The Associated Press changed its writing style guide Friday to capitalize the “b” in the term Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context, weighing in on a hotly debated issue.

The change conveys "an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa," John Daniszewski, AP's vice president of standards, said in a blog post Friday. “The lowercase black is a color, not a person."

Top news agency the Associated Press has decided that Black should be spelt with a capital letter and white shouldn’t. This is pointless pedantry pandering to the woke left that will cause more division.
Great news! The Associated Press has worked out how to end racism at the push of a button. One of the world’s largest news agencies has decided that from now on it will capitalize the “B” in “Black people” and that will be the silver bullet to end prejudice. However, it won’t be capitalizing the “w” for “white people”, because apparently the normal rules of English grammar do not apply to institutions as prestigious as AP.

In a baffling blog highlighting the changes to its style guide on its website last month, it explained that it would “capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.”

The post, written by AP’s Vice President for Standards, John Daniszewski, added: “The lowercase black is a color, not a person.”

That final sentence makes this month’s update from Mr Daniszewski all the more interesting, as it is titled “Why we will lowercase white”. If lowercase black is a color, not a person, then surely the same follows for “white”? Are we to understand from this that white people aren’t people? Because that could be considered pretty insulting.
But don’t worry; white people aren’t the only group AP has managed to insult with its justification of this ridiculous decision. According to AP “people who are Black have strong historical and cultural commonalities, even if they are from different parts of the world and even if they now live in different parts of the world….[whereas] White people generally do not share the same history and culture.”

I’m no woke snowflake, but that sounds a bit racist to me. There are 1.2 billion people in Africa across 54 different countries, and there are at least 2,000 different languages spoken on the continent. By any estimation that is pretty diverse. However according to AP, that amounts to a “strong cultural commonality”, justifying lumping all of them into one homogenous blob.

It seems to be implying that white history is so complex that Swedes, Brits and the French, obviously, need to be separated into distinct groups, but Nigerians, Kenyans, Ethiopians and even black Americans can all be lumped together. If that isn’t racist, I don’t know what is.

SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Sat Nov 14, 2020 1:16 pm Black Lungs Matter!

i reckon
cough

SternAAlbifrons wrote: ↑Sat Nov 14, 2020 1:16 pm Black Lungs Matter!

i reckon
cough

Where could they possibly be getting this sickening and harmful ideas from? (Oops, didn't want this to turn political.)