The last issue of National Geographic was mostly about race. While reading it, I noticed that they consistently capitalized the "B" in Black, but not the "w" in white, even when both terms were in the same sentence. A week or so later, I noticed our local newspaper doing the same thing. It has been my understanding that, when a color is used to designate a race, you capitalize the first letter, the same way you do for words like Caucasian, Hispanic, Cajun, Creole and, formerly, Negro. I have noticed that everybody doesn't follow that rule, but it seems like you should either follow it or not follow it consistently, you shouldn't capitalize one race and not another. The only reason I can think of for capitalizing the "B" in Black and not the "w" in white is to subtly insinuate the notion that Black is somehow dominant or superior to white, but that would be just paranoid. Have my esteemed colleagues noticed this practice, and can they give me an alternate explanation for it?
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