Also written: White, white people, White people
| Source | Year | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Annie E. Casey Foundation | 2013 | Use |
| National Association of Black Journalists | 2020 | Use |
| Sierra Club | 2021 | Use |
| Native Governance Center | 2021 | Use |
| Diversity Style Guide | 2023 | Use |
“For nouns: African American, Asian American, black, Hispanic, Latino, Native American, non-Hispanic white, white (do not use Caucasian).”
Casey 2013 lists lowercase 'white' and 'non-Hispanic white' as approved nouns, parallel to lowercase 'black' — both reflecting AP's pre-June-2020 convention. The 'do not use Caucasian' instruction is the only explicit avoidance, and matches every later guide that addresses it (DSG 2023 echoes the same posture).
“NABJ also recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown.”
NABJ's symmetric rule: if a color names a race, capitalize it. White and Brown both get the same treatment as Black. The reasoning is descriptive-integrity-based rather than political-identity-based — NABJ does not engage the 'aligning with white supremacy' concern that drives Sierra Club's opposite decision. The split between NABJ and AP on this question is the central US journalism style divergence on race capitalization since 2020.
“Do not capitalize the word 'white.' Doing so risks the perception that Sierra Club is aligned with organized white supremacy. Some argue that by not capitalizing white, whiteness is designated as the default. This is a good conversation to have, but at this time the Sierra Club does not capitalize white to avoid the appearance of allying with organized white supremacy.”
Sierra Club explicitly lowercases white and names the reasoning: capitalized 'White' is used by far-right movements as an organized racial-political identity, and Sierra Club does not want to share that orthography. Acknowledges the counter-argument (lowercase white designates whiteness as the unmarked default) as legitimate but unresolved. The house decision is risk-asymmetric: the cost of appearing to share white-supremacist orthography is treated as higher than the cost of marking white as default.
“DO NOT capitalize the word white.”
NGC's rule is set against the surrounding 'DO capitalize Black, Indigenous, Native, American Indian, Asian, Latinx' list — the asymmetry is the point. Links to the MPR editor's note ('Why we now capitalize Black but continue to lowercase white') for the reasoning.
“People who share a lineage that can be traced directly or indirectly to Europe. Don't use Caucasian. There has been much discussion about whether the w in White and the b in Black should be capitalized. … Most media organizations still lowercase White. Some noted exceptions: The Washington Post, Fox News, D Magazine, The Conscious Style Guide. … In a June 2020 statement announcing its endorsement of the capitalization of Black, the National Association of Black Journalists wrote, 'NABJ also recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown.' The Center for the Study of Social Policy also makes an impassioned case for the capitalization of White as well as Black. … The Diversity Style Guide has long advocated for the capitalization of White as well as Black.”
DSG's house position: capitalize White, parallel to Black. Documents the broader landscape — most US news still lowercases, with notable exceptions (Washington Post, NABJ, APA, Conscious Style Guide, Center for the Study of Social Policy). Cites the Center for the Study of Social Policy's argument that lowercase white 'allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability from White people's and White institutions' involvement in racism.' Caucasian is non-preferred as a synonym.
AP Stylebook decision on White (July 20, 2020)
One month after announcing capitalization of Black, AP issued a separate decision NOT to capitalize White. Cited concerns about reinforcing white-supremacist usage of capital-W White as an organized racial identity, but acknowledged both directions of the argument.
The asymmetric capital-B Black / lowercase white rule that Sierra Club, NGC, and most US news adopt traces directly to this AP decision. AP's reasoning is the substrate for the dominant US journalism convention.
View source →NABJ vs. AP divergence (June–July 2020)
NABJ's June 2020 statement and AP's July 2020 statement adopt opposite rules on the same question: NABJ capitalizes both Black and White (and Brown) for symmetry; AP capitalizes Black and lowercases white. The split has held since 2020.
The single most consequential active disagreement in current US race capitalization. Choosing between the two rules is the editorial decision houses make — the choice signals which side of the political-vs-descriptive framing the house treats as primary.
View source →Washington Post adoption of symmetric capitalization (July 29, 2020)
The Washington Post began capitalizing both Black and White on July 29, 2020, citing the same symmetry rationale as NABJ — both are color-based racial descriptors and should be treated identically.
The most prominent mainstream US news adoption of the symmetric rule. Together with NABJ, APA, and DSG, defines the 'capitalize both' camp.
View source →Center for the Study of Social Policy argument
Lowercase 'white' allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability from White people's and White institutions' involvement in racism.
The clearest articulation of the 'White as default = White as exempt' argument. The strongest case for the symmetric rule on a political (rather than purely descriptive) basis.
View source →White is the most-divided term in the R&E corpus — five guides reviewed here, three distinct positions, all defensible, all currently in active use across major US institutions. The divergence is the content, not a defect.
The two live capitalization rules:
Asymmetric (lowercase white) — Sierra Club, NGC, AP, NYT, LA Times, and most US mainstream news. Adopted in mid-2020 in tandem with the capital-B Black decision. Reasoning is risk-asymmetric: capital-W White is the orthography used by organized white-supremacist movements as a political identity, and these institutions decline to share it. The trade-off — leaving whiteness as the unmarked default — is acknowledged as a real cost, not a benefit.
Symmetric (capitalize both) — NABJ, Washington Post, APA, Diversity Style Guide, Conscious Style Guide, Center for the Study of Social Policy. The reasoning runs the other direction: color-based race descriptors should be treated identically for descriptive integrity, and lowercase white concretely lets white readers exit conversations about race that capitalize the racial label for everyone else. The Center for the Study of Social Policy’s framing — “the detachment of ‘White’ as a proper noun allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability” — is the strongest articulation.
Pre-2020 lowercase (chronological, not doctrinal) — Casey 2013. Both white and black lowercase, matching AP’s pre-June-2020 rule. Read this as a date marker — Casey is not taking a position against the 2020 capital-B Black shift; it predates it.
Both active rules are coherent. Both are working out the same problem — how to write about whiteness in a way that surfaces rather than naturalizes it — and reaching opposite tactical answers. The choice is doctrinal: which failure mode is treated as worse?
There is no third synthesis position in the corpus, and the split has remained stable since 2020. Houses should pick one and document the reasoning; switching mid-document or between adjacent pieces is the only choice the corpus uniformly criticizes.
Caucasian is the one settled call. Every guide that addresses it (Casey 2013, DSG 2023) directs writers away from Caucasian as a synonym for white in identity contexts. DSG carves out demographic-data usage where ‘Caucasian’ is the formal label being cited; everywhere else, ‘white’ or ‘White’ per house style.
Non-Hispanic white appears in Casey 2013’s approved-noun list. This is federal-data terminology — the standard Census/HHS construction for separating racial and ethnic identification. Use it when citing federal data; in narrative writing, ‘white’ (or ‘White’) generally communicates the same thing more cleanly.
The lowercase ‘white’ convention dates back to AP style going back decades. Capital-W White appeared sporadically in Black-led publications and academic writing on whiteness studies through the late 20th century. The June 2020 AP decision to capitalize Black, followed one month later (July 20, 2020) by AP’s separate decision NOT to capitalize White, created the asymmetric rule that became the US journalism mainstream. NABJ’s June 2020 statement, Washington Post’s July 29, 2020 adoption of symmetric capitalization, and the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s March 2020 case all formed the opposing camp in the same window. The split has held since 2020 with no movement toward convergence.