The Associated Press has announced that they will not capitalize "W" for Whites when referring to a race or group of individuals in a news story. They did however make the move to capitalize "B" for Blacks when referring to a race or group of individuals in a news story. AP's Vice President for standards, John Daniszewski, had this to say about their decision: “We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore those problems, but capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”
According to various rules of grammar, it has been widely taught to capitalize the names of various ethnic groups, races, and nationalities so I beg to differ when Daniszewski says that "capitalizing the term White, is done by White supremacists". This is not an exclusive rule to capitalize only "W" for Whites and not other races. If that were the case, then yes, that would be ignorant and racist but we're talking about an across the board capitalization of the first letter for all races, nationalities, religions, ethnicities, etc. Their decision here to do away with capitalizing "W" for Whites but have all other groups like Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, etc. capitalized is journalistic discrimination. There is no other way of putting it. The way to accomplish equality is for there to be a baseline fair representation for all. This decision by AP appears to be some sort of journalistic justice for how they feel by using journalistic discrimination to make a wrong right. I will never believe the avenue to justice is accomplished by putting others down and discriminating against to appear to be "anti-racist". True justice is equal representation for all and how you correct that is not by targeting another group of individuals in an effort to raise another one up. I couldn't disagree with this decision by AP, more. This is an overreaction by them. While there is and has certainly been discrimination against Blacks, lets not pretend like that group is the only group who has experienced discrimination and everyone needs to bow down to them. Every group has experienced some sort of discrimination and lets take it step further, look what happened to a group of Whites...has the AP ever heard of the Holocaust? They were not enslaved, they were exterminated so I'd say that was extreme discrimination so do those group of Whites not deserve to have the "W" in their race classification capitalized because they represent White supremacists? Come on, smarten up AP. Treat everyone equally, let's not show favoritism towards one race because in doing so, you're actually engaging in racism and discrimination against other groups in your efforts to appear "woke". True equality is representing everyone equally so capitalize the names of all races and groups, period.
-Producer Lightning