A memo making the e-rounds asks some of Los Angeles County's 20,000 contractors to "review, identify and remove/change" any words or labeling on equipment or parts that "could be interpreted as discriminatory or offensive in nature" before selling it to the county.
The offensive words? "Master" and "slave," used for years to describe the relationship of computer and electronic parts to one another, and also for brake and clutch cylinders in cars.
Dennis Tafoya, who heads the county's affirmative action compliance office, said a black employee of the probation department had filed an employment discrimination complaint because he had to work with videotape recording equipment with functions labeled "master" and "slave."
The employee perceived the wording to be offensive, Tafoya said, and the prescribed drill for such a complaint was underway.
In the end, he said, "We didn't find there was employee discrimination of any type, but did recognize here was a situation where this employee and maybe other employees had concerns as regards to this language."
Purchasing and contract services division manager Joe Sandoval, who wrote the memo, said, "It's kind of mushroomed out of control in terms of folks thinking I'm dictating industrial standards, and I'm not." His e-mail has been running from supportive to "you should all be fired." The county is about halfway through surveying its electronic equipment for similar language.
To date, no one has evidently been offended by designations of "male/female" components.
As for the offending words on the videotape machine, Tafoya said, "We simply put tape over it and renamed it primary/secondary or something like that."
Scholars Consider Governor's Memories
This space told you last week that some scholars and World War II buffs had been puzzled about Arnold Schwarzenegger's declaration in at least two speeches that he "saw Soviet tanks" in Austrian streets.
This was because Schwarzenegger's home was in the heart of the British zone of Austrian occupation from 1945, before Schwarzenegger was born. The British, like the Soviet, U.S. and French occupation forces, left Austria when Schwarzenegger was about 8 years old.
Scholars said the only way he could have seen Soviet tanks in the streets was by traveling into the Soviet-occupied zone in northern Austria, or around Vienna, a trip that scholars say would have been difficult, given British and Soviet antipathies during the occupation.
