Words are not racist, people are
Are words inherently bad? No.
While it is virtually always wrong for white people to use the n-word, nobody calls black rappers racists when they use it in their lyrics. Context matters!
Is the word master bad? No, it has a wide range of meanings and it is very much used in daily speech. "John is an excellent programmer, he's a master of his field." - a perfectly fine sentence.
Could we come up with something other than master/slave? Yes.
Some more tangents on the perceived badness of the word master. While slaver holders were referred to as masters, so were expert craftsmen. While it is statistically certain that some slave-holders in history were named John, the name John is not frowned upon.
BLM protests the real-world injustice against black people. Most words which some people want to be cleansed from the code-based of the world are about perceived discrimination.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
