People who share a lineage that can be traced directly or indirectly to Europe. Don’t use Caucasian.
There has been much discussion about whether the w in White and the b in Black should be capitalized.
In the summer of 2020, after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police sparked protests around the country (and around the world), most style guides that had previously called for lowercasing Black changed their position. Hundreds of media organizations, including the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, McClatchy newspapers and NBC-owned television stations, called for capitalizing Black when referring to race. However, the style gurus were divided when it came to White. Most media organizations still lowercase White. Some noted exceptions: The Washington Post, Fox News, D Magazine, The Conscious Style Guide.
One month after announcing its decision to capitalize Black, the Associated Press asserted it would not capitalize White. “Some have expressed the belief that if we don’t capitalize white, we are being inconsistent and discriminating against white (sic) people or, conversely, that we are implying that white is the default,” John Daniszewski, vice president for standards, wrote on the venerable news organization’s blog. “We also recognize the argument that capitalizing the term could pull white people more fully into issues and discussions of race and equality. We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision.”
In a June 2020 statement announcing its endorsement of the capitalization of Black, the National Association of Black Journalists wrote, “NABJ also recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown.”
The Center for the Study of Social Policy also makes an impassioned case for the capitalization of White as well as Black. “We believe that it is important to call attention to White as a race as a way to understand and give voice to how Whiteness functions in our social and political institutions and our communities,” staff members wrote in a post on the organization’s website. “Moreover, the detachment of ‘White’ as a proper noun allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability from White people’s and White institutions’ involvement in racism.
The American Psychological Association Style Guide also recommends capitalizing both White and Black, but it advises against using other “colors to refer to other human groups; doing so is considered pejorative.”
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“Why ‘White’ should be capitalized, too,” Nell Irvin Painter, The Washington Post
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“The Case for Capitalizing the B in Black,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Atlantic
- “Why we capitalize ‘Black’ (and not ‘white’),” Mike Laws, Columbia Journalism Review
See Caucasian; White privilege; White, U.S. Census definition of.