RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/on_capitalizing_black_but_not_white.html

As we descend farther into more racial balkanization, it is noteworthy to point out that in 2015, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) ushered in a discussion about how to capitalize the words “white” and “black” when referring to groups of people.  Back then, they stated:

Language can reflect and foster bias and even invite violence, so respectfulness should always trump style or linguistic ambiguities.  There may be contexts where bias is appropriately intentional, but absent that, equality should rule.

To start with, let us stipulate that any discussion involving race is fraught: Even thinking there is such a thing as race is controversial, since many anthropologists believe that people cannot be so grouped biologically.

In fact, according to the Newsweek article that the CJR cites, “[w]hat many people do not realize is that this racial structure is not based on reality.  Anthropologists have shown for many years now that there is no biological reality to human race.  There are no major complex behaviors that directly correlate with what might be considered human ‘racial’ characteristics.  Many of our basic policies of race and racism have been developed as a way to keep these leaders and their followers in control of the way we live our modern lives.  These leaders often see themselves as the best and the brightest.  Much of this history helped establish and maintain the Spanish Inquisition, colonial policies, slavery, Nazism, racial separatism and discrimination, and anti-immigration policies.”

At the time, CJR stated:

Though there are more arguments for capitalizing ‘Black’ than for capitalizing ‘White,’ some have argued that ‘Black’ and ‘White’ should both be capitalized, the way Asian, Hispanic, Arab, etc. are.  One difference is that those are all proper names, describing not the person, but the geographical or ethnic origin or ancestry of that person.  And just as people might describe themselves as ‘Japanese’ or ‘Chicano’ rather than ‘Asian’ or ‘Hispanic,’ people who are ‘black’ or ‘white’ are just as likely to describe themselves as ‘African American’ or ‘Irish.’  [Thus] ‘Black’ and ‘white’ are equally broad descriptions of skin color, not ethnicity or origin.

That was then.  Now, five years later, the CJR has taken a decidedly more strident stance.  Mike Laws notes:

[W]e capitalize Black, and not white, when referring to racial groups.  Black is an ethnic designation; white merely describes the skin color of people who can, usually without much difficulty, trace their ethnic origins back to a handful of European countries.

This prompts the question of the difference between ethnicity and race.  According to PBS:

While race and ethnicity share an ideology of common ancestry, they differ in several ways.  First of all, race is primarily unitary.  You can only have one race, while you can claim multiple ethnic affiliations.  You can identify ethnically as Irish and Polish, but you have to be essentially either black or white.

But Mike Laws further explains:

[I]t is a kind of orthographic injustice to lowercase the B: to do so is to perpetuate the iniquity of an institution that uprooted people from the most ethnically diverse place on the planet, systematically obliterating any and all distinctions regarding ethnicity and culture.  When people identify with specific terms of the African diaspora, we defer to those; in the absence of the identifiable ethnicities slavery stole from those it subjugated, Black can be a preferred ethnic designation for some descendants.

And then Laws asserts:

Given the timing, after the killing of George Floyd and in light of a global reckoning with race relations, I’d be surprised if the AP didn’t take heed, and soon.  In the meantime — and in what is surely a sign of evolving American attitudes on the topic — USA Today has announced that it will be adopting the cap-B Black across its network, which includes the flagship paper and ‘more than 260 local news organizations.’

This all makes for a good start, but it will mean nothing if white Americans don’t make an effort to understand the whys and wherefores — which is to say, the history that delivered us to this precise point in time.  That, of course, will be a taller order than simply asking them to capitalize one little letter.

The callous tone and nasty overtones of the CJR piece should alert the reader that this is not about capitalizing a letter.  It is not even about respecting a person’s ethnic background.  Rather, it is the continuation of the left’s war on whiteness.  It is the Black Lives Matter dream come true.  As John Perazzo has written, “[t]he left’s attack on whiteness comes from many vantage points, but it has a single purpose.  It seeks to convince whites themselves that their whiteness unjustly confers symbolic and real privileges — access to better schools and safer neighborhoods; standards of beauty and intelligence that favor them.  The ultimate objective in stigmatizing whiteness is to intensify racial tension.”

This white privilege, which has now become de facto indoctrination beginning in kindergarten straight through to universities, “is a concept that first gained a foothold … in the 1960s, when white leftists … became committed to the notion, in Susan Sontag’s notorious formulation, that ‘the white race is the cancer of human history.'”

It has become the rallying cry through schools and the media, and it is a constant meme with the virtue-signaling coming from Hollywood and the business world as they bow their collective heads or knees to the likes of Black Lives Matter.

It doesn’t end with CJR.  Apparently, hundreds of American newsrooms have started capitalizing the “b” in “Black.”

Sarah Glover, an NBC executive and former president of the National Association of Black Journalists who has championed the move, described it as ‘affirming the experience and existence of an entire group of people who built this country and have contributed to every sector.’

Is this to imply that white Europeans had nothing to do with building this country?  Hence, the word “white” needs to remain lowercase.

A related question becomes how to refer to white people.  NABJ recommends capitalizing ‘whenever a color is used to appropriately describe a race.’  One concern is that white supremacists often capitalize ‘white’ in their literature.  Thus far, most news organizations have said they will keep white as lowercase.

By insinuation, then, all whites are neo-Nazis or white supremacists.  The tricky question becomes, how should American blacks view their genealogy?  Many, if not most, have mixed heritages.  Should the “white” part ever be considered?  Whatever happened to just being American?

Lori Tharps asserts that “[w]ith everybody claiming publicly that they respect ‘Black Lives,’ then why don’t you respect them enough to capitalize the B in ‘Black’?”

We are all supposed to ignore that Black Lives Matter is a “radical Leftist outfit that seeks to replace capitalism with socialism, abolish the police and looks to socialist Venezuela as a model.”  We are to disregard the fact that “our new racial overlords lecture us [that] racism is not simply inherent in white America’s shameful past, it still permeates our white skin[.]”

These media groups are wittingly doing the work of Black Lives Matter.  Daniel J. Flynn writes that “Black Lives Matter differs from past American mass movements from which it claims lineage.  It represses rather than liberates.”  BLM “come[s] for your rights.  Social justice isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. We must see racism everywhere or everyone sees racism in us.”

Dov Fischer explains that “[a] movement speaking of lives that matter but built on lies that matter is the exact opposite of what the Black Civil Rights movement was.”  Furthermore, “[t]he politicians and anarchist street rioters and looters are phonies. Blacks in Chicago alone — not [to] mention Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and other such Democrat-controlled cities — are dying by the thousands in the prime of their lives every year, and absolutely none of the kneeling, groveling Democrats nor their anarchist allies who want to burn down the country, loot its assets, and suspend our Constitutional freedoms and the rule of law gives a damn about Black lives.”

In fact, in this CJR article of June 3, 2020, they continue the incessant meme that there is “the history of systemic racism in America, police brutality, and protest.”  Straight out of the BLM handbook, statistics be damned.

David Horowitz highlights the rationale of  BLM and its allies.  In reality, “this is the nature of the assault on America.  It is … laying guilt on some because of their membership in groups and removing guilt from others for the same reason.  Orlando Patterson, a renowned African American liberal has said of America that it ‘is the least racist white majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protections of minorities than any other society, white or black and offers more opportunities to greater numbers of black persons than any other society, including those of Africa.'”

If there were even-handedness in the call for capitalizing a letter of a word, most fair-minded Americans would be on board.  But this call to action is yet another bit of camouflage for a much bigger attack on America because it seeks to divide us, not unite us.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

Hat tip: VP