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Will the Associated Press Go Woke? We’ll Soon Find Out.
Townhall.com ^ | July 18, 2020 | Ken LaCorte

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.

It’s more than a mere capitalization. Symbolically elevating one race over another based on skin color is the literal definition of racism. And it’s 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 Duke’s nomenclature gives him and his cohorts more power than they deserve.

It’s not about logic, but virtue signaling. It’s the journalist equivalent of dropping to one knee when writing any article that mentions race.

This segregated gamesmanship with words doesn’t unite America, but further divides us at exactly the wrong time.

It’s 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 we’ll all be watching.

Yes, times have changed since Mr. Boccardi’s 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. Let’s hope the AP doesn’t help reverse that with segregationist language.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: associatedpress; blm; language

1 posted on 07/18/2020 7:50:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

“go woke”

The AP is permanently and irrevocably insomniac


2 posted on 07/18/2020 7:53:47 AM PDT by bert ( (KE. NP. N.C. +12) Progressives are existential American enemies)
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To: Kaslin

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.


3 posted on 07/18/2020 7:55:03 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: Kaslin

“For white people?” Make that “for White people,” then, in the name of equality.


4 posted on 07/18/2020 7:57:26 AM PDT by DPMD (uo)
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To: ClearCase_guy

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.


5 posted on 07/18/2020 8:03:51 AM PDT by alloysteel (Freedom is not a matter of life and death. It is much more serious than that..)
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To: Kaslin

Why do liberal whites hate themselves so much? Liberalism really is a mental disorder.


6 posted on 07/18/2020 8:12:00 AM PDT by Old Yeller (Systemic liberalism is the problem.)
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To: Kaslin

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?


7 posted on 07/18/2020 8:14:00 AM PDT by Bernard (If I knew then what I know now, I probably would not have believed it anyway.)
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To: Kaslin

The Associated Press is obsessed with the color of people and has no understanding of people.
Here’s your agenda


8 posted on 07/18/2020 8:20:12 AM PDT by Vaduz (women and children to be impacIQ of chimpsted the most.)
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To: Kaslin

And what color, Capitalized, will they assign to Near East Asians, Far East Asians, North Africans, Southern Europeans, Inhabitants of the Polynesian Islands, etc?


9 posted on 07/18/2020 8:24:28 AM PDT by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: DPMD

It’s “White People”


10 posted on 07/18/2020 8:25:13 AM PDT by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: Old Yeller
Why do liberal whites hate themselves so much?

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.

11 posted on 07/18/2020 8:31:57 AM PDT by nwrep
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To: Kaslin

12 posted on 07/18/2020 8:50:01 AM PDT by Bratch (If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.)
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To: Kaslin

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.


13 posted on 07/18/2020 9:01:44 AM PDT by zeestephen
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To: Kaslin

When I first read the headline I thought the AP was going broke. Oh well.


14 posted on 07/18/2020 9:05:34 AM PDT by hanamizu
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To: alloysteel

Yeah...If someone is asking if the AP “will get Woke”, they have been asleep for quite some time.


15 posted on 07/18/2020 9:45:58 AM PDT by Bishop_Malachi (Liberal Socialism - A philosophy which advocates spreading a low standard of living equally.)
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To: Kaslin
Nevermind "woke," AP has been full-blown Marxist since I've been alive.

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.

16 posted on 07/18/2020 11:09:26 AM PDT by AAABEST (NY/DC/LA media/political/military industrial complex DELENDA EST)
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To: Kaslin

“people of Color”


17 posted on 07/18/2020 11:13:08 AM PDT by House Atreides (It is not a HOAX but it IS CERTAINLY A PRETEXT)
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To: Vendome

No argument here. But capitalize White wherever it appears, not just in front of “People.”


18 posted on 07/19/2020 11:54:05 AM PDT by DPMD (uo)
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To: DPMD

Like

“I’ll take two scoops of White Ice Cream”


19 posted on 07/19/2020 12:51:17 PM PDT by Vendome (I've Gotta Be Me https://youtu.be/wH-pk2vZG2M)
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To: Vendome

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...


20 posted on 07/20/2020 9:47:18 AM PDT by DPMD (uo)
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