• finestnothing@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    Cultural baggage? Neither term has any roots in racism, blacklist came from a play and whitelist came about as the opposite of blacklist

    • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      It comes from the act of voting using a black or white ball. Black was a no vote, white was yes. It goes back to ancient Greece.

      • finestnothing@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Where did you find that that is the origin of blacklist and whitelist? The first use of the term blacklist came from a 1630’s play called “The Unnatural Combat” where the people who executed the king were put on a so called “black list” to say that they were suspicious and would be punished, it later came to mean (through use in other plays and texts) people who were to be excluded or had wronged the person, which is why computing blacklisting uses it (i.e. this ip is suspicious or not to be trusted, so add it to the blacklist and don’t let it access anything). Whitelist came around in the 1840’s as an explicit opposite of the term blacklist