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Racially charged terms like master, slave, whitelisting, and blacklisting must be removed. But what are the replacements?
The recent movement to greater racial equality and awareness has affected many aspects of our lives and professional work. As a result, even the technical community has come under scrutiny. Perhaps this is most apparent in the long-standing use of the words master and slave to describe electronic components and network interactions.
This racially charged language permeates electronic design, verification, hardware, software, documentation, and – most importantly – standards. The terms “master-slave” are also present in other realms of technology, notably automotive clutch, brake systems, clocks, flip-flop circuits, computer drives, and radio transmitters.