Okay, so a thing just happened… I have just been accused in email of being racist because the APK file for Flaming Durtles contains the words ‘blacklist’, ‘whitelist’ and ‘whitespace’. It was a rather lengthy and abusive message.
I ignored the email because I refuse to have any kind of online discussion about racism anymore. The subject is so incredibly emotionally charged, especially now, that it’s effectively impossible to have a rational discussion on the subject anymore.
So I’m just going to say this once, and move on. I do not want to have a discussion about this, this is just a statement.
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Flaming Durtles contains the words “blacklist” and “whitelist” because it has to. Those two words are used in the WK API, and for FD to function correctly it must know and recognize those two words. Recognizing them is the only purpose for which they appear. All occurrences of these words are hidden, i.e. they are not visible to a normal user.
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Flaming Durtles contains the word “whitespace” because that is the standard term for a category of spacing characters, and I need to use that word because the Android standard library (based on the Java standard library) uses it as well. Interacting with the standard library is the only purpose for which that word appears. All occurrences of this word are hidden, i.e. they are not visible to a normal user.
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The words “black” and “white” appear frequently in Flaming Durtles, sometimes in a way that is visible to a normal user. In all cases, the words “black” and “white” are only used to identify colours for UI elements in the app, and for no other reason.
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The word “master” appears frequently in Flaming Durtles, often in a way that is visible to a normal user. This is because the word “master” is the name of one of WK’s SRS stages. The word “master” does not appear in any other meaning or context. The word “slave” does not appear in Flaming Durtles.
This is the full extent of the use of the words “black”, “white”, “master”, “slave” and their derivatives in the app. If you have a problem with this, I suggest you stop using Flaming Durtles and WaniKani. If you think I am racist because of this, that’s your problem. Not mine.