It makes me think of the phrase: I wouldn't lift my little finger to help you. By pushing the shift key when typing the "B," they are, at least, lifting their little finger...
But are they helping? Are people with this characteristic helped by a gesture that says — or is supposed to say — you have a shared cultural identity with the other people who have the same characteristic?
Let's read the argument. First, the Times tells us that before 1930, it used the word "negro" — uncapitalized — to refer to black people, and W.E.B. Du Bois led a campaign to demand capitalization, writing that "The use of a small letter for the name of twelve million Americans and two hundred million human beings is a personal insult."
There's no link to the full text of the letter, and I tried to find it. I'd like to know whether Du Bois's argument included the fact that the word for white people — perhaps "Caucasian" — was capitalized. If so, his name and eminent reputation are misappropriated in the argument today, when the word for white people is "white," and it is not capitalized. The "insult" back then would have been in denying black people equal treatment, whereas the decision today is about giving them distinctive attention.
“We believe this style best conveys elements of shared history and identity, and reflects our goal to be respectful of all the people and communities we cover,” said Dean Baquet, The Times’s executive editor, and Phil Corbett, associate managing editor for standards, in a memo to staff....That raises the question why it is good to assign individuals to a culture. The color/culture distinction is a bit like the sex/gender distinction. Shouldn't each individual control his or her association with a culture? Why would a newspaper, supposedly dedicated to factual reporting, routinely attach a culture to a person because of their color?
“It seems like such a minor change, black versus Black,” The Times’s National editor, Marc Lacey, said. “But for many people the capitalization of that one letter is the difference between a color and a culture.”
Lacey says, "Some have been pushing for this change for years." So, one answer is: We're responding to demands. So, if "some" — the right "some"? — demand that the capitalization be abandoned, the NYT will do that too? A lot of demands are being made these days. Did the NYT ask the entire black "culture" what they wanted or is it following its own "culture" and satisfying demands?
“We don’t treat the stylebook as an instrument of activism; we don’t view it as at the vanguard of language,” Mr. Abrams said. “We generally want the stylebook to reflect common usage.”...The NYT doesn't want to be the last to go along with this demand. That's the argument Lacey hastens to make right after noting the strongest argument against capitalization — that "white" isn't capitalized. Does he have an answer to that argument? Is it that "black" is a culture and "white" isn't?
“Some have been pushing for this change for years,” Mr. Lacey said. “They consider Black like Latino and Asian and Native American, all of which are capitalized. Others see the change as a distraction from more important issues. Then there are those troubled that our policy will now capitalize ‘Black’ but not ‘white.’ Over all, the view was that there was a growing agreement in the country to capitalize and that The Times should not be a holdout.”
Or is it that if "white" is a culture, it's a culture of supremacy and the idea must be to break it down, not give it more solidity? I wrote that question before reading this last part:
The Times also looked at whether to capitalize white and brown in reference to race, but both will remain lowercase. Brown has generally been used to describe a wide range of cultures, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Corbett said in their memo to staff. As a result, its meaning can be unclear to readers; white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups.
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95 comments:
Talk with recent black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.They sure feel their culture is different than American blacks.This reasoning is actually insulting to blacks.
The shared cultural identity is Blackity Black.
It’s the Anna Karenina principle of race:
All Black families are alike; each white family is white in its own way.
If you don’t see yourself as part of the Black culture, too bad.
The Times will capitalize you anyway.
Perhaps like pronouns you should be able to state your preferred race?
“Hi, I’m Sammy. He/him, lowercase b.”
I believe the correct phrasing is
"white devils, that we wish were dead"
That IS kinda long, so you can shorten it to
"white devils "
Whatever, man. Enjoy your capitals.
in Poland we have a specific term for such situation, originating during Communism rule. It is 'mądrość etapu' - 'wisdom of the phase/stage'. Used when something that was not officially true, suddenly becomes true, even if contradicts government ideology. Such situation happens when government needs it right now for tactical propaganda purposes.
