Much ado about masters

On the 2nd of July 2020, Twitter Engineering put out a tweet declaring “At Twitter, the language we have been using in our code does not reflect our values as a company or represent the people we serve. We want to change that.” They then proceeded to outline how they were weeding out non-inclusive language in their code such as “master/slave”, typically used to refer to the main code and its controls and to replace it with either “leader/follower” or “primary/replica” to avoid slavery-related connotations.

The changes were reportedly jumpstarted a couple of months ago when Regynald Augustin, an engineer at Twitter was ‘infuriated’ upon receiving an email with the subject line: ‘Automatic slave rekick’. He decided to do something about it and it resulted in a company-wide update across “internal resources, Google Docs, runbooks, FAQs, readmes, technical design docs, and more.”

The move is not just limited to Twitter. Earlier in June 2020, GitHub, the world’s biggest software developers site decided to drop the “master/slave” coding terms. They proposed replacing it with more neutral terms. Google too had changed their terms used in Android’s programming language from “whitelist/blacklist” to “allowlist/blocklist”. The PHPUnit Library and Curl file download utility have also stated similar intentions.

While the latest trigger for the changes has been the Black Lives Matter protests across the United States and elsewhere, this isn’t the first time they have been broached. Back in 2014, the Drupal Project replaced the “master/slave” terminology with “primary/replica”. This was then debated and/or adopted by Microsoft’s .NET compiler, Chromium, Python and the open-source Kubernetes software project — but the quasi-movement never culminated in anything. Primarily because software doesn’t work in isolation. Unless all participants in a software project use similar — and consistent — coding terms, they can never really distinguish between “slave-code” and “non-slave code”. It remains to be seen how effective the move will be this time around.

Let us leave the software industry aside for the moment to look at the education sector. Back in 2016, Yale University decided to retitle the administrative heads of its residential colleges from “master” to “head of college”. In the same breath, they decided to retain the name of Calhoun College — named after John C Calhoun, the seventh Vice President of the United States, who is best remembered for his spirited defence of the institution of slavery. Apparently, it was fine to name a college after a pro-slavery politician and white supremacist, but the current-day administrative heads could no longer be called “masters” due to the slavery connotations! A distinction clearly without a difference.

Even Harvard University in the US wasn’t spared. In 2016, the university, under pressure from protesting students removed the word “master” from academic titles like “house masters” and replaced it with “faculty deans”. This was apparently done to distance the titles from echoes of slavery. Harvard Law School was also contemplating changing/modifying its official seal due to its incorporation of the coat of arms of 18th century College donor Isaac Royall, who was a notoriously brutal slaveholder. His money helped endow the University. Fortunately, most of these universities have decided not to change other uses of the word “master” — such as in master’s level degrees!

If one were to look at the history of the term “master” it dates back to several hundred years before its connotations to slavery in the US. The term “master” was borrowed from “magister” in Latin and referred to a chief, head, director or superintendent. When the word first appeared in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it referred to “a person having authority, direction or control over the action of another or others; a director, leader, chief, commander; a ruler, governor.” By the 20th century, the term “master” came to connote one who was highly skilled or experienced as in “master teacher” or “master craftsman”. “Master” was also often used as a courtesy title for a young boy.

Speaking of titles, it has long been the tradition to use the term “master” with a person’s last name as a title for master sommeliers. No longer. As of June 2020, the Court of Master Sommeliers, America will cease its use of the singular term in favour of the full term “master sommelier” along with the person’s surname in all formal communication and programming. This is part of their effort to be “more inclusive” and to “help diversify the wine industry.” The additional benefit of distancing themselves from slavery-related terminology is an added incentive.

However, it was news that the realty industry jumped onto the bandwagon that had me thoroughly flabbergasted. The Houston Association of Realtors will no longer use the term “master” to describe the primary bedroom of a home on their housing listings. This is because the term “master has its roots in slavery”. The Multiple Listing Service Platform that the association uses will use the terms “primary bedroom” and “primary bath” going forward. However, since the term is not (yet) considered to violate Fair Housing Law, realtors will still be allowed to use it in marketing, public remarks and photo descriptions! So, for all practical intents and purposes, I may be the “lord and master” of my home, but it behoves me not to refer to my bedroom as the “master bedroom!”

Where does this stop? I foresee that the day is not far when linguistic revisionism will assault any number of English idioms and phrases. If extreme political correctness is imposed on common language, it will become a case of a man no longer being able to serve two masters. Would it be offensive to call someone a “Jack/Jill of all trades but a master of none?” May one continue to refer to God as “Master of the Universe?” Or will racist undertones be attributed to it? How about “mastery” over some skill, being “masterful” in speech or writing or even have been a “past master” at some activity, craft or field? Are these no longer terms we can use for fear of being labelled racists? Should I call on a dog’s “owner” or “master” (Only dogs really. We all know that cats have staff!)

For now, I take consolation in the fact that my “Master’s Degree” — for which I worked really hard and long — is safe. However, I really don’t know how long it will stay that way.