Apparently "Master Bedroom" is now racist

...even though the origin of the phrase has nothing to do with slavery.

Everyday words and phrases that have racist connotations

See, this is where activists take things too far and start to lose the support of the mushy middle. I agree that a lot of our language needs to be expunged of racist terms, but "master bedroom" is just stupid.

As long as these activists don't try to cancel BDSM, they can do whatever they want.

BDSM? Black Dove Sometimes Matters?

This really, really helps black people and the oppression they endure. Ground breaking stuff

There’s also people calling for the golf major The Masters to change its name

By god at this rate these leftists will have cured racism by the end of the week

Doesn't it? Then what does it mean?

Don't be silly. You're obviously smarter than that.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/master

Can you get a Master's Degree in the Study of Slavery and Justice from Brown University?

https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/slavery-and-justice/

It isn't the real activists calling for this. The real activists are out in the street demanding violent cops be charged, that police forces be demilitarized and defunded. This bullshit with "master bedrooms" and pulling old 30 Rock episodes from Netflix and renaming the Dixie Chicks? It's all empty gestures designed to distract from the lack of meaningful change. Don't fall for it.

Oh, I see. You didn't understand the argument. That's the usual word master, the same as in master/slave. It's not some mysterious different etymology that just happens to spell and sound the same.

No, I understood the argument perfectly. Words can have multiple meanings and the etymology of "master" is not solely confined the abhorrent practice of slavery.

Just as the word "black" doesn't necessarily have to do with the colour of a person's skin.

Really, don't be so goddamn obtuse. I know you're better than that.

It's a beautiful thing, isn't it? The destruction of language.

He’s proven time and time again that he doesn’t understand the English language very well.

According to Trelora, a real estate site:
https://www.trelora.com/blog/2018/07/master-bedroom-origin/

So master simply refers to owner, though it's easy to see how it would be construed as being built for the master of the house/plantation. It's a very short hop thanks to our culture that is and has been stewed in racism for centuries.

So this also points out that "Master Bedroom" has been on the way out for a few years at least. Sounds like people complaining about political correctness are making hay for nothing.

'tys a byautiful thyng, ysn't it? ye bane of language.

When I read this, I literally exclaimed "Bitch, please!! How about an equality in lending bill or something?"

Wait until people get wind of the master/slave terminology in electronics.

Oh wait: https://www.cnet.com/news/master-and-slave-tech-terms-face-scrutiny-amid-anti-racism-efforts/

FTFY

It's just so retarded. Oh wait...

I'm on the path to become a Master Jeweler. I had no idea I was a racist...

I have friends that are Master Carpenters and Master Plumbers. Oh, and one Master Welder. To jail with the lot of us, I guess.

It's also time to shut down the entire Merchant Marine.

FTR, no one asked for that bullshit. I dunno who concocted that crap. Probably some clueless yippie liberal who tells me black folks we should be grateful for political correctness existing

The Dixie Chicks still have a career after the Bush Incident?

But this, yeah. To use an analogy I brought to Diacanu on FB when he was asking about the use of the black anthem at football games, this is much like the changes to ENT season 4 that gave people a shit ton of prequel stories but fixed none of the real issues people had about the writing or themes. And in the end, we all got reminded that Manny Coto was the puppet for Bermaga, who took a dump over the fandom when ppl went apeshit over the window dressing that passed itself off as "improving" the show.

It's all distraction, but not from BLM. It's from white folks who want to skirt along and do the absolute bare minimum possible to end the protests before people come after their $5 mill houses and Bentley's. They aren't interested in real change or they would have removed racist mascots and pancake labels years ago before it was cool. Land O Lakes didn't need an uprising of Native Americans to remove the indigenous girl on their packaging.

No reform too petty in the Maoist Cultural Revolution of 2020.

Some of these things go too far, however much more interesting is how some people get more worked up about the injustice of words like this being taken away from them than they do about the much more real and larger issues.

So am I still a Master Jedi? Or is that racist against "sand people" now.

Let's rewind the clock a bit here, for a second. In ~98, it was pointed out that every new show on every network that year, had an all-white cast (or nearly all-white cast, with BIPOC being regulated to the token friend who shows up every now and then to say, "Hi, my name is Token" before quickly being forgotten). Lots of people (of all different shades) got upset by this and the networks agreed to do something about it. I think that we can both agree police were happily murdering brown people at this time. Yet it was the new Fall shows people glommed onto as being the real problem.

Now, I don't know, but I'm going to guess it wasn't white people who noticed the lack of folks with different pigmentation on TV. I could be wrong. I know it didn't occur to me that this might be an issue until I heard it mentioned in the media. Now, I didn't particularly think about the various voice actors on shows like The Simpsons, but when I found out that Cleveland on Family Guy was voiced by a white guy, I thought that was a bit odd. I didn't see any reason why they couldn't have cast a black guy in the role. The same was true with the character of Diane on Bojack Horseman. She's supposed to be Vietnamese, but she's voiced by a white woman.

