Maybe I should have put that in a new thread? I am at the mercy of the mods.
(apologies for this hijack, will take to another thread if continues)
Way to avoid the question. The question was whether APIs / frameworks, and OK, platforms, like GitHub frequently make changes to naming conventions and/or deprecate commands?
Any developer knows the answer is “yes”. GitHub Enterprise Server for example has made 8 releases this month.
I am confused by this.
If your customers are developers directly creating new repositories on GitHub, then it’s part of their job to be familiar with the latest naming conventions. Not to work from some old document and assume everything in it will still work with all the latest versions. (Or, if the document must be kept up to date then that is ongoing work regardless; as I just explained: these systems change all the time).
OTOH, if they are not developers and are using GitHub indirectly, then what are you saying? That you have developed tools that require the user to enter the name of the main branch, but the tool can neither overwrite the default name, nor lookup what the default name is, but requires the user to type the default name and it must match whatever is currently on GitHub? That would be pretty terrible software if that were the case.
Well, here’s a few links saying that they do indeed find this term offensive:
- “What’s in a Name? Professor take on roles of Romani activist and spokesperson to improve plight of their ethnic group”.
- “The Romani” (PDF).
- “The Plight of the Romani People-Europe’s Most Persecuted Minority”.
And since, as MrDibble points out the vast majority of travellers are Romani, then ISTM that Romani / Roma, or just “travelers” should be the preferred term.
Here’s a pretty recent government Equalities report from the UK that talks about terminology:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/360/full-report.html#content
The term Gypsy, Roma and Traveller has been used by policy-makers and researchers to describe a range of ethnic groups or those with nomadic ways of life who are not from a specific ethnicity. In the UK, it is common to differentiate between Gypsies (including English Gypsies, Scottish Gypsy/Travellers, Welsh Gypsies and other Romany people), Irish Travellers, who have specific Irish roots, and Roma, understood to be more recent migrants from Central and Eastern Europe. In continental Europe, however, all groups with nomadic histories are categorised as “Roma”, a much broader term that, while it includes Gypsies and Irish Travellers, is not the way in which most British communities would identify themselves.
and
We asked many members of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities how they preferred to describe themselves. While some find the term “Gypsy” to be offensive, many stakeholders and witnesses were proud to associate themselves with this term and so we have decided that it is right and proper to use it, where appropriate, throughout the report. We also heard many other terms used to refer to the Communities that are completely unacceptable and hate speech will be explored in Chapter 6 of this report.
It seems that like many other things, it’s complicated.
Incidentally, a Chinese company made its debut on the stock market recently. The company is New Oriental Education.
Those sites were all in the USA. I made it very clear that that I was talking about the UK. I even contrasted the opinions of UK gypsies and US Roma.
UK Government Census says different. Who we gonna believe? UK Government census or MrDibble?
OK, but remember the original reason this came up: kevlaw was “rolling [his/her] eyes” at the notion of “gypsy” becoming a disfavored word and suggesting that “white people suddenly decided that gypsy is offensive”.
I’ve cited several studies suggesting that many Romani themselves do find it offensive, and even your cite concedes the same.
I never suggested that the situation is simple. But it’s not an example of “Political correctness gone MAD”. And furthermore, we generally like to err on the side of caution. It’s not enough to find, say, some Japanese people who don’t mind being called “Japs”; if it’s hurtful to enough people, we switch terms.
I think we’ve taken this discussion about as far as it will go but some final thoughts to sum up my position.
I never disputed that Roma don’t like to be called gypsies.
I said that 1) most of the people in the UK that you might call Gypsies are not Roma. 2) ‘Gypsy’ is how they refer to themselves and how the government refers to them. 3) the word itself is not a slur.
The sites you shared made it clear that Roma in America don’t like to be called gypsies, but I already knew that. In other news, Scottish people do not like to be called English.
I rolled my eyes at the idea that ‘gypsy’ is a slur. It’s not. It’s the word that gypsies use to refer to themselves. I provided several sources that show that that’s the case.
You said it’s better to refer to them all as Roma. It’s not.
From DemonTree’s link:
In continental Europe, however, all groups with nomadic histories are categorised as “Roma”, a much broader term that, while it includes Gypsies and Irish Travellers, is not the way in which most British communities would identify themselves.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/360/full-report.html#content
On the matter of relative numbers, I learned from DemonTree’s report that most of the Roma in the UK are recent immigrants from the EU and arrived in the last 20 years. There were barely any before 2000. I didn’t know that before. I do now.
Incidentally, most will have to leave soon as barely any have registered for settled status and their status as legal immigrants expires in July.
If you are going to sum up, it would be good to refer to your original comments. Because you were originally were rolling your eyes at the idea of gypsy being disfavored and considered it just something “white people suddenly decided”.
If you’re now saying that of course it causes offense to many Roma, that would seem to be inconsistent.
