SOME people’s subconscious. They are the people with the problem (racism). It certainly isn’t used ‘often’ in my world - and if it is, I put people right rather than changing the term.
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Trying to draw this back towards FinTech in some way, black also has positive connotations.
Being in the black is a positive thing.
Being in the red is negative.
This originated from ledgers kept by bookkeepers where positive balances were written in black ink and negative balances in red ink.
There, black has a positive connotation and I’m the only one to link it to money/accounting/FinTech.
It all comes down to how you choose to interpret something. Perhaps it’s your own bias? The use of language is often intended in a non-exclusive way but there are many who are prepared to deliberately misinterpret well-meaning people in order to be offended or offended on behalf of other groups.
I have never interpreted this meaning to be excluding any group of people, nor favouring any group, for to do so would be misguided and silly.
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When you take a word such as blacklist which in society has no known connection to race or slavery, and dissect the whole term to extract black and then purposely go looking throughout history to try and find a connection to race and slavery I would say that is not helping.
If the term was bluelist and people understood like they do with blacklist that it was the list you didn’t want to be on the chances are Monzo would have not changed it.
It’s being changed because of the colour black having negative connotations, but that doesnt mean we should rewrite colour meaning in the same way we don’t change green for envy.
People aren’t taking this as a list of black people, or making the leap from blacklist > black > bad > black people.
By making the change it has a negative impact as you are changing for the sake of changing not because of a legitimate reason.
All you do is cause the current generation to be labeled as overzealous PC that is trying to rewrite history.
It’s not helping the systemic racism towards black people. It basically belittles the whole change of attitude and movements like BLM by trying to purposely seek out racism that doesn’t exist, and that calling it blocklist is going to do anything but rile up anti-black and anti-pc idiots.
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A good post but a change to the last word to ‘representatives’? ‘ambassadors’? ‘believers’? Or similar…
That single last word killed the whole (otherwise well presented) integrity of the post for me, personally.
I should have probably left a insert blank to fill in with your own word.
@Simonb Sorry if that post came off a bit ranty. It wasn’t meant to sound as if it was your call, I’m talking Monzo collectively. On the whole the Tone of Voice page is spot on and what every business should aspire to achieve.
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This is just what happens - even if no one would reasonably make the connection between blacklist and black people because in reality one doesn’t exist - it needs to be banned.
Whilst on the topic of this I’m still bitter that Monzo reports my title as Mx to TransUnion as Mx - assigning me a gender which I’m not. If you’d reported everyone as Mr there would be outrage but the other way around is of course acceptable. As long as the minority are happy the majority just have to go along with it.
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I thought I read ages ago Monzo reports it as NULL as in no value given?
Maybe that’s improved then, admittedly I’ve not checked for a while but that’d be a move forward imo.
Could be depending on the CRA , they definitely said they send Mx, I don’t recall seeing anything saying this changed.
I’ve just checked on Credit Karma and it doesn’t show any title for Monzo now. It did used to be Mx but it looks like this has changed now - a positive.
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Hey guys, fancy a free £1m?
How long before this thread becomes clickbait for a tabloid?
I can say “clickbait”, right? 
@simonb I just realised I didn’t type why I think it actually weakens real black issues in my previous reply above 
So obviously with all words society decides what is acceptable or unacceptable, what words are created and what are dropped, either going out of fashion, or we realise that they should never have been used and actively push for change so we ain’t making the same historic mistakes.
We have words where 95% would agree needs changing or dropping.
We then have words where 0.0001% would agree need changing or dropping.
The problem is if you change lots of those 0.0001% words it weakens the adoption of words that collectively we agree should be changed.
You start adapting the language not because society wants it, but because you’re in a position where you can, its seen as unnecessary by most and creates a new race issue where was none. It has no impact in pushing forward improving racial issues and just causes a generation to be seen negatively for messing with language under “someone” might be offended.
We shouldn’t be going to the extent to try and deliberately be offended by trying to find long lost meanings that may or may have been used commonly in words that nobody would have seen, know about, or make any connection to, or making the leap between using one word, that contains another word, having a negative reinforcement of another word.
If we were able to take a truly anonymous poll with society taking into account everyone, we could ask the question “what does the term blacklist mean to you?” I would expect between 0-1% of the global population would make a connection to race and slavery being a list of black people. In the UK only I would expect close to 0%.
I would also expect asked “should we replace the term blacklist?” we would again get a 0-1% response of yes, made of people truly thinking yes, and others worried that would be labeled a racist if they didn’t answer yes and someone found out.
On the topic of being offended if x people out of z people think it needs changing to improve society as whole we change it, its just where you draw the line. Do we change because one in thousand, one in a million, one in a billion, or if one person on the planet is offended do we still change for their opinion?
1/10 ?
1/100 ?
1/1,000 ?
1/10,000 ?
1/100,000 ?
1/1,000,000 ?
1/10,000,000 ?
1/100,000,000 ?
1/1,000,000,000 ?
1/ everyone on the planet ?
The problem is when you start mixing changing words that affect 1/1,000 with the 1/100,000,000 it dilutes the cause and focus on adoption, where energy should be spent elsewhere on the words that actually matter and make a difference to the majority lives both living and born in the future.
Going back to blacklist I would feel the same if Monzo felt like black-hat/white-hat hacker needed changing because it contained the word black in it.
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I’ve always said this kind of thing is a race to the bottom.
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It is a sad time in human history where there is an employee and part if their role is to decide on language changes in case someone is offended at a term which does not, and never has, offended. Is there a decision making process? Government guidelines? Genuinely interested.
As mentioned upthread, being ‘in the black’ is a good thing in financial talk. I assume that this will no longer be allowed to be said by Monzo employees, because 0.0000001% of the population will say it could possibly be seen as having negative connotations against white people? It is ridiculous idea, right? That is the point. You have already implemented ridiculous ideas with blacklist/whitelist. Where does it end?
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I wonder if pronunciation will be next on the list? As a Northerner I’m scared 
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I still remember that point in that thread 
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I for one am all for this update.
A company can “have policies towards diversity” all they want, and “be commited to a a diverse workplace” in all their corporate speak, but never walk the walk.
But you’ve got to properly get into the culture of a company to make that stuff stick. Writing a policy that never gets used is one thing, living and breathing the output of that policy - great.
It also gives people who are affected by it, wether customers or staff, a place to point to say “we/you don’t behave like this”.
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You might agree with all of it, some of it, none of it.
The thing is people will always have their own opinion, and that is good.
We shouldn’t lose that, and we shouldn’t blindly accept things without questioning was that the right decision. Not just personally but collectively.
The majority will always do the right thing, its the minority that push for change, you’ll never get 100% onboard, some people want to watch the world burn.
We shouldn’t fall for playing along and taking everything as gospel in what a company decides is the right thing because we enjoy a product they have created.
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