America’s press is rushing to show its support and sensitivity for the movement led by Black Lives Matter by capitalizing “Black” while keeping “white” lowercase.
USA Today and its network of 260 media outlets announced the plan in the last week. It is also a style policy in other newsrooms, including NBC News, the Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Sun-Times, and some expect the Associated Press to follow soon.
The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and NBC News last week decided to capitalize Black, and the National Association of Black Journalists urged other news organizations to do the same.
AP leaders continue to discuss. For now, we lowercase black and white.https://t.co/XsgiOJQudQ— APStylebook (@APStylebook) June 16, 2020
“AP leaders continue to discuss. For now, we lowercase black and white,” said the outlet on Twitter.
African American is uppercased in virtually all media.
At the Columbia Journalism Review, which also capitalizes “B” but not “w,” a new column explained the difference.
To our readers: Why we’re now capitalizing the ‘B’ in Black https://t.co/SiRime5ZLT
— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) June 15, 2020
“Black is an ethnic designation; white merely describes the skin color of people who can, usually without much difficulty, trace their ethnic origins back to a handful of European countries,” it said.
CJR added, “This all makes for a good start, but it will mean nothing if white Americans don’t make an effort to understand the whys and wherefores — which is to say, the history that delivered us to this precise point in time. That, of course, will be a taller order than simply asking them to capitalize one little letter.”
