June 18, 2020 - 7:00am
The Chicago Sun-Times bills itself as “the hardest-working paper in America”. Well, they’ve certainly been hard at work on their style guide. In a special message to readers, the paper announces a significant change in policy:
We also instructed our journalists that in the event the terms Black and Brown are used together to collectively describe a group, we will capitalize the ‘B’ in both words, such as ‘Black and Brown communities.’
However, they also told their journalists “to continue to lowercase the ‘w’ in white.”
Why the inconsistency? The reasons given don’t stand-up. For a start, it is claimed that the paper’s decision “puts Black on the same level as Hispanic, Latino, Asian, African American and other descriptors.” Except that it doesn’t, because all of those descriptors are capitalised because they are derived from capitalised place names i.e. Spain, Latin America, Asia, Africa and America. In this context, the descriptor ‘black’ is not derived from a place name — and neither is ‘white’.
Why then, would the two adjectives be treated differently? Various reasons are given, none of them especially convincing. For instance, there’s the argument the paper’s new policy is an “acknowledgment of the long-standing inequities that have existed in our country”. In which case, shouldn’t we also have ‘Women’ and ‘men’, ‘Gay’ and ‘straight’, ‘Poor and rich’, etc? In fact, why not put these pairings in differently sized fonts?
The paper also wishes to recognise “the unique role that Black art and culture have played in our society” while asserting that “cultural trends among white people, e.g. Italian Americans, Irish Americans, etc., are much more disparate, which was a key factor in our decision not to capitalize white.” But black American culture speaks for itself — it doesn’t need a capital letter awarded to it like some special prize. As for the notion that white America is “disparate” in a way that black America is not, that’s a sweeping generalisation on both sides. What about black immigrants to America from various Caribbean and African countries? Just like immigrants from any other diverse range of backgrounds, they too are “disparate”. Does that mean they should be referred to as black but not Black?
This whole idea, which is bound to spread to Britain before long, is pointlessly divisive. After all, if we don’t need capital letters for ‘human being’ then that should be fine for all of us.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeIt’s hilarious. Except isn’t it going to start to look a bit racist when they report on Black things that don’t necessarily represent ‘the culture’ (whatever that is when referring to a global demographic of 142 million people worldwide) in the most favorable light -Black crime figures etc… it’ll just look as if they are very racistly keen to point out the ethnic ‘ownership’ of these sorts of things, whereas by contrast those pesky ‘whites’ will be able to lie low and escape their culpability behind a diminutive little ‘w’.
Looks like it will probably Blackfire.
Very well observed sir…..I shall be watching….
The article makes a valid point of course but I would want to go further. I strongly dislike ethnic monitoring forms that force me to define myself as ‘White British’ (or ‘white British’?!), ‘White Irish’, etc. I have Scots-Irish heritage and am not Chinese despite my moniker!
The reason is that I would never, ever describe myself as ‘white’ (or White). I might mention British, Irish, European, human, proud ‘Citizen of Nowhere’ (as a tribute to poor Mrs May), a gay man (but certainly not ‘LGBT’😡). However I would never mention colour or complexion and don’t see those as part of my identity.
Who does “Asian” include? Popularly speaking it means those from south east Asia. But geographically it includes billions of people whose colours, histories and languages are very different to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The forms are a nonsense.
I lie. If I bother to complete them at all.
Having recently moved to the US from Europe, I was very surprised at how attached Americans are to group identity. I’m a student at grad school and one of the black students was explaining to the class how proud she was to be black. I replied that I found her skin color her least interesting attribute and was more curious about who she was as a person. The same with being gay. Since when did the gender of your sexual partner become so wrapped up in personal identity.
Politics is Hollywood for ugly people. Identity politics emphatically so.
I always just write “I’m not woke” on ethnic monitoring forms.
If the font idea suggested by the author (in jest) were actually adopted, and the capitalisation became dependent on the political whims of the writer, at least the printed page of the newspaper would physically look as unhinged as the contents are rapidly becoming.
Btw does anyone think it’s racist that they think black – sorry, Black – culture is monolithic and white culture disparate (=diverse) ? Or is that one of those things polite people ignore.
Either a brilliant stroke of editing or a fortuitous coincidence to have this article follow Fraser’s article on nominalism.
