On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 12:43:18 +0100 Rhodri James <rhodri@kynesim.co.uk> wrote:
On 29/06/2020 11:31, Steve Holden wrote:
If I am being oversensitive it is perhaps because I have trodden in these waters before, and have frequently been surprised by what other people find distasteful or offensive. I do not necessarily require my opinions to be thought reasonable, even by other reasonable people.
I don't think you are being insensitive, I too found that commit message offensive. Personally I think equating standardised English -- specifically Strunk and White -- with racist supremacy is itself a racist remark which should not have been made.
From the outside, this does seem like a reasonable position. Also, more generally, while I'm sure there are elaborate sociohistorical arguments to be made about the influence of prejudice (for example gendered or racist) on language, a Python commit message is not the place to elaborate such a theory. If this is important to you, perhaps one direction is to propose your edits to the corresponding Wikipedia page (which doesn't seem to list such criticism currently): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style IMHO, the fact that the "Strunk & White standard" is not known by everybody (it's certainly not by me) was enough of a reason to remove that wording and replace it with a clearer phrasing. Regards Antoine.