Part of my job is to review the bunch of website URLs and approve. So that people with restricted access can access it and continue their job. Generally we called this 'URL whitelisting'. Being a computer science graduate, I find this term technical and often used in security domain. But something happened this morning and we stopped this practice.
What happened? Anything special??? What made us to change this grandfathered term suddenly?..... A simple awareness.
Actually we had a chance to meet one of our counterpart from legal team today. We were having some discussion and this 'whitelisted' term appeared in the conversation. Though this person was familiar with this concept, he asked a simple question - I understand what it means. But I want to know, whats that 'white' means in 'whitelist'? I know it's the opposite of 'black'list but does this white or black symbolises the actual difference? If its only meaning to distinguish one with other, why can't we simply say - approved vs non-approved list?
I don't know where this through came from? Is it generated from unconscious bias awareness or simply to keep terms simple? He might have threw that question this morning very casually or with some intention. I really don't know. But I like it. The society where I grew up, we doesn't believe the racism, so obviously we don't follow it. So for me white and black are just two colors. However, considering the DEI campaign we all run today, I think such tiny thoughts and action matters. So yeah, we believe the same. No wonder we replaced the word 'whitelisted' vs 'blacklisted' by simply 'Approved' vs 'Non-approved' in our KBs. Would you like to do the same?