Just to add some context for that infamous Stanford list, it was a proposed internal list within the IT department about language to use for the text on official Stanford websites. As far as I'm aware that's the only place it was intended to be applied by the authors and it was never implemented. I know your intent wasn't bad but I found a lot of the media coverage massively over the top for what was essentially an overzealous suggestion to modify a website style guide.
It gives us evidence (for the above discussion) that the term “brown bag lunch” has actually been documented as harmful by someone - and wasn’t just made up as a stick to beat diversity initiatives with.
I would argue it also gives an indication of how “mission creep” works.
(A well-used term like “tarball” now being deemed potentially offensive, presumably because it sounds like “tarbaby”, even though it’s obviously just referring to a bundle of files archived with the “tar” command.)
I'm genuinely fascinated by how this came to be written. Were there brainstorming sessions where people threw out random word associations to show willing, combined with a fear from the rest of the group of accusations of racism for calling it out as arrant nonsense?
