Posted on 07/18/2020 7:50:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
On Juneteenth, the Associated Press announced it will capitalize Black when referencing people. AP executive John Daniszewski writes that now, The lowercase black is a color, not a person.
For white people? The AP is making that decision this weekend.
Who really cares if news articles capitalize one and not the other? You should.
Its more than a mere capitalization. Symbolically elevating one race over another based on skin color is the literal definition of racism. And its creepy.
It leads to bizarre sentences such as:
· The Black girl handed the white girl a pencil.
· We saw whites and Blacks unite against racism.
· Or from a recent NY Times story: "The F.B.I. is investigating a confrontation between a Black man and a group of white men ..."
One can easily argue that both words have become stand-ins for race in American lexicon. A reasonable person could argue to capitalize them both. Or neither.
But it takes more than mental gymnastics to prioritize Black over white. It takes bigotry.
The rationale for prioritizing Black over white is weak at best. Some argue that whiteness is more disparate than blackness, who have a more similar shared history. Some blacks understandably find it wrong that white would then become the equivalent of normal, with blacks seen as a distinction from that norm instead of one of the many ethnicities who comprise America.
Others balk because they say white supremacists love to capitalize their w. Yet making decisions about the English language based on David Dukes nomenclature gives him and his cohorts more power than they deserve.
Its not about logic, but virtue signaling. Its the journalist equivalent of dropping to one knee when writing any article that mentions race.
This segregated gamesmanship with words doesnt unite America, but further divides us at exactly the wrong time.
Its good to see some organizations still standing for equality in language. The National Association of Black Journalists announced in June that it is important to capitalize "Black" when referring to (and out of respect for) the Black diaspora." They go on to say that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown.
Yet however the Associated Press goes, so will the national press corps. AP stories appear in 1,300 newspapers and its AP Stylebook is used by nearly everyone. Whatever AP decides will soon become the norm. Schools and corporations will undoubtedly follow.
It would be a shame if the AP throws aside its historical mission and decides to walk the woke path. Its former CEO Lou Boccardi famously and pointedly said, At the AP, you have to be apolitical.
The AP is on the verge of proving whether this is still the case, and well all be watching.
Yes, times have changed since Mr. Boccardis tenure. Yes, America has changed. And, unfortunately, the news business has changed.
But as the most influential information provider in the world, The Associated Press has a singular duty not to become enmeshed in emotion, and to adhere to the high standards it has long maintained and with which it influences members and non-members alike.
Despite current racial tensions in America, all evidence suggests that racism is on the decline. Lets hope the AP doesnt help reverse that with segregationist language.
“go woke”
The AP is permanently and irrevocably insomniac
Golly. Could the AP get woke? That would mean they would embrace Progressivism and take a stand against President Trump. What a change that would be.
“For white people?” Make that “for White people,” then, in the name of equality.
What do you mean, the AP “will” get “woke”? They pretty much set the standard for how politically correct the definition should be.
Been practicing for this perfect storm for years now.
Why do liberal whites hate themselves so much? Liberalism really is a mental disorder.
I thought they are african americans, or people of color. When did they become black people again? And what word will the ap use in Spanish language papers?
The Associated Press is obsessed with the color of people and has no understanding of people.
Here’s your agenda
And what color, Capitalized, will they assign to Near East Asians, Far East Asians, North Africans, Southern Europeans, Inhabitants of the Polynesian Islands, etc?
It’s “White People”
The neo-Marxists who emerged from the Frankfurt school in the 1940s (Marcuse, Adorno, Habermas), and their Marxist successors of the 1950s and 1960s (Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida) preached a "deconstructive" theory of society in which every interaction became cast as a power play between a perpetrator and a victim. This created a hierarchy of victimhood, with the white male as the universal perpetrator of injustice.
This was the only philosophy taught in colleges and universities beginning in the late 1960s, and came to be viewed uncritically by generations of students.
This philosophy became commonplace in the academia, media, entertainment, publishing, corporations, and has pervaded all spheres of political life in the West, but most sharply, in America.
I have capitalized Black, Hispanic, and Asian for as long as I have commented at Free Republic.
And, I have always lower cased “white.”
For me, it is a way to flaunt the fact that I never even think about my race.
I judge every person by the same two standards - personal behavior, and to a lesser extent, political philosophy.
When I first read the headline I thought the AP was going broke. Oh well.
Yeah...If someone is asking if the AP “will get Woke”, they have been asleep for quite some time.
Deluded BLM blacks and lefty clowns think they can just wish-in a new society, where lack of accomplishment and incapability is overcome by stupidity... as if mis-using capital letters should solve any problems.
I've seen a lot of the morons portending that some new dawn has rising... meanwhile they're just as pathetically dumb and inept as they were a few months ago... just way more hated.
people of Color
No argument here. But capitalize White wherever it appears, not just in front of “People.”
Like
“I’ll take two scoops of White Ice Cream”
Works for me. I recall when the British government ruled that the terms “black” and “white” were political speech, and required coffee drinkers to stop ordering theirs black, but rather without milk. We’re getting there...
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