TL;DR
- Stop using colors to label groups of people
- Blacklist does NOT have racist etymology and has never carried racist connotations.
- You're just wasting other people's time for things that will never solve any racism problems.
Allowlist and denylist are more descriptive than whitelist and blacklist. Ok, I can agree with that. Let's start using them for new projects.
But, please use your brain before making changes to existing projects. Is it really worth your time? Definitely no. A bigger NO if your motive was from the fact you want to see blacklist or whitelist is a racist word. No. Please don't waste our precious time. Let me tell you why I say so.
First of all, the origins of "blacklist" have nothing to do with racism. It doesn't carry racial connotations at all. And, more importantly, it has never been used as an abusive word against black people. You are just trying to find racism in everyday language. If you're not a racist, you wouldn't come up with this misuse of completely irrelevant terms.
Some would argue blacklist's etymology to be racial by referring to this academic paper. But, the main claim of this paper is merely based on subjective speculations as follows:
It is notable that the first recorded use of the term occurs at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas.
Also, the citation count of this paper is only four. Having a small citation count should not always degrade the validity of a paper; however, it often suggests that the claim of this paper has not been widely recognized nor accepted by etymologists. We should conclude that this paper should not be used as a silver bullet of the proof of blacklist being a racist word.
Black, as a color, carries negative connotations across many cultures including African countries. This is mostly because we, humans are normally diurnal creatures and fear the darkness at night. Black is often associated with fear as you can see in movies, cartoons, etc. This is reflected in our language as well. Black appears in many negative words. It's not only in English but also in many other languages. If you start a stupid word hunt, you'll be swamped with millions of words in hundreds of languages. Going by your logic, you should be advocating for a repaint of The White House because it's a symbol of white supremacy. You shouldn't be using a red card in a soccer match because it "could" offend Native Americans.
A smarter way to attack this entire messed up situation is to stop calling a certain group of people with color. Don't call people who are scientifically categorized as the Negroid race "black". Stop using "white" as a group of people as well.
Hunting down blacklist or whitelist only reinforces the stereotype. Also, it's simply a waste of time for many developers across the globe. The US is not the center of the world. Learn from our history. Many countries banned the use of the language of enemies. This movement could easily lead us to a world where horror movies are not scary at all. Too much political correctness can kill our art as in totalitarian art.
Stop the hypocrisy. Focus on the right and the most important things to do. Stop ridiculous political performance. Stop pretending like you care under-presented groups of people. Please.