"It’s certainly long overdue"

July 1, 2020 7:02 AM

The New York Times has announced it will start using uppercase “Black” to "describe people and cultures of African origin, both in the U.S. and elsewhere"; so has the Associated Press, which is updating its writing style guide accordingly; and other newsrooms have been following suit. Here’s the story of how long it took and some of the people who made that happen, why this is "far more than a typographical change", how "the question of how to properly refer to Black people in print has deep historical roots", and why "saying 'Black' with a capital B isn't enough" .
posted by bitteschoen (24 comments total)

The Chicago Manual of Style has also recently changed their recommendation.
posted by adamrice at 7:28 AM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Why we capitalize ‘Black’ (and not ‘white’) (Columbia Journalism Review, Jun. 16, 2020)
posted by katra at 8:14 AM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

I understand why we capitalize Black and not white, but as an editor the stylistic inconsistency makes me all twitchy. However, while a good editor knows that consistency is extremely important, they also know that consistency is not always paramount.
posted by orange swan at 8:37 AM on July 1, 2020 [13 favorites]

I understand why we capitalize Black and not white, but as an editor the stylistic inconsistency makes me all twitchy. However, while a good editor knows that consistency is extremely important, they also know that consistency is not always paramount.

Agreed. If there was a TV show about editors like "Halt and Catch Fire," it might be called "Twitch and Let Stand."

If we're sharing editorial nightmares, somebody I know had to deal with a fun author who wanted to capitalize both 'white' and 'black' for consistency, but used 'White' thirty times in the book, and 'Black' once in an endnote.
posted by Beardman at 9:03 AM on July 1, 2020 [5 favorites]

"But the messy, complex and painful work required won't come from hitting "shift" on a keyboard. The shift comes from confronting uncomfortable truths."

Really love this quote from the last article. There are SO many superficial things happening right now -- Juneteenth, painting Black Lives Matter murals, this 'b' debate, etc. -- that are all definitely PART of changing the tide, but it's pretty much all that's being offered from the powers that be. And that's not what is being asked.

The real change is coming to grips with white supremacy, and working to dismantle it.
posted by knownassociate at 9:12 AM on July 1, 2020 [15 favorites]

I'm not going to try get into the issue of whether this is significant in the big picture. But in my 20 years as a newspaper reporter and occasional editor, the one style issue I had to explain the most often to readers, in phone calls, letters and in person, was why we printed the word "black" with a lower-case "b" when referring to people.

The consistency issue bugs me, too, but I'm happy to see this change.
posted by martin q blank at 9:24 AM on July 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Mod note: One deleted; please don't edit for content, and please don't invent offensive things people might hypothetically say as a way of talking about how you know better than to say that offensive thing.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:35 AM on July 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

“black” is a description. “Black” refers to a shared identity and experience of oppressive power relations, and also stands in for whatever background those so describes have been cut off from by dispossession.

“white” is also descriptive. “White” refers to a shared identity of being on the other side of the pitchfork. There is no common culture shared by all White people and no non-white people that is not that of oppressing and dominating those decreed to be non-White. It follows that those who celebrate White culture or identity are assholes, at least to non-white people.
posted by acb at 9:47 AM on July 1, 2020 [13 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted. Folks, the articles describe the reasons for this change; these organizations aren't doing this for no reason. Please don't comment on this before reading about their rationales.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:07 AM on July 1, 2020 [9 favorites]

I liked radical copy editor’s old post on the topic.
posted by progosk at 10:19 AM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

(Incidentally, I’ve had some difficulty finding the right translation equivalents for Italian, where “afroamericano” is in the process of being edged out variously by “di colore” or “nero”, which... should that preferably take the capital “N”? I consulted with the BLM organizers local to Rome, waiting to hear back...)
posted by progosk at 10:26 AM on July 1, 2020

This should have been done long ago. I guess the western world's issue with denial meant we didn't want to outright acknowledge that chattel slavery had created a particularly heinous and horrible cultural and genealogical situation for the descendants of slaves. It's like calling slaves "immigrants", which has been typed out, reviewed, and authorized an appalling number of times. We don't want to acknowledge the truth.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:06 AM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm only willing to care about consistency between writing "Black people" and "white people" when there's actual consistency and equality for Black people and white people.
posted by Nelson at 11:06 AM on July 1, 2020 [10 favorites]

That Columbia Journalism Review piece contains this sentence early on: In deciding on a styling, fusspot grammarians and addled copy editors generally fall back on a pair of considerations.

Which instantly inclined me to approve of whatever else they were planning to say.
posted by nickmark at 11:27 AM on July 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

I understand why we capitalize Black and not white, but as an editor the stylistic inconsistency makes me all twitchy. However, while a good editor knows that consistency is extremely important, they also know that consistency is not always paramount.

Agreed. If there was a TV show about editors like "Halt and Catch Fire," it might be called "Twitch and Let Stand."


Stylocultural Collision Error

(A)ccept (R)evise (F)ML
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:46 AM on July 1, 2020

I'm a professional editor, and my delight when I am able to employ the tools of my trade in some small way to further justice and fight marginalization far outweighs any twitchiness about consistency.