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You now say that the census says most travelers are not Roma, but how could that be, since the census only had one box covering both groups? It’s true there’s an estimate, with the upper range of the estimate for Irish travelers being greater than the estimate for Roma, but the lower bound is also lower, so this is not support for your earlier claim.
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Who is “they”? If it’s the Roma, as I’ve cited*, we cannot simply say that they don’t find the term offensive. And the census also concedes that. It’s just that it makes the judgement call that overall most are happy with the term. We can debate the judgement call, but either way, it doesn’t support the position that it was “PC gone mad” that made anyone think anyone was offended by the term.
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Is the most ridiculous of all, IMO. I am British. I’ve heard “gypsy” preceded by “fucking” by BNP types as often as the word “paki” gets that prefix. I am familiar with people referring to others as a “gippos” as an insult, and for sure if anyone were to self-identify as a “gypsy” that would get smirks of derision. And of course dictionaries agree with me on this.
It’s nice to see that shows like “My big fat gypsy wedding” have tried to rehabilitate the term, but to deny it has any connotations as a slur is beyond absurd.
- And I don’t know why it would matter if the researcher(s) were American: the subject of their research was the UK, and they cited sources like the BBC.
Well, perhaps you can stop mentioning the war. 
So then I’m not really sure what the point of all that is, anyway. There’s no bright line to look for, here, but there are some general principles:
-Teasing is sometimes okay and sometimes not.
-Whether it’s okay depends more on the reaction of the teased than on the intentions of the teaser.
-Whether the teaser is an asshole depends on 1) whether they were trying to hurt the teased and 2) whether they persist in teasing after they were told the teased is upset. Either of these makes the teaser an asshole, with the proviso that if the teasing was because the teased was being an asshole, that changes things.
-Teasing a member of a minority group for traits that put them in the minority is kind of gross. Same goes for someone in a traditionally powerful group teasing someone in an historically marginalized group for their membership in that marginalized group.
Probably? So?
Sorry. I did ramble on a bit.
Here’s my point reprised:
How much should we teach our children to be resistant to this cross-cultural teasing versus teaching them to look out for offence and to complain about it?
“Resistant” here seems to mean “put up with it without objection.” Is that accurate?
You didn’t ask me but I think sometimes, like in the James Corden example, the answer is yes. Some cross-cultural teasing is not meant as a frontal assault on the entire culture.
Good question! But no, I don’t think so. I don’t think the two are exclusive (despite the poor way that I framed the question).
I think it means to not be crushed by it. Complain by all means, but don’t let it grind you down.
The episode I had in mind was this one:
Law professor Jason Kilborn cited the N-word (and the B-word) on an exam thusly: n****, b****. It was in a question about an employment discrimination case. He has done so for years previously to no comment – as all reading this but a sliver would expect.
But this year, a group of black students initiated a protest against him for harming them in exposing them to this expurgated rendition of the N-word. That is, in a class training them in litigation in the real world.
One black student claimed that they experienced heart palpitations upon reading the words.
[Skip a bit …]
If a black student is traumatized to such a degree by seeing “n*****” on a piece of paper, then that student needs psychological counseling. We all understand the history and power of the N-word, but we all also understand the simple issue of degree. That student who got heart palpitations needs help, and what the suits at the University of Illinois in Chicago should have done as gently direct this student to the proper services, which the school surely provides, for people who have fallen away from the ability to cope with normal life.
This is an extreme case, perhaps, but the article in Mary Sue made me think of it.
From a combo of the same UK census data you cited, and Wikipedia.
I see nothing in the numbers you cite that contradicts what I said. You are aware that “Gypsy/Traveller” as a category includes Roma. But that not all Roma choose that categorization.
This is a different case: it doesn’t involve teasing, so I’m not sure how a long discussion of teasing is enlightening if this is the case you have in mind.
Reading a bit about that, I’m on the professor’s side here. But I’m not sure if there’s additional context that would change my mind.
Sometimes undergrads–and, yes, law school students–react in a way that’s not helpful or reasonable. As someone suggested, it’s possible that a student knew she’d bombed the test and invented this as an excuse to get out of trouble for her bomb. I dunno.
What I do know is that I don’t think cases like this are the primary danger to academic freedom in the United States. Earlier I mentioned the Nicole Hannah-Jones affair that’s happening right now (like literally the UNC board is meeting today). That’s a far greater threat to academic freedom–but zero people responded to it. Contrast that case with this case, several months old and instigated by some law students. Is this the case we should really be talking about?
It was all over Twitter, same as all the other people who got cancelled. IIRC one of the free speech groups was involved in the case or at least offered to represent her.
“it” referred to my post, not to the affair off the Straight Dope.
- You are completely missing the point.
- This hikack has reached a tipping point and I’m going to drop it. Feel free to PM me if you want to continue.