Members of hate groups are known to wear shoes.
Hence going forward, all Times staffers will now go barefoot.
They are helping - helping divide and destroy our country. It's the nature of the scorpion.
I still remember negro being the preferred term in newspapers in the 60s. I don't remember if it was capitalized or not.
Colored was also common.
Colored is now out but people of color is in. Somehow, blonde, blue eyed, fair skinned people like me and aoc have become "people of color"
It gets hard to keep up.
John Henry
Black should be capitalized because it refers to a distinctive people? Not so very long ago, that would have been considered racist because it ignored the unique stories of the hundreds of African tribes and nations. And at the rate we’re going, it will be racist again in few weeks for some reason nobody’s thought of yet.
As a result, its meaning can be unclear to readers; white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does,
Fascinating. I will not be capitalizing either, but if I did one, would do both.
I know W.E.B. Du Bois is a big black name, but wasn't he a dreadful commie, and always in opposition to Booker T. Washington, whose superior ideas unfortunately didn't win out over his?
"They all look alike" is racist. "They all are alike" is enlightened.
Maybe we should use the term "NYT-enlightened" to identify this.
Excellent. This will only benefit Whites waking up to a group identity.
Per local news, an Omaha woman wants the State to remove the word Negro from her birth certificate.
NYT word salad = we are more woke than most, and we prefer to deal with our favorite people, who we refuse to treat as individuals, in a lumpen way. We have reached ultimate condescension.
The only thing that could make this even more insulting to black Americans would be if Dean Baquet were white.
Those black pressure groups can sure make those NYT editors dance.
capitalize black delete n
I am making a policy change. From now on it will be called the new york times.
Ha ha!
Now they must make all white NYT employees stop wearing pants.
I bet you they will get away with it.
Douglass, king, Dubois, tub an and other famous black names have been bandied about lately.
How come we never hear of Marcus Garvey anymore?
Is it because, like Harris, he is not ADOS?
ADOS - American descendant of slavery. Garvey was born in Jamaica.
John Henry
white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history
Whites are too diverse to deserve capitalization.
There are racial disparities in many important outcomes. There is nothing we as a society can do about that. It's not because there is an obvious path forward that we are unwilling to take. It's because there is nothing that we agree on as an effective approach. The left and Dems (including I think, BLM) think that we need to keep doing all the things that have been ineffective in the past, but we need to do those things more intensively. The right and Reps think that black people need to take more responsbility at a personal level to reduce these disparities.
Who says nyt doesn’t embrace capitalism in a just but selective way? Black Americans: yes! white Americans: no capitals for you.
The Soup Nazi is running nyt!
So, Blacks are deserving of capitalization because they are a single culture, but whites are not because they are a mongrel race. I've heard that argument somewhere else, I just can't quite remember...
cacimbo said...
They sure feel their culture is different than American blacks.This reasoning is actually insulting to blacks.
+++
The history of Caribbean blacks who came to the USA after slavery is significantly different from the history of blacks who came to the USA as slaves. These differences continue through at least 3rd generation.
Differences include
More intact families
More and better quality education
More work experience/fewer spells of unemployment
Higher income
Less perception of discrimination
Lower involvement with the law
And other quantitative metrics.
The re are various theories about why this is but there does not seem to be much argument that it is true.
It is not genetic since both groups originally came from the same general area of Africa as slaves
Many Dominicans (Dominican Republic) are indistinguishable from American blacks other than language. Their ancestors came from the same area as slaves.
When they come to the US from RD, their experience is more similar to Other Caribbean blacks than to ADOS blacks.
The above is all factual. I don't understand why it is insulting.
John Henry
Blogger is busy this morning.
We don’t treat the stylebook as an instrument of activism
This is one of those performance art jokes, delivered deadpan by an artist who never breaks character, laughed at by people who get the ruse.
For many, very, many years I have used upper-case letters in such terms (When referring to people) as in Asian, Black, First Peoples, Latinos, Whites---And Fascists.
