Phneh indeed!

I was meaning to comment on this issue, but Jaqandor beat me to it. It seems that the are some individuals that are offended by the use of the terms "master" and "slave" in computer jargon. This has to do with having more than one device on a particular bus. One has its jumpers set to master and one to slave. But it appears that we should remove these words from the lexicon because someone has chosen to be offended by their use. These words are not racial slurs. Sure they could be used in an offensive manner, but we are talking about computer hard drives here. I don't think that hard drives are able to be offended, at least not yet.

While we are at it, can someone suggest a new word for me to use in describing the color of my car? A while back Krista, in her handling of all manners of office work for the music school for which she teaches, received a call from a parent who had a complaint about one of the teachers. It seems that this teacher was referring to the chalk board as a "black board." It was an actual black chalk board. This offended the woman (I cannot recall all of the details of this incident, so maybe Krista will rap at us). This made me crazy. To appease this woman are we no longer allowed to use the "black" as a descriptor? My car is black, Krista's is silver. When talking about our cars we refer to them possessively rather than by their color. But if we did refer to them as "the black car" and "the silver car," would somebody be offended? If they were, I think that might offend me. I'm not joking about that either. If someone were to claim that I were "racially insensitive" by using the word "black," I would not only be offended, I would be royally pissed-off. My friends and coworkers are not offended by the use of the word black, even in the context of race. Most refer to themselves as being black, not African American.

So why are some people offended? I think Jaquandor nails it. They choose to be. Read his relating of an episode of days of yore where one individual became offended by a word devoid of meaning, and it's manner of use devoid of context.