In a way, it doesn't really matter, since you never see the actual actors, if Cleveland or Diane is played by someone with their particular ethnic background, but at the same time, not only are there plenty of people from those backgrounds who could use the work, but someone from that particular background could bring certain nuances to the characters that a white person wouldn't necessarily be able to. And let me point out that just three years ago there was a documentary pointing out that Apu, on The Simpsons, was offensive to Indian-Americans. Not only because he was voiced by Hank Azaria, who isn't Indian, but because he was a stereotype. And The Simpsons caught a lot of flak because rather than actually doing something about this, they mocked the documentary.

So now, various animated shows have said that they'll try to cast an actor who matches the role, rather than just sticking any old actor in the role. And we're dealing with a weird area of human existence. I mean, it doesn't make Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle any less funny now that I know Neal Patrick Hariss is gay, because gay or not, the scene of him snorting coke off a hooker's ass in a stolen car just fucking works. But would I have enjoyed Bojack Horseman more if Diane's character had been played by a Vietnamese actress, even if nothing else about the series had been changed? Yeah, I would have. Even if I didn't know that the actress playing the character was Vietnamese, because I've known a number of Vietnamese immigrants over the years, and I would have picked up certain inflections in the voice and other things that a white person (or at least a white person who'd not spent a lot of time around Vietnamese people*) wouldn't have been able to bring to the role.

Now, despite the fact that the cast of The Simpsons (or most any other TV series) could buy a politician for the amount of money that they have laying around in their couch cushions, they don't think that they have any more political power than your or I. So, it doesn't occur to them that they could fix things by meeting with a politician and telling them that if they want a large chunk of change the politician needs to push for meaningful reform. So they do the only thing they think they can, and say I'm going to only voice characters who match my ethnic background, etc.

Is that really meaningful and pushing for change? In a dramatic sense, no. In a subtle sense, however, it is meaningful. More than a few folks have pointed out that despite having "Black Lives Matter" painted on the road to the White House the mayor of DC hasn't pushed for anything meaningful as far as police reform goes. They're not wrong, but when Jimmy Doolittle made his famous raid on Tokyo, it didn't do much from a military standpoint, either. From a psychological standpoint, however, it was both a big boost to the US as well as a big blow to the Japanese. If Mayor Bowser doesn't do things to enact real reform, then people will point to the street and say, "If you want to claim that Black Lives Matter, then you need to do <this>." After all, one of the reasons people are supporting the tearing down of slaveholder statues is because they provide inspiration to white supremacists today. The same is true of the paintings of Black Lives Matter on various streets.

*One of the favorite singers the Vietnamese folks I knew liked to listen to was a white woman whom they all said had an American face, but a Vietnamese heart. These weren't just a couple of folks listening to bootleg cassette tapes, but a number of people. I learned about this woman because my then-girlfriend made me watch a performance of that woman. It was shot in California and was as lavish as the Oscars at the time. She, and all her friends (who were also Vietnamese), were in tears after the woman sang, because she so captured the soul of the songs, despite not being Vietnamese.

The issue I have with all of this happening now is that it took riots over far worse things to do it. Like, we been complaining and grumbling about this for decades. Why now? It's like when you were a kid and you kept ignoring you mother asking nicely to turn off the Atari and you ignore it until she's screaming at the top of her voice and yanks the damn thing outta the TV. Should your mom be happy you cleaned it up after all that? do you get an orange slice if you decide to weed the garden instead?

I'm not mad that it's happening. I'm mad that white folks are doing this as placation to the other more grevious issue at hand, with no input from what we actually want, and other white folks point at that and accuse US of being pedantic buzzkills. It ain't us,and networks can do this cosmetic face-lifting after the hashtags have died off, if they're really interested.

Sidenote: a great example of listening to black folks is this document put out by Bad Robot, in which every single link and resource provided was submitted by black employees. My friend at the studio said they were the ONLY studio on Hollywood whose statement to end racism actually bothered to consult black folks and another studio head whined about it being too long to read. Yet, Abrams' official Twitter doesn't use that as a selling point and BTS they acknowledge that yeah, they should've fought harder not to give into Disney dumbing Finn down so much. there's another Star Wars project coming down the pipeline , produced by a black guy who started as JJ's secretary and got the same molding and guidance that Rick Berman was given with his whole *check notes* one D list project he has other than Star Trek in his ENTIRE career.

Oh, and the Lovecraft Country show with the all-black cast? Took YEARS to greenlight because he didn't back down on this all black requirement.

THAT is meaningful change to fight the system, and there weren't any riots involved to force his hand.

And yes, I'm glad for the black VAs not named Cree Summers who will be employed following COVID re-opening of Hollywood, but I'll be counting down the time it takes for them to slip it back in and play stupid.

All those academic lefties with Master's degrees better watch out!