Eglash, Broken Metaphor

In November 2003, after receiving a discrimination complaint from a county employee, the Los Angeles County Office of Affirmative Action Compliance sent a memo to all its equipment vendors asking that they stop using the words “master” and “slave” in reference to computer hardware and other equipment.{1} The memo read in part: “Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label.” The idea of slavery in ancient Egypt or classical Greece did not carry the racial connotations that make it such a hot button in the United States today. Even Hegel’s famous use of the master-slave relationship to illustrate the dialectic, in 1807, has no real racial overtones, although Frantz Fanon observed that if Hegel had had any experience with African or African-American life he would not have made the progression toward synthesis seem so easy. But now things are different.