The Associated Press has decided to capitalize Black. 

They are finally acknowledging that “the lowercase black is a color, not a person.” But the change is not only practical, it’s political, based on “the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language.”

I made my own decision sometime back to capitalize Black for the strictly practical purpose of distinguishing the person from the color. Most liberal publications now also capitalize Black, though many of them, perhaps most, still refer to people like me as white. Lowercase white.

I think this is what racism looks like. Lowercase white.  

Not hard racism, but soft racism, the kind that arises from assumptions that are so ingrained we don’t think about them. I understand that kind of racism. I have lived with it. 

Black, capital B, is an identity, but white, lowercase, is both a color and a casual reference to people whose skin happens to be on the lighter side. It’s surely not an identity! We white people don’t even think of ourselves as white. We’re just people! We’re all individuals! Carpenter, lawyer, accountant, farmer—those are our identities. Does the guy who rants about identity politics consider his own whiteness an identity with its own politics?  

I am White. Not the color; my color is nowhere near white. I’m White, the racial identity. It’s an identity I’m comfortable with, though never specifically proud of. There’s never been a reason to be. That would be like being proud of free tickets to the theater. In the past I was able to disregard my racial identity. Lowercase it. That’s one of the privileges of being White, you don’t have to think about it. Or didn’t. Now I’m reminded of it daily. This is a good thing. It has to become important before it becomes less important. So I want to remember that I am White, just another of the many capitalized racial or cultural identities that make up America.