DUH!!! The librul libtard FAKE News MSM is capitalizing (on) Blacks to boost ratings and ad revenue. The Stalinist Democrat party is capitalizing (on) Blacks to defeat Trump. Capitol Idea
Oh god, not the style book too? The NYT is well and truly finished!
So, is the "n" capitalized or not?
THEOLDMAN
For the record, I always capitalize both "White" and "Black" when referring to race.
The "insult" back then would have been in denying black people equal treatment, whereas the decision today is about giving them distinctive attention.
That pretty much describes the |"civil rights" movement today.
white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does,
Not now, but if the Left keeps this bullshit up, that will change. I keep telling you guys, you really really don't want to convince White people that being White matters.
and also has long been capitalized by hate groups.
So fucking what?
By making “Black” a cultural identity, it’s easier to argue that African-American conservatives aren’t really Black.
"Shouldn't each individual control his or her association with a culture?"
You are so very, very bourgeois.
"Why would a newspaper, supposedly dedicated to factual reporting, routinely attach a culture to a person because of their color?"
Well, because putting people down like that, depriving them of agency, assigning them to categories, affirms their helpless dependence as tools in the prog project.
"white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups"
So if hate groups start capitalizing black, the NYT will switch back to lower case?
Anyway, I guess it's a mark of white cleverness that we were able to maintain our common supremacy without a common culture, impose racism without a a shared history of racism, and erect all those statues without even having a shared history at all.
I know W.E.B. Du Bois is a big black name, but wasn't he a dreadful commie, and always in opposition to Booker T. Washington, whose superior ideas unfortunately didn't win out over his?
There has always been a dual track to the Black civil rights movement. There's the slow and steady improvement track. This has Booker Washington and MLKjr in it. Then there is the militant "I want equality now" track. This is the W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X track.
Today the MLKjr track is largely dead, and we are left with the Malcolm X track.
"Black" was capitalized in the style following the diversitist model of "African-American" or 1/2 American, and combining people of different nationalities, tribes, even color, etc. under one judgment and label, which places groups like Hutu and Tutsi at odds with each other, or conflates Progressive South Africans and the black natives they lynched in post-apartheid South Africa, etc.
I've dubbed it carlos slims, for their majority shareholder, who has influenced their editorial direction
"NYT-enlightened"
Needs a capital E.
You have to assign people to strata before you order the strata with Times Readers on top.
You mean, the NYT is racist, because they are elevating one race above others.
white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups.
But but....according to the nyt, and even in that sentence, White people have a shared culture of hate and systemic racism.
Diversity (i.e. color judgments) breeds adversity. NYT has been at the forefront of normalizing this Progressive doctrine that has been adopted faithfully by Liberals, and 1/2 of moderates, too.
Liberal virtue signals don't improve a damn thing for anyone. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when a WOKE committee of mostly white execs comes up with dumb and meaningless crap like this.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, newspapers reported the news.
If I recall the use of negro morphed into Afro-American then African American and later Black. They choose each appellation themselves as how they wished to be referred. But now all negative things associated with the color black is racist and demeaning. Yet all those connotations existed before they chose black as the preferred term.
What would e e cummings have to say?
In the NYT case it is pure pandering, but that's what they're good at.
Somebody, I think on this board, commented that they don't label themselves as Irish-American or Italian-American. They might say that they are 'white' in a broader sense, but they are just garden variety Americans. African-American is silly...it surely doesn't apply to blacks whose families have little to do with Africa...perhaps they are from Haiti or Jamaica?
Ultimately, if we are all from Africa eons back, they I say reparations for everyone.
Last point, do Ernie Els' kids get special treatment when applying to Harvard?
The really funny one is the "people of color" and "colored people" brouhaha.
