I too personally find the terminology itself a bit confusing. I have some cognitive overhead on trying to remember what "whitelist" and "blacklist" actually means. But it's minor. Allow-list and block-list is intuitive. I _would_ be in inclined to update my terminology for the sake of clarity and practicality, but given the current context of the culture war we are currently in, I have consciously decided not to change my language. The language list that is on Stanford's site has infiltrated my employer (a major tech company) as well. The ELT and HR has made it clear they want everyone in the company to abide by it. Sure, making this small change for this specific example will result in slightly improved productivity, but it will come at the cost of emitting a social signal that the words "whitelist" and "blacklist" are bad, which they very well are not. This is a trade I not willing to make.
This is an interesting emotional phenomenon; the more people claim I'm being "racist" by using "blacklist" or "master" the more I'm inclined to keep on using it, as a kind of "fuck you and your accusations".
It's not even that I mind adjusting my language if people object to it; but there's a world of difference between "I really don't like it when you use the phrase [...]" and "you're being racist when you use the phrase [...]".
