Blacklist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"Blacklisted" redirects here. For other uses, see Blacklisted (disambiguation).
A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, or mobility. As a verb, blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize them from a certain social circle.
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[edit] Political context
The term blacklisting is generally used in a negative context, since it implies that someone has been prevented from having legitimate access to something due to the whims or judgments of another. For instance, a person being served with a restraining order for having threatened someone else would not generally be considered to have been blacklisted, but if someone is fired for exposing poor working conditions in a particular company and is subsequently blocked from finding work in that industry, that may be considered a form of blacklisting. Blacklisting can and has been accomplished informally and by consensus of those in authority, and does not necessarily require a physical list or overt written record.
One of the most famous examples of blacklisting in American history stemmed from the investigation launched in 1947 by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) into Communist influence on the motion picture industry. The first in the industry to be blacklisted, as a result of their refusal to provide evidence to HUAC, were a group known as the Hollywood Ten, most of them screenwriters, who had at one time or another been members of the American Communist Party. Today, the best known of the Hollywood Ten is writer Dalton Trumbo, who was barred from openly working in Hollywood for over a dozen years as a result of his defiance of HUAC. (He continued to work under pseudonyms and "fronts" until the revelation in 1960 that he had written the script for Spartacus.) Actor John Garfield is one of the more famous Hollywood performers blacklisted by major American film studios as a direct result of HUAC investigations and hearings.
Blacklisting sometimes results in a domino effect, as in the case of radio actress Madeline Lee, who was one of the many entertainers blacklisted during the McCarthy era. The wife of actor Jack Gilford, who was also blacklisted, Lee specialized in making baby noises. She was blacklisted after it was revealed that she had given a party in her house to raise funds for a group later labeled as a Communist front. An actress named Madaline Lee, a regular on the Amos & Andy television show, though there was no suspicion that she had ever been involved in any putatively "subversive" political causes (and though her name was spelled differently), became the target of thousands of protest phone calls to her network. Another actress, Camilla Ashland, who appeared on the television show Danger, physically resembled Madeline Lee; though she had no political past, her network too was the target of protest phone calls. Madeline Pierce, a 20-year veteran of radio, who again had no political past, also specialized in making baby noises—she, too, was ultimately blacklisted.[citation needed]
The term "blacklist" can be offensive to African Americans. The British Sociological Association's website explains: "The term has taken on more political connotations with the rise of black activism in the USA since the 1960s and now its usage implies solidarity against racism. The idea of 'black' has thus been reclaimed as a source of pride and identity. To accept this means that we should be sensitive to the many negative connotations relating to the word 'black' in the English language (black leg, black list etc.)."
[edit] Private clubs
Another word for blacklisting is blackballing. This term allegedly derives from the practice of some private clubs of allowing any member to veto the application for membership of any person by anonymously placing a black ball or other token among the white balls put in an urn by other members when the individual's application was brought up for consideration: See blackball.
[edit] Computing
In computing, a blacklist is an access control mechanism that means, allow everybody, except members of the blacklist. The opposite is a whitelist, which means, allow nobody, except members of the white list. As a sort of middle ground, a greylist serves as a temporary blacklist that could be used, for example, to block poorly-configured electronic mail clients that may be used to send undesirable electronic mail.
An organization may keep a blacklist of software or websites in its computer system. Titles on the list would be banned and everything else would be allowed. For example, a school might blacklist KaZaA and ICQ; other Internet services would still be allowed.
An e-mail spam filter may keep a blacklist of addresses, any mail from which would be prevented from reaching its intended destination.
Many copy prevention schemes include software blacklisting.
[edit] Alternative terms
"Blocklist" is considered to be more sensitive to dark-skinned people and has been adopted by some technology departments - especially in U.S. higher education. "Rejectlist" is another alternative.
[edit] Medical Context
In the UK the term blacklisted is used in the NHS to denote blacklisted medicines that are not allowed to be prescribed on NHS prescriptions.
[edit] References
- James J. Lorence. The Suppression of Salt of the Earth. How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America. University of New Mexico Press: 1999. ISBN 0-8263-2027-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-8263-2028-7 (paper)