Blatant shameless woke racism.
It’s just blatant racism. I’m disgusted by it. We need to call it out wherever we see it.
An own goal by this newspaper. white is left uncapitalised – means it’s the normal. Black and Brown are capitalised because they’re the exceptions. Just the reverse from the line of the social fascists who want White highlighted as an object of criticism all day long.
From Vladimir Lenin to Saul Alinsky, the formula has been clear: when you want to transform the culture ( to use Barack Obama’s endearing phrase ) start by perverting language. Just redefine words to mean their polar opposite, gain the buy-in of the intelligentsia ( media and academics ) and you’re more than halfway to your goal. Hey, most of the proletariat are ignoramuses anyway, for whom words are as nothing. So, why not just distort their meaning?
The pun in the headline -assuming it was intentional -answers the question – there is something here the newspaper can capitalise on -woke virtues etc…
I capitalise “White” but not “black”. I’m not at all racist. I just want to offend the woke scum.
I capitalise “White” but not “black”. I’m not at all racist. I just want to offend the woke scum.
Delete
I have never heard anything so ridiculous. Someone once said to me “don,t be ridiculous” did this mean I was being Ridiculous instead of Ian? People can put capital letters where ever they want in this day and age. I know things are changing but if we don,t have rules, how can Anarchists and Fascists expect to be obeyed except by the force they use on each other.
I was profoundly disappointed with the C of E response to the Covid-19 situation. I think it is a dangerous precedent to close churches because the government tell us to.
I like the variety within the C of E.
The parish system is very important and has the potential for being a great asset to the C of E. In rural areas far more significant than urban. I hope we never lose that.
I am a school chaplain and therefore used to church being for a geographically widely dispersed community. Many of our Cathedrals are finding a significance in modern society. And Fresh Expressions have their place.
I am expecting there will be some elements of what we have learned during lockdown that we can take with us into the future. But I hope we do not now think we can dispense with the oak and stone and stained glass of our buildings which play such an important part of the parish in many areas in England
This may incur serious repercussions especially within the Conspiracy movement within the US and will no doubt inflame racial prejudism.
The capitalisation of Contracts and parties involved in litigation has been used unsuccessfully to avoid paying federal taxes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…
With the claim that capitalisation only relates to fictitious entities.
No I don’t understand it except that a distinction is made between the person (human being) and the fictitious legal entity that is the name of that human.
Similarly it is a legal convention in America to capitalise parties in a litigation case which will bring to the fore the argument that the newspapers in question are creating the grounds for litigation with Blacks versus the Federal Government
https://www.mondaq.com/aust…
In this respect, capitalisation is a specifically legal construct that goes beyond the usual capitalisation of names
https://youtu.be/TBukbCw09vg
but may well be an attempt to create a legal entity that can claim reparations against the Federal Government.
https://www.google.com/url?…
Will it come here. It will require a political platform to give it societal credibility and apart from far left groupings I don’t see any of the main parties touching it with a barge pole. Certainly not the Conservative Party and only the Labour Party if it seeks electoral suicide.
Perhaps it is because historically “Blacks” has been used as a proper noun to describe a group of people as in “No Blacks here’. Whose idea was that? I don’t think the adjective “white” has generally been gives the same status.
For the same reason we often see East and west
From the beginning I’ve been agog at the severity of government responses around the world based on death rate predictions by scientists which have once again proven to be grossly exaggerated. This Article seems to be a self evident truth.
Thank you Professor Friston and Unherd which I’ve only just discovered.
I checked my 14th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, which I try to follow in my own writing. It recommended that “white” and “black” be lower-cased, but as it often is (and why I love it) is not dogmatic about it. It notes that now one often sees “White” and “Black”, by analogy with “Caucasian” and “Afro-American”, and finds this style acceptable as well. Whatever a writer chooses to do, I think they should be consistent, but I certainly wouldn’t knock anyone who chooses to write about “White and Black Americans”. I remember a French-Canadian friend telling me one of the charms of reading English was the much higher frequency of capitalized words as compared to French.
I think a group gets to choose the term(s) it’s referred to with and how that’s styled. If blacks wish for the B to be capitalized, that’s their call.
And if whites later decide they like/dislike the W capitalized, that’ll be their call too.
The article does not mention how the b(B)lack community feels about this.