NY Times explaining why capitalizing Black and not capitalizing white is right

quote:

---

Based on those discussions, we’ve decided to adopt the change and start using uppercase “Black” to describe people and cultures of African origin, both in the United States and elsewhere. We believe this style best conveys elements of shared history and identity, and reflects our goal to be respectful of all the people and communities we cover.

---

quote:

---

The new style is also consistent with our treatment of many other racial and ethnic terms: We recently decided to capitalize “Native” and “Indigenous,” while other ethnic terms like “Asian-American” and “Latino” have always been capitalized.

---

quote:

---

We will retain lowercase treatment for “white.” While there is an obvious question of parallelism, there has been no comparable movement toward widespread adoption of a new style for “white,” and there is less of a sense that “white” describes a shared culture and history. Moreover, hate groups and white supremacists have long favored the uppercase style, which in itself is reason to avoid it.

---