Do White People Share a Lived Experience?

From alumni letters to the editor:

Matters of style

I always read the Magazine and enjoy it immensely. I have a comment for the editing team, however. In the last issue, in the story on cochlear implants and early childhood language learning (“Family Doctor,” Spring/22), you used the term “White” with a capital W. I respectfully ask that you instead use the term “white” with a lowercase letter, as using the uppercase relates to white nationalism and suggests the idea that all white people share the same lived experience.

Thank you very much for your consideration.

Meryl Zwanger, AB’92
Arcadia, California

With our Summer/20 issue, we began capitalizing both Black and White when referring to race. This was a decision that was made after much discussion and guided by The Chicago Manual of Style, the National Association of Black Journalists, and an extensive review of literature from linguists, journalists, and scholars of race. We recognize that there are compelling arguments against this stylistic decision; to address some of those concerns, we lowercase references to white nationalism and similar phrases in accordance with Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. We thank Zwanger for raising this important issue. —Ed.

Notice thahat the letter writer says uppercase White is associated with white nationalism, but then does not associate it, and say White Nationalism.

On the contrary, the magazine decided that White people merit an uppercase W, unless they are nationalists, in which case they must be demoted to lowercase.

It does not mention brown or other colors. I guess they agree that Pakistanis and Mexicans do not share a lived experience. I guess the letter writer is trying to imply that all Black people share a lived experience.

And the write tries to imply that Whites have no culture or commonality. It is anti-White and insulting.

Pres. Biden just gave a speech where his top complaint was that some White folks expressed some opinions in a 2017 Charlottesville protest, and that Pres. Trump said that there were good people on both sides.

He was introduced by a woman who said that her daughter was killed by a car where the driver admitted in court that it was a crime of hate.

I didn't think that the driver knew anything about the daughter, so I do not see how it could have a hate crime. Even if it were, the whole story is a big hoax, and it is bizarre to see Biden keep repeating it.

The only point is for Biden to say that Whites are not allowed to express an objection to being replaced by foreigners, or to retain Civil War monuments. He is based his whole Presidency on being anti-White.

The Wash. Times reports:

Rank-and-file FBI agents are accusing the Biden administration of exaggerating the threat of White supremacists and pressuring agents to cook up domestic terrorist cases involving racist extremists.

Yes, the whole Biden Presidency is based on racial hoaxes.

One remedy is destroying highways!

A long-delayed plan to dismantle Interstate 375, a 1-mile (1.6-kilometer) depressed freeway in Detroit that was built by demolishing Black neighborhoods 60 years ago, was a big winner of federal money Thursday, the first Biden administration grant awarded to tear down a racially divisive roadway.

The $104.6 million is among $1.5 billion in transportation grants

They have to be nuts to think that this will help Detroit. More likely, they are just doing it as an anti-White statement. No matter where a highway is built, someone claims it is racist.

Highway placement is a funny no-win situation.

If it goes down the middle of a black neighborhood, it splits the community.

If it goes along the edge of a black neighborhood, it separates it from nearby white communities.

If it is far away from a black neighborhood, then that neighborhood has been bypassed and cut off.

All three claims are being made about different highways right now in different parts of the country.

Everything is racist. Get used to it.