It is not even separate but equal. It is just unequal.
The Associated Press announced this week that the “W” in “white” will remain in lowercase when used in reference to white people, whereas the “B” in “black” will stay capitalized when referring to black people.
“After a review and period of consultation, we found, at this time, less support for capitalizing white,” the international newswire explained in a statement. “White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. In addition, AP is a global news organization and there is considerable disagreement, ambiguity and confusion about whom the term includes in much of the world.”
The statement adds, “We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore those problems. But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”
It continues, conceding that there are legitimate concerns that a failure to capitalize “W” while also capitalizing “B” would represent a major inconsistency for the AP Stylebook. The news organization also concedes that there is a legitimate argument that leaving the “W” in lowercase implies that white is the default. The AP even concedes that capitalizing the “W” could perhaps “pull white people more fully into issues and discussions of race and equality.”
But, ah, nevertheless — the newsgroup will continue to capitalize one and not the other, it affirmed this week.
The “W” announcement comes shortly after the AP revealed it would capitalize the “B” in “black” for all race-related reporting.
“AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a person,” Vice President for Standards John Daniszewski explained in a blog post.
He adds, “We also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.”
Daniszewski said the change comes after more than two years of “in-depth research and discussion with colleagues and respected thinkers from a diversity of backgrounds, both within and from outside the cooperative.”
“These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American,” he writes. “Our discussions on style and language consider many points, including the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language. We believe this change serves those ends.”
All this racialist stuff is getting out of hand. Indeed, as we saw last week with the National Museum of African American History’s promotion of an exceptionally racist graphic, attempts by academia, governments, the news and entertainment industries, and corporate America to pander to hyper-racialist sensitivities have resulted in the promotion of explicitly racist viewpoints — for example, that white people are harder workers, more competent, and more logical than all other races. That is what the African American History Museum’s website said.
Perhaps this pandering to “woke” racialism keeps producing racist results because the racialist stuff is nothing more than a bizarre, backward form of racism.
Using separate languages for blacks and whites, for example, creates a system whereby blacks and whites are treated differently. Segregation for allegedly virtuous reasons is still segregation. The sooner the “woke” brigades realize this, the sooner we can get out of this backslide into supposedly righteous institutionalized racism.
