5/9/2023 0 Comments Unherd san diego twitter![]() "For me, it's almost a simple question," White said. ![]() Southern.īeyond this, we the affected people - not newspaper editors - should get to say what we are called. Many descriptors, commonly capitalized, are neither national nor personal names, she points out. Catholic. ![]() "Black is key to creating a cohesive identity, for a people who have had a lot stolen from them." "Being a displaced person, that basically means you often don't feel you have a nation - particularly in a country where race alienates you on a daily basis," she said. "I understand that I am a displaced person," said Khadijah White, associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, who teaches courses on race, class, gender and media. To Black folks, it was an emblem of solidarity - as key to identity as Welsh is to someone from Wales. What they have in common is a social construct: "Blackness."įor white people, it was a tool to oppress and stigmatize. On the contrary, said the big B advocates: Black is the only proper name for a diverse group of people (Jamaicans aren't "African American") who - due to the tragic history of slavery and racism - often can't claim their original heritage. To capitalize it went against the editorial grain. There is no country of "Black." Black was not a single, monolithic culture, the way that Ghanian, Ethiopian, and so on, are specific national cultures. There has never been a question about capitalizing that.īut "Black" didn't seem to fit into that kind of box. Italian, Armenian, Japanese are proper names of specific nationalities. "Which was about wanting to be recognized, and heard, and understood."įor what it's worth, most editors who until 2020 had resisted the change would have probably said they were doing it for semantic - not political - reasons. "We felt an urgency, just like many other outlets, to recognize what many were marching about," McCarter said. The National Association of Black Journalists had been urging it. It had been a matter of debate for years, McCarter said. Changing stylesįor USA TODAY, as most other news outlets, the change didn't come out of the blue. ![]() "One response was, Since you have decided to capitalize the B in Black, why don't you capitalize the N in you-know-what," McCarter said. The change was as essential, and overdue, for some readers, as it was confounding and off-putting to others.įor one group, seeing "Black" represented by the small b had been an irritant - and an insult - each time it appeared in print (most popular Black media outlets have used the uppercase B since the late 1960s).įor the other group, seeing the B capitalized and the w in lower-case gave the game away. "The USA TODAY Network," they said, "will join other media outlets, such as the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times and BuzzFeed, who are listening to Black readers (and) employees." The USA TODAY network - of which this newspaper is a part - announced the same thing June 14, making it one of the first. More significantly, the Associated Press - whose stylebook is the usage guide for many of the nation's newspapers - also announced on Jthat uppercase Black was its recommended style. More: The 'women's section' of the newspaper is gone. More: Broadway in 2021 will 'have so many Black voices.' Theatergoers, pros say it's about time
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