Question: In recent weeks the newspaper has made a printing style change in which any reference to a Black person has the word Black capitalized. … I wondered what agency generated the style change? AP? To be consistent, shouldn’t white also be capitalized? Other ethnic identity tags refer to countries and continents so are logically capitalized, Asian, Hispanic, African American, Irish, etc.

Answer: Yes, the change was made by the Associated Press, a global news organization that publishes the AP Stylebook, a guide to spelling, language, punctuation, usage and journalistic style that the Honolulu Star-­Advertiser and most other U.S. newspapers follow, as do many media outlets around the world. You are one of numerous readers to ask.

The AP has updated its style to capitalize references to Black or Indigenous people, while continuing to lowercase the term white people, in part to avoid legitimizing white supremacists. John Daniszewski, AP vice president/editor at large for standards, explained the reasoning in the AP Style Blog.

In a June 19 post, Daniszewski wrote that “AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a person. We also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.”

The changes, under consideration for more than two years, align with AP’s long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American. In that post, he wrote that the AP was continuing to discuss whether to capitalize the term white people.

A month later, in a July 20 post, Daniszewski wrote that “AP style will continue to lowercase the term white in racial, ethnic and cultural senses.”

“There was clear desire and reason to capitalize Black. Most notably, people who are Black have strong historical and cultural commonalities, even if they are from different parts of the world and even if they now live in different parts of the world. That includes the shared experience of discrimination due solely to the color of one’s skin.

“There is, at this time, less support for capitalizing white. White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. In addition, we are a global news organization and in much of the world there is considerable disagreement, ambiguity and confusion about whom the term includes.

“We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore those problems. But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.

“Some have expressed the belief that if we don’t capitalize white, we are being inconsistent and discriminating against white people or, conversely, that we are implying that white is the default. 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.”

As for brown, Daniszewski wrote that “as the AP Stylebook currently directs, we will continue to avoid the broad and imprecise term brown in racial, ethnic or cultural references. If using the term is necessary as part of a direct quotation, we will continue to use the lowercase.”

Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.