AP changes writing style to capitalize ‘b’ in Black when referring to race

If black is Black white is White, IMO.

 

Agreed. Has to be.

With it being a summer weekend, most people around my shop are out, so there's been no ruling on this. I had a bunch of content referencing black and white, and I'm leaving it all lower case for now. I think it's honestly just confusing if you capitalize one and not the other, and I don't want to explain it to people who think I have some agenda.

This is something that should be decided all together, not one word separate from another, IMO. Too confusing.

 

USA Today (Gannett, writ large) made the same change this week.

 

The ink is Black. The page is white.

The sentence above doesn't look right.

 

Well played!

 

You're talking about ink, which is an object, so it gets the lowercase "b." Many Black people are protesting police injustice nationwide.

 

The explanation from the AP makes sense. There's a shared cultural history and identity for Black Americans, much in the way there is for Japanese Americans or Arab Americans or any other cultures.

I know the AP is still discussing it, but in my mind, white is too broad. I don't think there's the same shared identity or shared history in being white as there is Black or Latino or Asian.

 

There really is not any group identification as white Americans. We have never as a group been identified as a white Americans. Whereas in our language we have always separated out the Black Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans... And on and on and on. In fact I would go so far as to say that white American really isn't a phrase because when refer to us they just call us white people.

 

The Boston Globe made this change recently. Before Friday, but only in the last month or two from what I recall.

 

How will this change, which is essentially Cosmetic in nature, just like the vast majority of changes that we've seen since George Floyd's death, affect what's being called "systemic racism"? We live in a society that confuses symbolism with substance. I don't believe any of these cosmetic changes are going to deal with any of the legitimate issues African Americans face. It's nothing but condescension.

 

It's not condescending. It's the AP Stylebook -- no one's looking to it to end all of systemic racism. They're just adjusting something so it better reflects the way other races are treated.

Seriously, if all anyone does is resist small change because it won't fix a massive societal problem then nothing will ever get done. It's a small step and feels like a right one.

 

It’s a suboptimal solution to an important issue. African-American ignores black Caribbean-Americans who have been subjected to the same societal issues.