6 ms·

Isn’t the AP the organization that insists Black be capitalized while insisting that White not be capitalized? They are just as biased and steeped in the cultur

Isn’t the AP the organization that insists Black be capitalized while insisting that White not be capitalized? They are just as biased and steeped in the culture war as anyone else. For the record I don’t care if both are capitalized or both are not but taking the divisive approach of choosing one and disallowing the other causes me to lose all trust in them.

res0nat0r 4y ago
This is likely why: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Yep; the AP cited similar motivations (https://apnews.com/article/archive-race-and-ethnicity-9105661462 https://apnews.com/article/archive-race-and-ethnicity-910566...). I think CJR's is a better explanation; that many Black folks in the US have no idea which country their ancestors came from, and thus don't have the Irish / Chinese / German / etc. identifiers of origin many Americans honor and celebrate.
  - gfdsgfsgf 4y ago
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      That is... not my experience. Tracing my family tree was a school assignment; I know folks who wear kilts because they've got a Scottish ancestor, or talk about their Italian grandmother's cooking, there's Greek and Korean and Italian and Puerto Rican and whatnot festivals annually in my city... https://archive.ph/1zKZF https://archive.ph/1zKZF > A basic tenet of genealogical research is that white Americans can more easily trace their European ancestors, while black Americans often face a “ brick wall” — a dearth of records before emancipation. Because enslaved people were considered property until after the Civil War, many enslaved people’s full names and identifying information are not included in documents that white Americans can use to track ancestors, such as annual census counts. But Ancestry.com’s attempt to provide context often does not take into account that white and black histories are fundamentally different.
- obvslythrwy 4y ago
  That article fails to explain why White isn't capitalized. It just claims in a very tautological manner that "capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists."
  - kbenson 4y ago
    I think it fairly clearly made a case that in transporting people for slavery we stripped them of a lot of cultural identity, and now a lot of their identity is the lack of a prior one and their prior treatment in our nation, while white people often have other cultural identities and history to fall back on. Whether you agree with that or not is one thing, but I'm not sure why you're ignoring it.
    - just-ok 4y ago
      Well, it does completely ignore the cultural identity of African-descendant people who don’t have slaves as ancestors (some of which were actually facilitators of said transportations, as well, but I suppose that’s tangential).
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        Also erasing the difference between descendants of slaves from the Americas and the descendants of people who were enslaved in the US. Colin Powell and Kamala Harris are the first without being the second.
  - tsol 4y ago
    In America, Black people as a whole are a distinct cultural group with their own foods, words, holidays, mannerisms, and media. The are in the special case where they don't identify with their ancestral lands because all culture pertaining to that was forcibly stripped away. White people, at least in America, aren't a group with shared culture. The only thing that really unites them is the color of their skin. White people also tend to have an actual ancestral culture they identify with highly-- usually the culture of a European country their predecessors emigrated from. And as far as I know the vast majority of them don't want to identify as 'white', as they value their ancestral culture more.
pie_flavor 4y ago
According to AllSides, AP Politics is definitely sided[0], but it doesn't affect the AP outside of the politics section[1]. A lot better than nothing, especially since anyone more centrist would not publish anywhere near the volume of stories. [0]: https://archive.ph/aqpJM https://archive.ph/aqpJM, [1]: https://archive.ph/1rhNj https://archive.ph/1rhNj Archive since they've merged the ratings for clarification, but haven't actually changed their minds.
Yhippa 4y ago
This is very far down the list of things for me to be outraged about.
tzs 4y ago
Capitalizing "Black" but not "white" seems arguably reasonable for the same reason we have a "Black History Month" but no "White History Month". We don't have a "White History Month" because white history is the default in the US. In a sense every month is a white history month here. Note that we do have months for some subsets of white, e.g., Irish-American Heritage Month (March). Same for why we have LGBT Pride month but no straight pride month. Straight is the default.
bombcar 4y ago
I've seen outlets start to capitalize "Brown" which confused me.

res0nat0r 4y ago

This is likely why: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php

ceejayoz 4y ago
Yep; the AP cited similar motivations (https://apnews.com/article/archive-race-and-ethnicity-9105661462 https://apnews.com/article/archive-race-and-ethnicity-910566...). I think CJR's is a better explanation; that many Black folks in the US have no idea which country their ancestors came from, and thus don't have the Irish / Chinese / German / etc. identifiers of origin many Americans honor and celebrate.
- gfdsgfsgf 4y ago
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    That is... not my experience. Tracing my family tree was a school assignment; I know folks who wear kilts because they've got a Scottish ancestor, or talk about their Italian grandmother's cooking, there's Greek and Korean and Italian and Puerto Rican and whatnot festivals annually in my city... https://archive.ph/1zKZF https://archive.ph/1zKZF > A basic tenet of genealogical research is that white Americans can more easily trace their European ancestors, while black Americans often face a “ brick wall” — a dearth of records before emancipation. Because enslaved people were considered property until after the Civil War, many enslaved people’s full names and identifying information are not included in documents that white Americans can use to track ancestors, such as annual census counts. But Ancestry.com’s attempt to provide context often does not take into account that white and black histories are fundamentally different.
obvslythrwy 4y ago
That article fails to explain why White isn't capitalized. It just claims in a very tautological manner that "capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists."
- kbenson 4y ago
  I think it fairly clearly made a case that in transporting people for slavery we stripped them of a lot of cultural identity, and now a lot of their identity is the lack of a prior one and their prior treatment in our nation, while white people often have other cultural identities and history to fall back on. Whether you agree with that or not is one thing, but I'm not sure why you're ignoring it.
  - just-ok 4y ago
    Well, it does completely ignore the cultural identity of African-descendant people who don’t have slaves as ancestors (some of which were actually facilitators of said transportations, as well, but I suppose that’s tangential).
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      Also erasing the difference between descendants of slaves from the Americas and the descendants of people who were enslaved in the US. Colin Powell and Kamala Harris are the first without being the second.
- tsol 4y ago
  In America, Black people as a whole are a distinct cultural group with their own foods, words, holidays, mannerisms, and media. The are in the special case where they don't identify with their ancestral lands because all culture pertaining to that was forcibly stripped away. White people, at least in America, aren't a group with shared culture. The only thing that really unites them is the color of their skin. White people also tend to have an actual ancestral culture they identify with highly-- usually the culture of a European country their predecessors emigrated from. And as far as I know the vast majority of them don't want to identify as 'white', as they value their ancestral culture more.

pie_flavor 4y ago

According to AllSides, AP Politics is definitely sided[0], but it doesn't affect the AP outside of the politics section[1]. A lot better than nothing, especially since anyone more centrist would not publish anywhere near the volume of stories. [0]: https://archive.ph/aqpJM https://archive.ph/aqpJM, [1]: https://archive.ph/1rhNj https://archive.ph/1rhNj Archive since they've merged the ratings for clarification, but haven't actually changed their minds.

Yhippa 4y ago

This is very far down the list of things for me to be outraged about.

tzs 4y ago

Capitalizing "Black" but not "white" seems arguably reasonable for the same reason we have a "Black History Month" but no "White History Month". We don't have a "White History Month" because white history is the default in the US. In a sense every month is a white history month here. Note that we do have months for some subsets of white, e.g., Irish-American Heritage Month (March). Same for why we have LGBT Pride month but no straight pride month. Straight is the default.

bombcar 4y ago

I've seen outlets start to capitalize "Brown" which confused me.