The New York Times columnist John McWhorter criticized his paper’s decision to capitalize the word “black” when writing about race, calling it pointless and a waste of time and energy.
In his last editorial On Friday, McWhorter, a critic of “wakeful vocabulary,” revealed that he always spells “black” with a lowercase “b” and that The Times editors capitalize the word when it is associated with race because of corporate identity. Times”. The August newspaper and hundreds of other publications began covering the topic of race in the summer of 2020, after George Floydmurder and after Black Lives Matter protests.
“On the black issue, my final opinion is that we are spending an inordinate amount of time on how issues of power and diversity are expressed,” writes McWhorter, a linguist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s conservative think tank.
“I suspect that the activists and agitators of the past would have found our obsession with such things rather odd and worried that it was draining energy from more mundane endeavors.”
New York Times columnist John McWhorter, a critic of the “wake language”, called the paper’s insistence on capitalizing the word “black” a waste of time.
The NY Times was among hundreds of news outlets to announce in 2020 that they will capitalize the word “black” after the Black Lives Matter movement.
In June 2020, the Times made the decision to capitalize the word “black”, stating that it “best conveys elements of a shared history and identity” for black Americans and reflects the newspaper’s “goal to respect all the people and communities” it covers.
Other publications such as USA Today, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, BuzzFeed and the Associated Press have made the same decision.
Sarah Glover, chief executive of NBC and former president of the National Association of Black Journalists, has championed the movement and said in a June 2020 statement that it affirms “the experience and existence of a whole group of people who built this country and contributed to its development” . each sector.
Both the AP and the NY Times also chose to keep the word “white” in lowercase, stating that the white race does not share the same culture as blacks and that capitalizing “white” when referring to race is associated with the supremacist movement. white race.
CNN, Washington Post and Fox News have decided to capitalize the words “white” and “black” when referring to race.
McWhorter explained that while he was not strongly opposed to the move to capitalizing the word, he said that he “has a hard time caring if we write ‘black’ or ‘black'”.
The death of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests have forced news outlets across the country to rethink how they write about race.
Sarah Glover, chief executive of NBC and former president of the National Association of Black Journalists, was one of the leaders in pushing news outlets to capitalize on “blacks.”
“I’m happy that others use the capital letter ‘black’. Maybe someday I will,” McWhorter wrote.
“But when I think about social change, my mind lingers more on, say, the Year Up program,” he added, referring to the eponymous organization that provides underprivileged high school graduates with a full education who are looking for a job in technology. field.
“Compared to this type of practical problem solving, black or black is not that interesting.
McWhorter added that he also never liked the term “African American”, which he said inappropriately links black Americans to Africa despite generational differences.
“Emphasizing this connection in what we call ourselves has always seemed forced to me,” he wrote.
“While opinions will vary on such things, in my opinion the connection to Africa is too many generations away for most of us for ‘African American’ to actually work.”
McWhorter has previously critiqued awakened language in his book Racism Awakened: How a New Religion Betrayed Black America, where he compares the new “awakened” anti-racism movement to a self-flagellated religious cult that not only stifles debate but actually harms black people.
He was hired by The Times as the paper came under accusations that it had become obsessed with kotoowing to the often authoritarian stance of the far left progressives on social issues.