JPMorgan drops terms 'master,' 'slave'

JPMorgan Chase is getting rid of words that carry racial overtones. Sources tell Reuters the big U.S. bank is eliminating terms like "blacklist," "master," and "slave," apparently making it the first in the financial sector to do so.

A source said those terms appear in some of the bank's programming code and technology policies, standards and control procedures.

In some computer hardware and programming languages, "master" and "slave" describe one part of a device or process that controls another. "Blacklist" refers to items that are automatically denied while "Whitelist" means just the opposite.

Sparking this re-examination of sensitive words was the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in police custody. Some realtors, for example, no longer use the term, "master bedroom."

Eliminating the terms won't be simple for JP Morgan. One programming expert says changing them within the bank's code could take months of work and cost millions of dollars.