Both, or Neither

Browsing the paper this morning and the New York Times announced that they will be capitalizing 'Black' when referring to Black people, but they will not be capitalizing 'White' when doing the same. 

As I tut-tutted about it my girlfriend said, 'are you having a tough morning, White man?', which was funny and accurate. How very middle-aged White man to be frowning at some news in the morning paper. 

And yet, here we are. 

I am all for capitalizing Black when referring to people, but if you are going do that then it follows that you should also capitalize White. Whatever rule applies to one should also apply to another. Both are broad generalizations, and if there is a Black experience (and there very much is) then it follows directly that there is a White experience. This is not complicated or difficult to understand. 

What is difficult to understand, and where the Times blows it, is by applying different rules for what are, effectively, two sides of the same coin. (Actually different sides of a multi-faceted object, but still.) I am unconvinced by the Times arguments against capitalization. Here it is: 

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.

Let's unpack this. 

'an obvious question of parallelism' - yes, the question is why do you have different rules for different people? Why do the same rules not apply to everyone? 

'there has been no comparable movement toward widespread adoption for a new style...' - this argument is debatable, and you can expect that there will be a 'movement' now that you have adopted this style. Also, the absence of a 'movement' is not itself a valid reason for discrimination, so we can put this argument in the trash where it belongs. 

'there is less of a sense that 'white' describes a shared culture and history' - Is there? This argument suggests that Black people have a shared culture and history, which they do, but that history is extremely varied at the individual level, and much of what they share (so far, in the USA) is systemic racism and exploitation by White people. White people also have extremely varied cultural history, but they do share one thing in common: they have a White experience. In fact it is very difficult (impossible, in the United States) to justify the existence of a Black experience without a White experience; you would just have 'an experience', and you would have to come up with some other way to classify people, such as by socioeconomic status. 

'hate groups and white supremacists have long favored the uppercase style' - If the Times were endorsing the ideas of the 'hate groups and white supremacists' that would indeed be reason to avoid it. But they are not; they are coming at this from a different direction. The hate groups do not own the language, but by deferring to them you empower them. This is a mistake. 

Black people deserve to be identified as such. So do Whites. The Times gets it wrong here.