R&I – TxPat
Harold Ross must be spinning in his grave, tearing out leaves from his copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
With little fanfare, The New Yorker followed suit with other periodicals and adopted a new capital-letter convention: plumping the lower-case “b” in “blacks” to “Blacks.” The style change was implemented in the hebdomadal journal’s July 20, 2020 issue. It was not evident in the previous issue, a doublized special dated for July 6 and 13.
Unlike other papers and newsweeklies, The New Yorker didn’t announce the change in a cloying justification, slavering for a smidgeon of approval from sensitive Black Lives Matter–supporters. Most publications did: “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 New York Times executive editor Dean Banquet. “These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American,” wrote John Daniszewski, vice president for standards at the Associated Press. “When people are offended by how we describe their community, we have to listen,” pleaded Cristina Silva, relaying the move on behalf of USA Today.
The common thread among all these expositions is appeasement, not appeals to grammar, consistent style, linguistics, elucidation, or plain understanding of language. Put another way, it’s a normative prescription — this alteration is a mark of moral standing. Abide, or be a bigot.
That The New Yorker capitulated to capitalizing “blacks” shows the real power of the Afro-supremacy movement. And supremacy it is. Observe the psychological anchoring effect that takes place in the following sentence from a profile on Steve Mnuchin: quoting Michelle Holder of John Jay College, staff writer Sheelah Kolhatkar carefully writes, “It may be difficult for someone like the Treasury Secretary to relate to what is happening with the everyday Joe and Joanna, whether they be Black or white or brown.”
Not only is “Black” placed before white and brown, but its capitalization suggests that it occupies a higher stratum in a contrived hierarchy of races. Like with affirmative action, racial equality in de rigueur lexicology means inverting egalitarianism completely, awarding special treatment to some and not others. It also has the unintended — or possibly intended — effect of belittling other races unworthy of an uppercase.
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Article URL : Checking newspapers' tortured explanations for capitalizing 'black'