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Just a few weeks ago, writing ‘Black’ when referring to race wasn’t considered standard by the Associated Press (AP).
AP is what top tier news groups and writers turn to for guidance about professional writing style guides and it advised writers to use ‘black’ instead when referring to African Americans.
Two weeks ago, this all changed and now AP’s standard is to use ‘Black’ when writing about the race.
This might not seem like a big deal, but it says a lot about how far these protests have come in the last few weeks and the differences they have made.
Other races were already capitalized by AP. Races like Hispanic and Italian have been capitalized by the AP Style guide for a long time, but not Black.
Amid these protests and the outrage in the country toward racial injustice right now, AP has decided to capitalize Black.
If you still don’t get it, let me put it in layman's terms. It’s called recognition. The United States’ best and most trusted writing guide has recognized Black as a race and more than just a color.
It’s such a new concept that many journalists are still lowercasing it because they’ve been doing it since…well since forever. It was just capitalized now, so anytime before…
