Why I'm not happy with the AP's decision to support capitalizing "black."

[LAS14]

I've never been happy with this change, but I've finally figured out why. It's because you have to be "in the know" to understand the rationale. Unlike the move from "girl" to "woman," which was intuitively obvious. This just raises the question, 'Well why not "white?" ' There's an answer, sure, but it requires thought and a sense of social history, and... and... Just the kind of thing that causes people to have animosity toward educated "elite." When I see black captalized in a book of fiction (as it is all the time, now), I think, "Yeah, and who decided this?" I'm sure it's prevalence is due to the AP's putting it in their style guide.

I was prompted to think about this today when I read a 2026 book by James Lee Burke that did not capitalize it. He has enough professional heft to say "no" to his publisher.

"AP’s style is now to capitalize 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 lowercase black is a color, not a person. AP style will continue to lowercase the term white in racial, ethnic and cultural senses."