For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

Stylistic question. I noticed Black and White capitalized in this article. Is that an emerging convention?

It's a really interesting story, actually! The question of whether and when to capitalize has been an active one since at least the early 20th century. Here's a (very) recent Columbia Journalism Review article that discusses it from a stylistic perspective:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php

And I also thought that this article, about the Brookings Institution's decision to capitalize Black in their reports, had some interesting historical context:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/brookingscapitalizesblack...

Chicago Manual of Style says either is ok. It's pretty typical to capitalize, e.g. Hispanic, Arab, Asian, but Black and White have a slightly different use and capitalization history.

The AP, I believe, prefers lowercasing both. Some publications will capitalize just Black. Discussions of casing these words go back at least a decade, but I don't believe there's a strong consensus yet?

It is. I forget which news outlet has recently made it a standard to capitalize Black which is in contradiction to the AP Style Guide.

It's something which is developing and being debated. The Root had a rundown earlier today:

https://www.theroot.com/capitalizing-the-b-in-black-is-nice-...

> At The Root, we’ve had a long-standing debate over capitalizing the “B” in black. Some of us are adamantly for it, while others (myself included) are grammar freaks who think that if we capitalize “black” we would also have to capitalize “white,” and I, personally, have no interest in that as it would continue to center whiteness.

Capitalizing White seems extremely weird, though, and somehow emblematic of how we're sliding backwards into a racialized consciousness even while trying (and hopefully succeeding) to step forwards toward equality.

Five days ago, the National Association of Black Journalists revised their style guide:

'For the last year, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) has been integrating the capitalization of the word "Black" into its communications.

However, it is equally important that the word is capitalized in news coverage and reporting about Black people, Black communities, Black culture, Black institutions, etc.

NABJ's Board of Directors has adopted this approach, as well as many of our members, and recommends that it be used across the industry.

We are updating the organization's style guidance to reflect this determination. The organization believes it is important to capitalize "Black" when referring to (and out of respect for) the Black diaspora.

NABJ also recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown.'

https://www.nabj.org/news/512370/NABJ-Statement-on-Capitaliz...

This appears to have been part of what prompted a large number of newspapers to change their style guides this past week, including USA Today, NBC News, MSNBC, the LA Times, the Seattle Times, the Boston Globe, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Washington Post.

This. The words "white" and "black" are not proper names of places, and they aren't honorifics. To say I'm "White" would be like saying I'm "Fat" or "Tired".

That quote really sums up the ridiculousness of this imo.

Asian, Arab and Hispanic all come from place names (Asia, Arabia, Hispania). This is why they are capitalised.

compare with Hofstadter, "A Person Paper on Purity in Language" (1985)

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.htm...

I'm not sure that argument works grammatically because we capitalize things that aren't names of places, but I agree with you in the sense that it's the feeling I got while reading the article, and it was strangely creepy.

The Root, from my experience over the years, tends to err on the side of being extremely racist. So take it with a grain of salt.

FWIW, there is "capital D" Deaf and "little d" deaf. This article provides some interesting discussion [0].

I'm not claiming to be an expert in either area, and I don't mean to draw parallels between them. I think it just speaks to how complicated identity is for humans, not to even begin to mention empathy.

[0]: https://www.deafax.org/single-post/2016/06/08/What-are-big-D...

But they're also not physical qualities, they're ethnic classifications. I don't know any others that aren't capitalized.

People aren't actually colored black or white, and you can have the same coloring as a person who is black or white ane be neither black or white.

I'm not a big fan of the capitalization, but it's reasonable. Are "Aboriginal" or "Indigenous" place names or honorifics?

In the American context, they are proper names of ethnic groups.