Various media organisations in the US have taken a stance to capitalise the letter ‘B’ when referring to people in a racial, cultural or ethnic context. Among them are Associated Press, which made the announcement via a blog post by its vice-president for standards, John Daniszewski.
He wrote “AP’s style is now to capitalise 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 lower case black is a colour, not a person.”
He said AP will also capitalise "I" in "Indigenous" when referring to the original inhabitants of a place.
Daniszewski said these changes align with the capitalisation of other ethnic groups like Latino, Asian American and Native American.
NBC News also adopted this change last week, according to Washington Post media critic, Erik Wemple and Fox News. The media house said the change will be adopted, effective immediately, across all its other platforms.
These changes come amid widespread protests and condemnation of racial discrimination and other social injustices after the death of African American man George Floyd, who was killed by a white police officer from Minneapolis in May.
Director of training and diversity at the Poynter Institute, Doris Truong told The New York Times that the change was long overdue.
“It's certainly long overdue. It's something that people who are Black have longed for, for a long time.”
The Guardian reports that The Seattle Times and Boston Globe adopted this change late last year. Boston Globe said the term "black" had evolved from a description of a person's skin colour to signify a race and culture.
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