bransonglobe.com NATIONAL • QUANDARY Continued from page 10 its flagship USA Today newspaper. “Capitalizing Black reflects an understanding and respect that is consistent with how many Black people and Black publications describe the people and descendants of the African diaspora and reflects a rich range of shared cultures,” the company’s diversity committee said in recommending the change. The Seattle Times and Boston Globe both changed their practices to capitalize black late last year. The Globe explained that the word has evolved from a description of a person’s skin color to signify a race and culture, and deserves the uppercase treatment, much like Latinos get. The biggest complicating factor for news organizations is whether descriptions of white or brown people should also be capitalized. A description of a person as “white” generally doesn’t carry cultural connotations. There’s also some concern that a capitalized “white” has associations in some minds with white nationalist or supremacist movements, said Paula Froke, the AP’s stylebook editor. With the issue taking on a new urgency since Floyd’s killing, the AP is actively considering it, she said. “We look at it from an objective point of view of how language has evolved,” Froke said. In a nod to the AP Stylebook’s influence, a half dozen news organizations have reached out in the past week to see what the AP was doing. The black journalists’ association has capitalized the word in its own communications for the past year, but had received several inquiries recently about why the AP doesn’t, said NABJ President Dorothy Tucker. The group wanted to make its preferences known, she said. Another seemingly small step by the AP last year — removing a hyphen that separated African American — had outsized influence because it removed a stigma of “otherness,” Truong noted. Journalists should also be thinking about a host of other issues, among them increasing diversity on their staffs and in voices included in stories, and imagery like the use of mug shots, said Sarah Glover, manager of social strategy for NBCowned television stations. The capitalization of “black” is “an important conversation,” June 21 - 23, 2020 • 11 Glover said. “But this is not something that should be a onehit wonder.” Your ad would look GREAT right here! Call (417) 334-9100 TODAY!
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