Thank you for making this post. The number of times I've seen the term used here lately has been bothering me.

I agree, it's another example of racism being burned into the English language. You should always make an effort to change and adapt your vocabulary, to not do so is to endorse the very racist history that the term is based on.

Also the term just doesn't make sense? I have no idea what "rice" is supposed to evoke outside of its history in the car industry/communities. "Cooking" seems to be the better term because people on Unixporn "cook up" their desktop to make it as appealing as possible (to their tastes or to the tastes of the group). So a submission would be someone's "cook/dish." The whole "let them cook" remark is also a relevant catchphrase.

We can do better, and why disregard that opportunity? "Rice" is a two-faced compliment with racist roots. It deserves the bucket.

The arguments being made here are the same ones that were used for f*ggot, tr*p, nword, g*psy, r*dskins, etc etc etc.

It's the same damn thing every single time, a bunch of reactionaries will piss and whine and piss and whine and piss and whine because they have to make the most minimal amount of effort to adopt a new word in their vocabulary instead of the problem one. They will piss and whine forever until eventually accepting it, like all the others historically.

They join a long long line of pissy whiney losers for making the same tired old arguments we've seen for so many things before.

Asian here and rice eater here.

Language doesn't work in absolute way, it could change its meaning all the time.

It's better to regain is neutral meaning instead of letting the racist weaponize neutral word.

Also, this mindset is also Western centric, go to Asia and people in Linux and car community simply use the word without any negative connotation.

Edit: By doing this, you're no different from imperial government who tries to make one standard of morality, which in fact further hurts Asian living in Asia. And as Indonesian, I'm hurt with your statement. Let me regain the neutral meaning. Don't speak for us.

I wasn't aware of this, thank you for posting

100% agree!!

I've never used the term and the first time I've heard about it even without knowing the origins/meaning it already was clear to be a pejorative term.

The excuse the mods in the old r/unixporn subreddit was that the term was broadly accepted by the community.

Well guess what we are not reddit and one of the reasons I left reddit was because I was tired of being in communities like that. We can do better, let's shape our communities with the right values and not just carry on a legacy that should've died with reddit itself.

ITT:

Yes please, I agree.

Sry I've been an absent mod here. Would anyone like to help mod this community?

I've also added a no-racist terms rule to the sidebar.

TIL thanks for the heads up o7

Linguist here. Totally agree the term should stop being used. As a practical concern, it would be easier to get people to stop using it if there were another term that was a drop-in replacement.

Yeah, we can say "customize" as the verb, but what about the noun? Sharing "customizations" doesn't really refer to the same kind of DE-specific customization as the other term.

Is there any such word in usage? If not, can we coin one and just start dropping it on forums?

I got called out for saying this once. At first I was like "what's racist about rice" but when I googled it everything that came up was an explicitly anti-asian meme.

So yeah the word is being used in the west as a racist term so non Asians should reconsider whether using the term helps or hurts their relationships with others within the communities we frequent. I think vigilance is better than ambivalence.

In general I don't agree with the sort of broad language policing some people seem to be advocating for here, but this word does seem pretty inseparable from a racist joke. What could rice have to do with computer customization? Even if it's distanced from the original meaning the word itself implies that racist joke. So yeah probably better avoided and replaced.