UCLA Daily Bruin: To B or not to b-That Is the Question

The Daily Bruin, campus paper of  UCLA, has announced that henceforth, they will use a capital B to refer to black people, er, Black people. At the same time, they will use a small case w to refer to white people. The reasoning is tortuous, to say the least.

https://dailybruin.com/2020/06/21/the-copy-shop-daily-bruin-will-capitalize-black-and-why-other-publications-are-doing-the-same

“To not name ‘White’ as a race is, in fact, an anti-Black act which frames Whiteness as both neutral and the standard,” Ann Thúy Nguyễn and Maya Pendleton wrote in the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s explanation of why it capitalizes white. “Moreover, the detachment of ‘White’ as a proper noun allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability from White people’s and White institutions’ involvement in racism.”

"After much deliberation and research, we at The Bruin came to the conclusion to capitalize Black and leave white lowercase. Capitalizing white, we believed, is unlikely to be the solution to complacency among white people in racial injustices. Additionally, its ties to white supremacist groups in the capitalized form are too strong for us to be comfortable adopting the same style."

To which I say, "Whatever floats your boat".

Unlike the DB, I don't want to spend a lot of time and space on this issue. For the last several years, I have noticed that when referring to black or white in referring to people, some would capitalize it while others would not. I myself have done it both ways.

The point I want to make is that whether to capitalize or not here should be a linguistic decision, not a sociological decision. I have already seen some far-left writers deliberately capitalize Black while small casing white as a deliberate sign of disrespect. I have also seen some critics of Islam deliberately small case the i. I do not do that because in English, religions are always capitalized. That is a hard rule.

So to conclude, my retort to UCLA is choose your rule on linguistic grounds and be consistent. To do otherwise is to imply that one is superior and the other is inferior. How about both are equal?