One after the other, a number of news organizations across Canada and the United States announced in June the same change in their language guidelines: to capitalize the word “Black” when referring to Black people and culture.
The Globe and Mail made its announcement on June 3, followed by the CBC on June 8 and The Canadian Press the next day.
In the U.S., a number of news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The Associated Press and the New York Times, also announced the same change to their style guides.
The announcements by so many news organizations coincided with the massive Black Lives Matter protests across the United States and Canada that have led to widespread reflection about the impact of racism across society, including in policing, the justice system, education, politics and the press.
A Black Lives Matter protester at City Hall Park in New York. Activists and journalists of colour have been calling on news organizations to change the way they write about and report on Black communities for years, but it was the groundswell of protest in the wake of the killing of George Floyd that prompted change. (Yuki Iwamura/The Associated Press)
Journalism style guides are, by nature, rigid and slow to change, purposefully upholding established rules and conventions. But many activists, academics and journalists of colour say the language used by the news media to describe diverse communities is particularly slow to catch up because there’s a lack of diverse voices in news organizations responsible for making such decisions.
Slow change
In 1930, American activist W.E.B. Du Bois was successful in getting the New York Times to start writing the word “Negro” with a capital N.
He had been campaigning for the change since the 1920s. He called the use of a “small letter for the name of 12 million Americans and 200 million human beings a personal insult.”
Many Black people have been writing Black with a capital “B” since the 1960s, inspired by the Black Power movement started by civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael.
There have been calls for publications to follow suit for the past two decades.
The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement not only in the U.S. but in more than 60 countries worldwide, including here in Canada.
A copy of the 17th edition of The Canadian Press Stylebook. The Canadian Press and a number of other news outlets in Canada and the U.S. recently changed their style and now capitalize the word ‘Black’ when referring to Black people and culture. (Kashmala Fida)
Newsrooms across North America are now taking a hard look at themselves, as journalists of colour, particularly Black journalists, point out the many ways in which news organizations have let them down.
And one of those ways has been through language.
Spelling “Black” with a capital “B” has been a common practice of publications that focus on the Black community, such as Essence and Ebony magazines, for example, for more than a decade. It is also offered as an option by Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.
Black writers and activists have long petitioned for the change in news copy.
James McCarten, stylebook editor at The Canadian Press, the authoritative guide for Canadian news writing and editing, said although the guide is the standard that news media follow, it does not set the course for changes in language.
“It does not chart the path; it follows the path that the users of the language are blazing,” he said.
The Canadian Press prefers not to rush into making changes to its style guide, he said, “for the simple reason that constantly changing a style essentially means you don’t have a style.”
He said The Canadian Press had to wait and see if “Black” with a capital “B” was consistently used before revising its rule.
“When you make a change, you can’t have to go back on it. You have to be sure that this is where the language is going to go, this is where the usage is going to go.”
At the CBC, the style guide says the lowercased version was based on a longstanding convention of using lowercase letters for “racial, ethnic and nationality labels not directly rooted in proper nouns. (e.g., African, European and Latino, but ‘black,’ ‘white’ and ‘brown’).”
The rationale to make the change was to “respect frequently voiced preferences of Black people” and “reflect increasingly common usage in Canada,” according to standards editor Blair Shewchuk.
The Globe and Mail gave a similar explanation in its public statement.
Lack of representation
Handel Wright, director of the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Culture, Identity and Education in Vancouver, said it helps if newsrooms listen to communities on how they would like to be represented, but it is even more important that members of those communities are actually part of newsrooms.
“Part of what needs to happen is that the media need to be more representative of the group that they’re speaking about. So … who is reporting about different groups makes a difference,” he said.
“I think it is reflective of the fact that maybe the media itself is not diverse enough that the media is always playing the catch-up game.”
The 2016 Canadian census found nearly a quarter of citizens identified as Black, Indigenous or a person of colour (BIPOC).
CBC/Radio-Canada tracks the diversity of its workforce with a voluntary survey. As of 2019, visible minorities made up 16.5 per cent of the workforce in English services and 6.5 per cent of the workforce in French services. Indigenous staff accounted for 3.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively. Among CBC/Radio-Canada executives, 4.1 per cent were visible minorities, and none were Indigenous.
The Globe and Mail did a voluntary survey in 2018 in which 60 per cent of staff participated. The results showed that 23 per cent of staff identified as visible minorities.
Maclean’s and the Toronto Star both changed their style to “Black” with a capital “B” before other Canadian outlets after columnists of colour in their newsrooms called for the change.
When Maclean’s did so in 2015, it was because of contributing editor Andray Domise.
Andray Domise, a contributing editor and columnist at Maclean’s magazine, is critical of how the news media covered the early protests that followed the police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis. (Andray Domise for Toronto City Council – Ward 2/Facebook)
Although glad to see the change, Domise nonetheless questions why it took Maclean’s so long to make it.
“Why wasn’t it a standard before I got there?” he said.
As for the outlets who made the same change last month, he questions the motives behind it.
“Why not before? What changed? What was the difference between then and now?” he said.
“Personally, I don’t think anything has changed except that we are seeing an uprising happening. To me, it’s almost an esthetic means of placating the masses, rather than engaging in substance of change.”
Anthony Collins, style chief for the Toronto Star, said the newspaper changed its spelling of “Black” in 2017 because Shree Paradkar, the paper’s race and gender columnist, explained why it was necessary.
He acknowledged that a lack of newsroom diversity helps explain why outlets are slow to respond to language changes that communities want to see in the media.
“I think there’s often a lot of uncertainty about what term to use and a lot of nervousness around using the wrong term, which, frankly, I think just comes from having a newsroom that’s not as diverse as it should be,” he said.
“I think the Star, you know, has a broad readership, and we serve a very diverse community. And I think if a community doesn’t see itself reflected in our stories, or misrepresented somehow, I think that’s incredibly injurious to public trust in our journalism.”
Describing communities appropriately
Despite the change to the word “Black” and other style guide adjustments, journalists of colour and activists agree that news organizations and journalists still have a long way to go when it comes to using the appropriate language to describe Indigenous and Black people and people of colour.
Another relatively recent language change at news organizations such as CBC, the Toronto Star and The Canadian Press includes encouraging journalists to specify, if possible, what Indigenous nation a person belongs to instead of just referring to them generically as Indigenous.
Rachel Decoste, a community activist in Ottawa, wants the news media to use the term ‘enslaved Africans’ instead of ‘slaves’ when discussing slavery. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
But Rachel Decoste, a community activist in Ottawa who had been advocating for the CBC to change its guideline on the word “Black” for years, says more changes are needed.
She also wants newsrooms to use the term “enslaved Africans” instead of “slaves” when discussing slavery. The change started in academic circles as a way to describe enslaved individuals as people first, commodities second.
“Now that we are writing ‘Black’ with a capital ‘B,’ perhaps our ancestors could also get the respect that they deserve,” Decoste said.
Beyond style guides
And although style and language guides might change, there are many other factors that go into telling a story.
For example, some of the early coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests in American and Canadian media was criticized for mirroring the language used in reporting on the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s, particularly in the way violence was often attributed to protesters rather than police.
Domise said some of the reporting following the killing of Floyd was quick to describe the protests as “violent” as soon as property damage was involved.
“No, the violence was already pre-existing,” he said of this type of coverage.
“The violence was what precipitated the protest in the first place. A police officer suffocated somebody to death in the middle of the street. You can see the anti-Blackness seeping out of the narrative.
“I was alive in the early 2000s, in the 1990s and 1980s, and nothing has changed in terms of the way the media writes about Black people. So, how far have we come along? We haven’t.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