I'm not white, though.
posted by sunset in snow country at 1:35 PM on July 1, 2020 [20 favorites]

I work as a copy editor, and I'm happy to use the singular they and to capitalize Black and Indigenous. Language is an evolving thing – and it doesn't evolve in a vacuum. It's shaped by culture and can shape it as well.
posted by lisa g at 2:57 PM on July 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

The CJR definition of "Black" excludes Africans, as well most African immigrants to countries outside of the Americas - and also seems to exclude recent/post-slavery immigrants from Africa to the US/ the Americas.
posted by Bwithh at 11:54 AM on July 1

I'm sorry, this assertion isn't supported by the pullquote you used in your post. In fact, the pullquote repeats no less than 5 different ways the complete opposite of your assertion. Unless you have some official CJR definition somewhere that you're relying on - please link it in that case. A line by line breakdown of why your statement on what the pullquote is saying is misleading:

"And, as my CJR colleague Alexandria Neason told me recently, “I view the term Black as both a recognition of an ethnic identity in the States...."
1. This is the writer's colleague's view, not CJR as a whole. Even if it was CJR's view, it still doesn't say what you're saying it does.

"...that doesn’t rely on hyphenated Americanness..."
2. In other words, the term African American fails to recognize Africans and other Black people that do not have American citizenship.

...(and is more accurate than African American, which suggests recent ties to the continent)
3. In other words, the term Black is expansive and explicitly more inclusive than the term African American which is generally the term used right now to refer to all Black people in the United States, regardless of heritage.

"...and is also transnational..."
4. She is explicitly saying that Black includes Africans, as well most African immigrants to countries outside of the Americas.

....and inclusive of our Caribbean [and] Central/South American siblings.”
5. See point 4.

She added, “African American is not wrong, and some prefer it, but if we are going to capitalize Asian and South Asian and Indigenous, for example, groups that include myriad ethnic identities united by shared race and geography and, to some degree, culture, then we also have to capitalize Black."
6. See point 3.
posted by Karaage at 6:03 PM on July 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'm curious who first used "Black" plus "white". One of the linked articles gives writers from the last 20 years, but Audre Lorde wrote that way in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name in 1982.
posted by zompist at 8:04 PM on July 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

it might be called "Twitch and Let Stand."

Twitch and Stet, surely? A buddy comedy title if ever I've seen one.

I think this is a good change, but things are starting to feel like I'm seeing a lot headlines about concessions that amount to not very much real change. Which was predictable I guess but it's important I think to not stop until defunding the police gets legislated. And not to let the NYT off the hook for that Cotton op-ed and the generally horrific state of their op-ed pages.
posted by axiom at 9:56 PM on July 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

That is very much my own fear and it really tweaks my skeptic / cynic radar. Oh, suddenly all of that shit we have been arguing about for decades just gets done? Statues down, flags changed, words substituted, etc.? It is the typical thing elites do in order to stave off real change, and to me it should be seen as flak that needs to be navigated through to the real issues - police reform, prison reform, war on drugs.
posted by Meatbomb at 2:47 AM on July 2, 2020

I want to comment on the idea that small changes like this deflect energy from larger issues. Copy editors don't have power to defund the police, but they do have power to change editing practices. I say that totally without snark. Everyone has to do what they can. What may seem like a superficial change to one person, is a change that makes the world a little bit safer for another person.

It's like the opposite of the discussions we'd have during the megathreads, where Trump would do something awful and people would say no, that's just a distraction and someone else would say, it's not a distraction if you're the victim of the policy. An uppercase versus lowercase B might seem like a distraction, a confederate flag or statue coming down might seem like a distraction--but if they make the world a little less hard for someone, aren't they worth doing? If they continue to make visible the racist assumptions behind our language and the way we decorate our capitals, isn't that worth doing?

I don't think they take away from the larger work of dismantling systems...but that is much larger work. It's huge, and it feels like we should make the smaller moves when we can, rather than putting them off until some future date when that dismantling is done.
posted by mittens at 5:49 AM on July 2, 2020 [11 favorites]

You're right that newspaper editors can't defund the police, and I was never trying to suggest that they could. What they can do is frame the discussions in the public arena, and while fixing their own house in this respect is certainly good, it's not sufficient. And inasmuch as column inches spent talking about house style are column inches not spent talking about defunding the police, it's a lesser concession that takes the air out of the room for the bigger issues. It's fine to change the capitalization policy right up until that's the only thing that changes, then we've got a problem because the fight is for defunding the police and saving lives, not capitalization policy.

And sure, I can walk and chew gum same as the next person, but it's important to do both. I'm not saying the lesser things should wait, just that them not-waiting can't mean the big things get pushed to the back burner for years until the kettle boils over and people are out in the streets again.
posted by axiom at 10:54 AM on July 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Capital B for Black (WaPo, Jul. 31, 2020)

Today on Post Reports, we pull back the curtain on a major decision The Post made recently to change our style guide: to capitalize B for Black to identify groups that make up the African diaspora.

posted by katra at 2:09 PM on July 31, 2020 [1 favorite]