Meta post I've decided to make. I enjoyed the unixporn subreddit a lot when I used reddit more. I enjoy customizing my linux de as much as the next nerd.
But you definitely shouldn't use racist slang to refer to the process.
To be clear, I didn't know the origin of the term 'ricing' until fairly recently. I was chattimg with my friend and used it to describe my de setup. They informed me that apparently it's from car customization, and is a pejorative against generally asian men who customize their car to look like a racecar.
After learning this I was sad to realize just how engrained it is in linux de customization culture. I personally have stopped using the term, and I would ask everyone here stop as well.
"My white friends and I used a racist term for each other that implicitly compares their cars to Asian ones perjoratively" is not necessarily the win you think it is.
When I was in seventh grade a classmate offered me a pull off a cigarette which I took. He then told me I had N***** lipped it. Does that magically become not racist as shit because we were both white and he used it to make fun of me?
Well, that's not at all what I said. Japanese compact cars were generally pretty cool and affordable in a way most similar small American cars were not, so of course they get customized a ton more that their American equivilents.
The people who actually made their cars perform were the racers, those who did the truly terrible mods were the ricers.
Yes, racist due to stereotyping. But it was more wordplay for insulting the taste of the person in question in comparison to the racers, not their ethnicity or the origin of their car. Bad taste is pretty universal. And as with pretty much anything in language, people can and clearly have used it as a racial insult. I just don't think that was it's origin.
I am really amused it has morphed into a more positive connotation with the *nix crowd, while still meaning essentially the same thing. Language truly is a living thing.