice. But you can't entirely blame them - racism and cultural
abrasiveness is often not easy to spot or be aware of. Watch any film
from the 50's or earlier and notice how women and people of color are
depicted; the cues can be subtle but, in retrospect, pretty harmful.
Here's one way to think of it. We have a certain set of principles that
bind Apache developers together - transparancy, consensus,
non-affiliation, respect for fellow developers, and meritocracy, among
others. Someone new to Apache or the concept of Open Source, and who
doesn't grok those principles off the bat, is likely to interpret our
feedback to them along these lines as Political Correctness - that it's
not PC to flame someone to shreds, not PC to make code decisions on IRC,
not PC to demand someone else to fix your bugs.
There's no doubt it gets abused - and having lived in Berkeley, boy do you
see it get abused. But in this case, there's every reason in the world to
be concerned about what we do with Native American history and mythology.
Despite this, I like Geronimo as a name. However, I think it'd be a poor
choice for two reasons previously noted: other software products already
using that name, and the *potential* it has to cause quite a bit of
trouble. It's really not that hard to come up with new names.
Brian
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