This was from a Snopes item from 2007. I wonder how many companies have complied with this since then? Also, how many people in industry filed medical claims for hernias from laughing so hard at this?

The County of Los Angeles has requested that equipment vendors avoid using the industry term “Master/Slave” in product descriptions and labeling.

Social changes of our era have been accompanied by linguistic changes: as discrimination based upon race, gender, or physical condition has become less socially acceptable, we began to frown upon the use of pejorative terms associated with race, moved towards more gender-neutral usages of language (e.g., ‘chairperson’ instead of ‘chairman’), and replaced terms for describing the disabled with less stigmatizing ones (e.g., ‘mentally handicapped’ rather than ‘retarded’). Along with these linguistic changes have come tales of the “political correctness run amok” variety – cases where certain usages were deemed unacceptable merely because they bore a resemblance to terms now considered inappropriate, even though the usages had little or nothing in common with the now-inappropriate terms in a linguistic sense.
[…]
One such recent example included the manufacturer’s labeling of equipment where the words “Master/Slave” appeared to identify the primary and secondary sources. Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label.

Found by Brother Uncle Don



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