U.S. firms change words to address racial justice

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The Black Live Matters protests across the U.S. are calling for efforts to change our language using standards.

The Associated Press (AP) has recently changed its writing standard, requiring writers to capitalize the letter "b" for the word Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context and when using it in lowercase terms, it refers to a color.

The change reflects "an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa," John Daniszewski, AP's vice president of standards said in a blog post. He also emphasized that it will help promote inclusive and respectful culture in the storytelling and language use according to AP.

GitHub, the world's biggest software development platform, has announced to replace the terms "master" and "slave" in its coding language to more neutral alternatives like "main/default/primary" and "secondary," according the BBC.

They also plan to drop the terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" and replace them with "deny/exclude list" and "allow list".

Many scholars believe that the terminology used in our language "not only reflects racist culture, but also serves to reinforce, legitimize, and perpetuate it". David R Burgest also thinks changing the language has the power to reshape a society unconsciously.

In response to promoting racial justice, tech companies also plan to make more high-level positions available for black candidates. Reddit has named Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel to its board of directors. Seibel was Y Combinator's first black partner prior to becoming CEO. Google also wants to dramatically increase its number of black executives, according to the Verge.

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