- The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal and science technology office, has made race and gender speech codes for its scientists a top priority.
- The guidance, for example, tells federal employees not to use the words “blacklist” or “whitelist” because of the racial connotations and also cautions against “using terms that assign a gender to inanimate objects, such as male/female connectors.”
- The NIST is a little-known government agency tasked with helping the U.S., among other things, stay technologically ahead of rivals like China. Congress appropriated about $1.65 billion for the group for 2023.
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Feds Ban ‘Blacklist,’ ‘Male/Female,’ ‘Master/Slave’
"Many technology and security standards contain racially insensitive language...examples of such language include using the terms blacklist and whitelist instead of block-list and allow-list and using the terms master and slave." National Institute of Standards and Technology
