Formal Question to Steering Council (re recent PEP8 changes)

[Random832]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020, at 12:33, o1bigtenor wrote:
> I would point out that even suggesting that the issue be a *obvious 
> factual mistake* only serves to prove that you didn't read the thing 
> and I, at least, wonder why you're offering an opinion on any part of 
> the discussion. 

I said obvious because even if it was not obvious from the commit message itself, it had *already been explained* in the thread on the other mailing list by the time Michael Torrie posted (July 02 15:14) his assertion of "The fact she would conflate an author's name with some kind of race-related thing". I even recall raising the question of whether he had in fact read any of that discussion. After all, Ethan Furman made the same mistake in his original post, and was corrected *very* early on in the discussion, so repeating it several days later makes little sense.

*Regardless whether you agree or not* with the premise that "standard english" is a subtle means of enforcing white supremacy, the fact that some people do believe that is a far more plausible explanation for the statement in the commit message than the fact that one of the authors happens to have been named "White", and the idea that it was because of the latter only exists in the imagination of those determined to assume the worst of the person who wrote the commit message.





On Tue, Jun 30, 2020, at 08:44, Ethan Furman wrote:
> On 06/30/2020 05:03 AM, Łukasz Langa wrote:
> > 
> >> On 30 Jun 2020, at 12:44, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us <mailto:ethan at stoneleaf.us>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Of course I don't know if Keara or Guido knew any of this, but it certainly feels to me that the commit message is ostracizing an entire family line because they had the misfortune to have the wrong last name.  In fact, it seems like Strunk & White is making changes to be inclusive in its advice -- exactly what I would have thought we wanted on our side ("our side" being the diverse and welcoming side).
> > 
> > In any case, saying that Keara and Guido mistook the family name of one of the authors for skin color feels derogatory.
> 
> My apologies, that was not my intent.  As I said, I never knew what it 
> was until today (er, yesterday now).