BLAH!…..BLAH!…..BLAH!
Whatever!
The Associated Press (AP) changed its style guide on Friday to capitalize “black” in reference to people.
The Associated Press changed its writing style guide Friday to capitalize the “b” in the term Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context, weighing in on a hotly debated issue
Associated Press
John Daniszewski, AP’s vice president of standards, wrote of the news outlet’s new guidelines in an official statement:
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.
We also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.
These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American. 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.
As a global news organization, we are continuing to discuss within the U.S. and internationally whether to capitalize the term white. Considerations are many and include any implications that doing so might have outside the United States.
We continue to discuss other terms, including minorities and people of color, as well as the term “Black, Indigenous and people of color.”
John Daniszewski
AP’s VP of Standards
The Chicago Sun-Times joined the AP’s new writing guidelines while also guiding its writers to capitalize the word “brown” in reference to people.
Chris Frusco, the executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, said via a statement, “Our decision to capitalize Black is an acknowledgment of the longstanding inequities that have existed in our country, and the unique role that Black art and culture have played in our society. Cultural trends among white people, e.g. Italian Americans, Irish Americans, etc., are more disparate, hence our decision not to capitalize white.”
Frusco wrote in an email to a staffer, “We will continue to lowercase the “w” in white, which is a wider descriptor of people of numerous origins. Of the city’s 4,767 firefighters and paramedics, 65.2% are white, 16.6% are Black and 15.9% are Hispanic.”
Other news media outlets adopting the new capitalization standards include BuzzFeed, the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, NBC, and USA Today.
Associated Press Changes Style Guide to Capitalize ‘B’ in ‘Black’
H/T Feet2Fire
Calamity Jane