I didn't want to participate in this discussion, but I will, probably for the following reasons:
- I'm French - I bought a copy of Strunk & White during my first trip to the US, in 1990, in a desperate attempt to improve my english writing style. - I can't say it changed my life, but I found the advice it contains useful - and, as noted by others, not just for english speakers. - For this reason, I have some fondness for this book (I know it has its limitations too...). - I'm puzzled by how some people might equate S&W with white supremacy. I was still puzzled, as many others in this thread, until I googled for it, and found some reference to this story: *His former executive assistant, Cassie Jones, who is black, quit shortly after he gave her a gift she considered insulting, three people with knowledge of the matter said.* > *In November, after she had spent four months working for him, Mr. Lynch called Ms. Jones into his office and handed her “The Elements of Style,” a guide to standard English usage by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. Mr. Lynch said he thought she could benefit from it.* > *With its suggestion that her own language skills were lacking, the gift struck Ms. Jones as a microaggression, the people said. A few days later, she quit. Before leaving the headquarters at 1 World Trade in Lower Manhattan, she placed the book on his desk.* *Mr. Lynch said he hadn’t meant to insult Ms. Jones, who declined to comment for this article. “I really only had the intention — like every time I’ve given it before — for it to be a helpful resource, as it has been for me,” he said. “I still use it today. I’m really sorry if she interpreted it that way.”* https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/business/media/conde-nast-racial.html So I guess this gives some context to this discussion. Additional personal remark: I have many times in my professional life given or been given a book about specific work-related topics when I or the other party thought that one could benefit from it in terms of useful work-related skill acquisition. I find it quite hard to understand how someone would reject such a gift and take it as a reason to resign (unless of course there were other things going on in this company, in which case, why bring the focus on S&W ?). S. On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 3:29 PM Kyle Stanley <aeros...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Basically, it feels like we were lied to. And if that wasn't bad > enough, to see that Guido accepted that vitriolic commit message and merged > it in ... it makes me embarrassed to be a Python supporter. > > Only Guido could attest to this, but as someone who spoke in support of > the change, I personally missed the commit message until attention was > drawn to it in the python-ideas thread. When reviewing PRs, I'll admit that > I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the individual commit messages > (particularly extended descriptions); most of my attention is on the actual > changes made. So, perhaps he did the same? > > Either way, I don't think I would go as far as to say that it embarrasses > me as a Python contributor. That being said, it did very much feel like it > went in a completely different direction than the PR description, and I'm > uncomfortable with it as well for that reason. So, my vote would be to > amend the commit message based on the description of the PR and proposal > made in python-ideas. > > On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 8:53 AM Ethan Furman <et...@stoneleaf.us> wrote: > >> On 06/30/2020 05:03 AM, Łukasz Langa wrote: >> > >> >> On 30 Jun 2020, at 12:44, Ethan Furman <et...@stoneleaf.us <mailto: >> et...@stoneleaf.us>> wrote: >> >> >> >> Of course I don't know if Keara or Guido knew any of this, but it >> certainly feels to me that the commit message is ostracizing an entire >> family line because they had the misfortune to have the wrong last name. >> In fact, it seems like Strunk & White is making changes to be inclusive in >> its advice -- exactly what I would have thought we wanted on our side ("our >> side" being the diverse and welcoming side). >> > >> > In any case, saying that Keara and Guido mistook the family name of one >> of the authors for skin color feels derogatory. >> >> My apologies, that was not my intent. As I said, I never knew what it >> was until today (er, yesterday now). >> >> > The commit message clearly is controversial but when you say the change >> itself was unnecessary, consider that English is now a language >> predominantly used outside of USA and Great Britain. Relaxing the >> recommendation to use S & L Standard English in the CPython codebase isn't >> problematic in this sense. That recommendation was largely ignored anyway, >> as core developer voices in the other threads already admitted. So, chaos >> won't ensue. We still want to maintain consistency, as PEP 8 recommends. I >> don't think you have to worry now about seeing organization and >> organisation in the same docstring. >> >> Well, that wouldn't bother me -- as often as not I use non-US-English >> spellings; I just appreciate if it's a correct spelling /somewhere/. >> >> >> That's what it felt like: betrayal. >> > >> > This entire section of your message is confusing to me. Mind >> explaining? How does a commit message equate stabbing somebody who helped >> you? What is being betrayed in this commit? >> >> The original request for the change had absolutely no hint that the >> current text was racist in any way; then we find out that, apparently, >> we've been harboring white supremacist ideals by prescribing when to use >> apostrophes and commas? That commit message (not the commit itself) took >> what should have been a simple change and turned into a platform for >> political grandstanding of the worst kind: >> >> - False, as far as I can tell (until given confirming examples from the >> S&W text) >> - Only colored people are mentioned (and other /native English speakers/) >> - Zero mention of non-native English speakers >> >> Basically, it feels like we were lied to. And if that wasn't bad enough, >> to see that Guido accepted that vitriolic commit message and merged it in >> ... it makes me embarrassed to be a Python supporter. >> >> -- >> ~Ethan~ >> _______________________________________________ >> Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org >> To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org >> https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ >> Message archived at >> https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/T55AGV7XPQ7YHU2VFIBHAWUZHEMZ43R3/ >> Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ >> > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org > To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ > Message archived at > https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/DOM5V5QSKFJSD3FKVXIF4C4X3AFE6QNR/ > Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/ > -- Stefane Fermigier - http://fermigier.com/ - http://twitter.com/sfermigier - http://linkedin.com/in/sfermigier Founder & CEO, Abilian - Enterprise Social Software - http://www.abilian.com/ Chairman, National Council for Free & Open Source Software (CNLL) - http://cnll.fr/ Founder & Organiser, PyParis & PyData Paris - http://pyparis.org/ & http://pydata.fr/
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