The New York Times, once respected as America's flagship newspaper, is now little better than a politically-correct campus newspaper of some university. A couple of weeks ago, we reported that UCLA's Daily Bruin had announced that henceforth, they would use a capital case B when referring to black people but continue to use a small case w to refer to white people. Here is our report along with the tortured reasoning.
Not to be outdone, the NYT has now announced that they will do likewise, B for black people and w for white people-plus, a small case b for brown people. Their reasoning is equally tortured.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html
"The Times also looked at whether to capitalize white and brown in reference to race, but both will remain lowercase. Brown has generally been used to describe a wide range of cultures, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Corbett said in their memo to staff. As a result, its meaning can be unclear to readers; white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups."
Look, I am OK if you want to say "Black people" if you are thinking in terms of ethnicity instead of color, but you should apply the rules equally. Not to do so implies a lack of respect for the group not capitalized. As the Times itself pointed out in the above paragraph. It is a fact that hate groups, both black and white, have made it a point of capitalizing their own group while using small case for the less favored group. It is a deliberate flaunting of the rules of English grammar to do that (apply different rules for personal or political reasons). How easier it would be to decide whether you are referring to a person's skin color or their ethnicity.
But we live in crazy times.
4 comments:
Couple of interesting thoughts regarding this general subject in this piece:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=email
I read as much of the article as I could stomach. I had never heard of Robin DiAngelo and I hope I never hear of her again. Condemning an entire race of people based solely on their race is stupid and racist in itself. The woman is an idiot but there are thousands of people like her in our universities, probably teaching gender or ethnic studies.
Thanks for sending.
Wish there was some way to punish UC Berkeley:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/berkeley-officials-say-theyre-planning-fraudulent-courses-to-circumvent-ice-rules-that-could-lead-to-student-deportations
Just out of control there.
There is. Cut off federal funding. Calif will not cut off state funding, but the feds can as well as those who donate to the university. Educate the public about our universities.
I would also guess that UCB may be planning something that is fraudulent. If so, prosecute them when they do it.
Post a Comment