Wouldn't it be great if all the protesters and Wokerati put some effort into doing something that was actually productive? You know, like volunteering at or supporting an adult literacy center or food pantry. Becoming a Big Brother or a Big Sister. Tutoring grade school children. You know, stuff that can actually make a positive difference in people's lives.
"the view was that there was a growing agreement in the country to capitalize" Doubt it. I have rarely seen it before this month, and the proof is that it looks jarring to me.
I was taught that capitalization rule in school. I thought it was standard, but I never cared one way or the other. Germans capitalize words far more than we, the Spanish far less. I still don’t care.
Isn't the NYT stepping on thin ice capitalizing "Black" versus "white" on the basis of the former being uniquely a "shared cultural identity" (distinct from capitalization on the basis of a proper noun like Latino or Asian)?
Doesn't that imply when reporting about negative disparities, such as socioeconomic outcomes, the NYT will be implicitly imputing those outcomes to the "shared cultural identity" rather than disparate treatment as a racial group based on outward appearance?
Kevin at 5:07 has a great comment.
Chris said, "They choose each appellation themselves as how they wished to be referred."
I doubt this very much. No vote was every taken; it was dictated by the same culture queens that always push linguistic terrorism, channeled by the MSM clerisy. I distinctly remember that when "gay" became "LBGT," neither I nor my other gay friends were consulted. We thought the idea loony because, at a time when equal rights were still not legally enforced everywhere, it was silly to start dividing us all up. But that's the MO. The nyt and WaPo have always been enforcers.
I believe Carlos Slim bought into the NYT purely as a defensive measure.
The man himself doesnt seem to have any political agenda outside of the liberty to pursue corrupt arrangements on both sides of the border. It certainly isn't a desire to control the editorial line. It may be even that his bailout was a sort of protection payment. Not protection to the NYT, as that entity is just a tool, but to someone, or someones, with the ability to make trouble for him, which do find the NYT useful.
Just a hunch. And as in so many other things, we may never know.
The really funny one is the "people of color" and "colored people" brouhaha.
Especially given the fact that the most powerful civil rights organization is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
By the way, the United Negro College Fund is still around too.
If I recall the use of negro morphed into Afro-American then African American and later Black.
It went Negro -> Colored -> Black -> African-American -> Black/person of color
How come we never hear of Marcus Garvey anymore?
He supported self-reliance rather than government hand outs.
The NYT is just "keeping up with the Joneses".
I always capitalize when referring to race, as when I assert that in the White country clubs Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Yosemite you will seldom see a Black, Brown or Red face in any number that corresponds to the general demographics of Amerika. A Black can be white,as in albino, and some, like Maori, Aborigines, Ethiopians, Indians and Bangladeshis, can be black but not Black. Hispanics can be White, Black or Other, since Hispanic is a gummint-invented category not clearly related to race. Iago called Othello, who was Berber, not Black, "an old black ram." Not all Black humor is black humor! The tar-baby tale isn't either one.
They are woke to Black because Moral Clarity.
- krumhorn (henceforth, lower case k)
Gahrie said...
Today the MLKjr track is largely dead, and we are left with the Malcolm X track.
Of course, with the Washington/King track you'd have to give up that comforting cloak of victimhood.
John henry said...
How come we never hear of Marcus Garvey anymore?
Is it because, like Harris, he is not ADOS?
ADOS - American descendant of slavery. Garvey was born in Jamaica.
Nah! B. Hussein Obama wasn't ADOS, we still hear about him. Garvey doesn't have any popular appeal; he wanted to colonize Africa, no EBT cards/Affirmative Action there.
We also don't hear much about Father Divine and he claimed to be God.
“Wouldn't it be great if all the protesters and Wokerati put some effort into doing something that was actually productive?”
Good heavens, they’re doing their best to get Trump re-elected! What more do you want from them?
And if you don't use the capitalization, you're Fired.
Can the nytimes get any more ridiculous?
It will interesting to see how they describe Clarence Thomas, or Kanye West should he really run for president this Fall.
