Blueprint in Black and white
Eagle-eyed readers of the Times Union might have noticed a small but significant change that occurred about three weeks ago: We’ve begun capitalizing Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context.
We’re certainly not alone in this style shift, which has been followed for years by many Black media outlets and a broad range of academic publications, among others. It was adopted in June by the Associated Press, which the Times Union tends to go along with in matters of style — though we have so far been resistant to the AP’S recent use of “%” as opposed to “percent” in copy, primarily because I think it looks weird.
An aversion to “%” is something we might get over at some point. But it will take a long time before I’m comfortable with the prospect of capitalizing “white” when referring to people in a racial, ethnic or cultural context.
The AP initially put off the question of whether to capitalize white, but finally decided against it earlier this month. John Daniszewski, the AP’S vice president for standards, wrote in a memo to staff that the news organization said that “white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore these problems. But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”
This is certainly not to say that everyone who capitalizes white does it for base reasons, and there is a case to be made for typographical equality; the National Association of Black Journalists has advocated for Black as well as White and Brown. Coming from what I have to assume is the other end of the palette, one conservative Times Union reader alleged in an email last week that our shift was “political in nature — to assuage (the Black Lives Matter movement). The change can only be seen as diminishing one group of people ... based solely on physical differences — nothing else. Why are not Americans of European descent referred to as ‘European Americans’? We have referred to black citizens as ‘African Americans.’ What is good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Media outlets, of course, have referred to people as Irish American, Italian American and so forth for decades. But it’s the goose-gander question that deserves a little unpacking.
Because in this case the goose includes people — not everyone, but many — whose descendants in many cases struggled against debilitating discrimination after arriving on these shores. The gander includes people — not everyone, but many — whose descendants were kidnapped and brought here as human chattel. That doesn’t mean that the unique legacy of slavery presses
down on every Black American life with the same pressure, but it’s tough to argue that anyone of color has been untouched by it. I’m not sure the same can be said regarding the travails of European-americans.
Like a lot of things having to do with this nation’s history on racial issues, it’s complicated. Journalistic style is as mutable as the linguistic standards of the communities we cover, as anyone who has read through old clippings and stumbled across the use of “Negro” and “colored” can attest. If these changes prompt arguments, that’s very much in keeping with this newspaper’s role as a nexus for community discussion.
Which brings me to a far more significant project the newsroom and the rest of the Times Union have embarked on. In the spring, we began what will be a yearlong participation in the American Press Institute’s Table Stakes initiative, a program designed to drive media transformation amid the larger digital revolution.
The initial stages of the program involve framing the specific challenges that each property plans to tackle. We’ve identified two: reimagining our newsroom processes to become the best possible online product we can be, and improving our outreach to and engagement with the Capital Region’s communities of color.
The second undertaking will involve looking at internal processes, from story planning to issues such as mugshot use that affect people of all races but have a disproportionate impact on minorities. We’ll also be establishing new ways of connecting with community members to establish a feedback loop that operates all the time. And we’ll do everything we can to make sure our staff’s diversity is more in line with the richness of the communities we cover.
The Times Union’s ambitions in this direction were in place before the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, though the events of the past two months have added urgency to the effort. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, whose editor Michael Kilian was gracious enough to talk to me and other newsroom leaders last week, embarked on a similar journey last year that has yielded positive results for the paper’s journalism as well as its bottom line.
Nothing we’ll do as part of this effort will be universally accepted; we’re going to fail along the way. Our journalism will at times annoy one group of readers, or several. But we want to hear from people of goodwill who see the Times Union as a vehicle to help make this community a better place to live for everyone.
In a time when it can seem like the country is falling apart at the seams, it’s the sort of thing that helps knit us together.