# The shifting tides of racist language

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shifting-tides-of-racist-language/977841>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [January 7, 2023, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shifting-tides-of-racist-language/977841 "2023-01-07T16:08:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 259

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**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-shifting-tides-of-racist-language/977841/259 "2023-02-06T07:03:13Z")

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> [@Riemann](#):
>
> > [@Odesio](#):
> >
> > Who the hell is triggered by the phrase master bedroom?
> 
> Nobody (I think). I suspect it’s a kind of hypercorrection going on - a desire to avoid use of the word slave, hence avoiding it where it’s used in the master-slave construction, leading to people wondering if _master bedroom_ is problematic. It does seem like rather pathetic window dressing, but nobody wants be _that guy_ who deprecates appropriate changes just because there are _also_ much bigger issues.

I agree, except for the bit about “nobody wants be _that guy_ who deprecates appropriate changes just because there are _also_ much bigger issues”. **[I’ve been happy to be _that guy_](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-term-master-bedroom-offensive/940001)** so you don’t have to. You’re welcome. 😉

> [@Grestarian](#):
>
> Now there’s a dangerous term. The IT people at my company were asked not to use “End Users” because someone thought it sounded like a reference to something scatological or deviantly sexual … The IT department was asked to call the people who use the computers and software ‘tech consumers’

Typically hilarious corporate nonsense. Forbid the use of a descriptive term like “end users” which actually describes what they are, and substitute “tech consumers”, which sounds like creatures that eat technology, or otherwise make it go away (as in “consumed by flames”). I tend to dislike the term “consumers” in many contexts because it’s not only so non-descriptive, but carries this weird connotation that their only purpose is to “consume” things rather than do anything productive with them. How about “users” or “customers”?

> [@hajario](#):
>
> > [@thorny\_locust](#):
> >
> > I think the “crippled software” use may be for that field, and not commonly run into outside it. I’ve never heard somebody refer to a crippled car part, or tractor part, or hand tool, or garden hose valve. And outside this board I don’t all that often hear people talk about software, except occasionally in the sense of complaining that it’s not working right, and they use laymen’s terms to do so; I don’t think I’ve heard anybody say “crippled”.
> > 
> > (I will now wait for multiple people to tell me they hear it all the time in multiple contexts; or used to until recently.)
> 
> OK, here you go. In high tech hardware we sometimes will have a version with fewer features but it’s basically the same thing with different firmware. Putting in the alternate firmware is referred to as crippling the part. This can be done to have two price points or because it would be illegal to have certain features in certain regions. &nbsp;

Totally agree. The usage goes back a very long way, and is still current AFAIK. It even predates the common use of firmware. Back in the day, for instance, IBM developed a line printer that was designed to print “x” number of lines per minute. Someone in marketing got the brilliant idea that they could expand their customer base by marketing a cheaper model that was 33% slower. The cheapest way to do this was to cripple the existing printer, and in the absence of firmware, the change was made by actually _ **adding** _ (at extra cost to IBM) a special circuit board that disabled every third print cycle.

So while the standard model would go “print print print print print”, the cheaper model would go “print print _click_ print print _click_”. They were otherwise exactly the same machine.

IBM’s strategy worked fine for most businesses, but when these things were leased to universities, the clever minds of academia figured out the simple fix of pulling out the offending circuit board. And yes, these models, as shipped, were universally referred to as “crippled” printers.

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