Someone -- a Black man -- argued at the beginning of this year that Kamala Harris wasn't a Black American. He meant that she wasn't ADOS. Is the NYT saying that people descended from American slavery should be called "Black"? Or do they not have the nerve to be that specific? They're half-assing it.
I capitalize them both, becuase I'm usually using the modifier as a racial identity, not just a skin color. I would write the White people have white skin. Just as I would write the Caucasian people have white skin." Same for Blacks, Asians, and Lefties, etc. When we say "White culture" for instance we are not describing a color.
I don't really agree with my own policy, becuase I don't think of White and Black as monolithic groups, communities, or cultures, but usually when we are talking about them, we are taking that shortcut.
"Wouldn't it be great if all the protesters and Wokerati put some effort into doing something that was actually productive?"
What's the fun in that? They wouldn't get to dance, yell at people, get high, hit on each other, or take selfies showing them standing up to authority right before they run away. That stuff can be social media gold. It's not really about Black lives. That's obvious. If you care about Black lives, you don't go to some White neighborhood where no Blacks have been killed, when there is Detroit and Chicago available.
It was perhaps three or four years ago that one of my very liberal colleagues lectured me for casually referring to someone as "Black" instead of "African-American." Policing language is all about enforcing power and control. Nothing more, and nothing less.
The fact that it will be capitalized shows, again, the weak support of the race that the NYT has always shown. Capitalizing is not enough, not nearly. The B should be a minimum of seven font sizes above the rest of the text. The w in white should be reduced to 7 font sizes below the rest of the text. That is doing something.
I'm re-reading Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters," a 3-part history of Dr King and the civil rights movement. Branch talks about the adoption of the term Negro in chapter 2:
"'Colored' was thought to be more inclusively accurate, but among other drawbacks it failed to distinguish the former slaves from Orientals and Indians. Moreover, the term 'colored' implied that whites were not colored, or that coloring was a property added somehow to basic human qualities. Alternatively, some argued for the word 'African,' but this only raised a continuing dispute as to whether the term referred to race or the place of origin. By the late nineteenth century, the term 'Negro' came to be widely accepted, after newspapers in New Orleans mounted a campaign to capitalize the first letter. (White newspapers were slow to adopt this dignifying practice. The New York Times did not begin to capitalize 'Negro' until 1950.)"
In the notes, Branch cites Richard Kluger's book "Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education" p. 546 for that background, but doesn't mention W.E.B. Du Bois directly.
Du Bois was a founder of the NAACP, so he would likely have expressed opinions on the naming issue.
What a silly and unsupportable decision. Capitalizing Black isn't so bad but not capitalizing brown or white leaves them with sentences like this: "It exposed the reality that Black and brown communities are disproportionately affected.”
How do they expect the Hispanic community to react to that inferior valuation?
I assert that in the White country clubs Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Yosemite you will seldom see a Black, Brown or Red face in any number that corresponds to the general demographics of Amerika.
So, you are recommending that Blacks be obliged to visit National Parks ? Should there be roundups of unwilling Blacks and then bus them to parks? Interesting. I assume that Blacks will be obliged to carry some sort of proof of attendence at a national park ?
And you lefties think the right is authoritarian.
white liberals, always ready to do meaningless things that make the world a better place for their psyche.
"The really funny one is the "people of color" and "colored people" brouhaha."
I'm wearing jeans of blue today : )
See how silly that sounds? An old friend (lost touch) used to mock PC feminists by calling them gyno-Americans. Equally silly.
I propose a national system of skin grading using color swatches like the kind you see when you buy paint. It could even be sponsored by Sherwin Williams.
Everyone goes to a local government center, Post Office, etc. and is tested. The samples are held against your skin to see if you are a person of color. If you are just one shade past what is considered 'white' then congratulations, you are a PoC with all the benefits and honors due.
This swatch shall be known as the Kamala Harris swatch, or maybe Rashida Jones...named after people you didn't know were black until you were told.
