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The New York Times took heat on Tuesday for how they covered the horrific death of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on public transportation. Specifically, this sentence:
“After the video’s release, a number of influential conservatives also accused major news outlets, including The New York Times, of ignoring the story because the crime was committed by a Black man against a white woman.”
Elon Musk and others took to X to ask why “Black” is capitalized while “white” is not.
The answer lies in the AP Stylebook, which most major outlets treat as their grammar and style bible.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, AP announced it would begin to “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 lowercase black is a color, not a person.”
But what about white? According to AP, white people don’t get a capital letter: “White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.”
Ever heard of the Irish!?
Yes, AP admits white people have been victims of inequities. But even then, they say, capitalization would be dangerous because “capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”
That is clearly racist. AP’s reasoning codifies a hierarchy: some groups’ histories and discrimination “count” enough to warrant capitalization, while others’ don’t. By saying white people “generally” haven’t experienced discrimination — when history is full of examples — they dismiss real persecution because it doesn’t fit their ideological frame.
That’s the racist part: this isn’t neutral style guidance, it’s a value judgment about which groups are “worthy” of formal recognition.
And have you noticed? I didn’t capitalize white here. This old faithful journalist student needs to break rank AP Style. While I’m at it, reclaim the Oxford comma, too. Here goes:
Humans can be White, Black, Asian, Russian, and many other things.
Woo! I’m free!