Bias Busters: Cultural competence guides

On June 13, this website wrote about newspaper style and advocated capitalizing Black when referring to race, ethnicity or culture. This was in exception to Associated Press style, used throughout the journalism industry. Our post explained that students in the Bias Busters class in the Michigan State University School of Journalism broke with the AP five years ago in publishing “100 Questions and Answers About African Americans.”

The students decided to capitalize Black, as well as White, and to carry that style in future guides in the series, which now numbers about 20 guides.

On Friday, the Associated Press changed its style.

John Daniszewski, vice president of standards, wrote Friday that AP’s decision to capitalize Black “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. The lowercase black is a color, not a person.”

The AP has also begun capitalizing Indigenous for similar reasons.

The day before the AP made its move, CNN announced it would capitalize Black and White.

Three days before the AP changed, the Los Angeles Times made the same decision. Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine was quoted this way: “The conversation taking place at the Los Angeles Times and across the country reflects a necessary and long-overdue shift in thinking about racism. Without exception, The Times is opposed to racism.”

The Times noted that NBC-owned TV stations, McClatchy newspapers and the National Association of Black Journalists had recently adopted the capitalization. The newspaper noted that the Seattle Times made the change in 2019, and that others had followed.

The Bias Busters project at Michigan State applauds the change. It was a long time coming.

This is how we explained our break with Associated Press style in 2015:

“In ‘100 Questions and Answers About African Americans,’ we capitalize Black when it refers to people of the African diaspora. For consistency, we also capitalize White as a demographic term.

“Capitalization has been controversial. Some people who prefer to identify as Black want the term capitalized. They take capitalization as a sign of equality to African American, Native American, Asian American, Hispanic and Latino. Those terms are capitalized because, except for ‘native,’ all are proper nouns.

“The case for lowercasing is that this is convention. This is the way it is in the Associated Press Stylebook used by many journalists. Following AP style and our mainstream peers would seem to enhance professionalism and credibility. Certainly, it wouldn’t raise any questions. But no publication is bound by AP style. Many adopt exceptions that make sense for them.

“For us, in the context of this series, the reasons for capitalizing Black as a racial, ethnic and cultural identifier outweigh conventions. We will capitalize Black in this and future guides in the series and as we update earlier guides.”

We support AP’s reversal, but certainly take no credit for it. Rather, we would like newsrooms not to silently “follow AP style” as journalists so often do. We would like to see them deliberate, discuss and declare to readers and audiences why they are changing their past practices.

This is much more than a change of style. It is a change of heart and mind. Explaining it is rooted in our ethical obligation to be transparent and accountable.

“100 Questions and Answers About African Americans” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

Two events related to whether Black should be capitalized in news copy converged this week.

The first was a statement Thursday by the National Association of Black Journalists that Black should be capitalized when used in the sense of ethnicity, race or heritage.

Michigan State students who created “100 Questions and Answers About African Americans”

She wrote: “the staff is debating whether to capitalize the ‘B’ in Black … Could you point me in the direction of any additional resources that can help me push them a little further on this? The staff is concerned that if they capitalize Black, they should also capitalize ‘brown’ and ‘white.'”

This is part of what I told my former student:

Understand first of all that, although we call the AP Stylebook the bible of the industry, it is far from that. It changes its own rules every year, and between annual updates, too.

Many, maybe most, news organizations make exceptions to AP style, often based on local considerations. Making an exception to AP and defending/explaining it is a legitimate, deliberate journalistic judgment call. Following style rules without any other rationale is indefensible. It amounts to outsourcing your news decisions.

I believe it is time AP changed this rule and that it will soon. But we don’t have to wait. The Bias Busters series broke with that rule five years ago.

In 2015, when students on campuses across the country were waging Black Students Matter campaigns, a group in the Michigan State University School of Journalism began creating “100 Questions and Answers About African Americans,” part of our Bias Busters series.

The students (Black, White, Asian, Hispanic and Palestinian) asked why Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Native American and Indian American were capitalized but black was not. The answer, of course is that most of those words (not native) are proper nouns. Black is the name of a color.

However, when used in a racial context, Black is not a color. It implies an ethnic/racial/cultural heritage. It has a meaning more like the other groups. Making this the sole group referred to in lower case is hurtful and carries a not-so-subtle implication of inferiority. I told the students that, as the authors of the guide, they could make the call, and we would carry it through the rest of the series. 

My sole stipulation was that if Black were to be capitalized when referring to race, ethnicity or culture, White would be, too. At the time, some white supremacists were capitalizing White but not black. Some African American organizations were capitalizing Black but not white. This seemed to be spiteful and inconsistent.

The students voted to capitalize Black and White and subsequent books in the series have ever since. It just seems to be accurate and fair.

Now, five years later, we are waiting for the AP to catch up to those students. I think it will. How long can it insist upon this inconsistency or deny the meaning of the word in social contexts? How long does the AP want to maintain a convention that is repeated hundreds of times daily and seems to reinforce systemic racism?

It is no great contradiction for a newsroom to decide that AP is behind the times on this one and to make yet one more exception to the bible of the news industry.

“100 Questions and Answers About African Americans” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.