And if my test were to come to pass, I'd be a PoC, especially in the summer after a few rounds of golf.
This obsession with skin color is lunacy.
I assert that in the White country clubs Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Yosemite you will seldom see a Black, Brown or Red face in any number that corresponds to the general demographics of Amerika.
The Chinese love to visit Yellowstone. They're buying up real estate in West Yellowstone at a pretty good clip. Sone locals are cashing in while others are being priced out...
And when we say that Milton Friedman was libertarian, we don't mean that he was Libertarian.
Obsession with skin color may be lunacy, but if our Blacks didn't have black skin and features, how would our gummint know where not to spend public-education tax dollars?
This obsession with skin color is lunacy.
Just one of the low information attributes selected by diversitists to guide their judgments and specify labels. Also, color blocs, color quotas, color inference, age discrimination, etc. So politically congruent ("="). So Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic.
in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of aftercoming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.
- ORATION IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, delivered at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.
Still colored, but not color blocs, not diversity, and no longer fractional Americans (e.g. African-American), and vested with names (e.g. Frederick Douglass) for personal identification.
@John Henry
Bad writing on my part.I agree that black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa have a culture different from American blacks.What I find insulting is the idea that they do NOT.That just by virtue of sharing skin color they automatically share culture.The excuse given for the capitalizing of the B in black lumps all blacks together and I find it racist.
jimbino: "I assert that in the White country clubs Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Yosemite you will seldom see a Black, Brown or Red face in any number that corresponds to the general demographics of Amerika."
Important Note: jimbino has steadfastly refused to provide funding for minorities to visit National Parks.
I wonder why jimbino doesn't want minorities in our National Parks?
NYT tackles the pressing issues of the day.
@Michael K: "So, you are recommending that Blacks be obliged to visit National Parks ? Should there be roundups of unwilling Blacks and then bus them to parks? Interesting. I assume that Blacks will be obliged to carry some sort of proof of attendence at a national park ?"
No silly. We just need to remove all authority for the socialist gummint to tax Amerikans for all these things they have never expressed a use for or interest in. Privatization should be the universal rule; otherwise Fee for Service should be implemented in all these White country clubs.
The original woke in the 70s used the term “peoples of color”. I always liked that. The peoples was a nice flourish.
50 dang years too late for me. 11th grade american history course had a big paper assignment.
Footnotes, the works. I must have written 30-35 pages on the Negro situation in the first half of the 20th century. I think I titled it Roots of the Black revolution. Black is beautiful, thank you Marcus Garvey. My 16 year old mind decided Black needed to be Capitalized. Got the paper back the first year teacher just out of one of the top southern universities circled in Red all the Blacks. Lots of circles.
The AP Style Book changed its rule on capitalizing 'Black' last month. The Times is simply following them.
"The excuse given for the capitalizing of the B in black lumps all blacks together and I find it racist."
Same with nationality and shared language. I had a good friend in Jr. High School who was from El Salvador. The fastest way to get your ass kicked was to call him a Mexican : )
tim maguire said...
Black should be capitalized because it refers to a distinctive people? Not so very long ago, that would have been considered racist because it ignored the unique stories of the hundreds of African tribes and nations. And at the rate we’re going, it will be racist again in few weeks for some reason nobody’s thought of yet.
****************
What's really laughable is the almost all "black" Americans have at least a little white in them, which is why nearly all are a shade of brown.
You want to see really black people? Go down to the Andaman Islands or to West Africa, where people are so black they have a bluish skin tone.
Where do we go to get our racial identity tested, confirmed, recorded and made the most important part of our entire humanity? The DMV, Ancestry.com or the Konzentrationslager? And where will having such an important racial factor in our lives lead? Again, I'm betting on the Konzentrationslager.
Why do we racialize everything? The concept of race in the US is that it has something to do with melanin, but not exactly; it's immutable yet communicates something about you that transcends skin color.
The notion that you can know anything about another based on an immutable characteristic is incorrect. And possibly racist.
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