Please don't take HN threads into these extremely repetitive, generic ideological places. It just leads to tedious, ever-the-same flamewar. There's actually an interesting historical story to discuss about the OP, and comments like this (and the inevitable avalanche of replies) drown it out.
If you're genuinely curious, there are ways of satisfying that which don't damage the forum, e.g. a web search.
My question was "extremely repetitive" and a "generic ideological place" to the point that it "damaged the forum"?
I'm a regular HN reader and I never stumbled over any of those apparently very repetive and ideological talks about capitalization. I read global news like the Economist and sometimes Bloomberg/FT and they certainly didn't address this apparently rather new convention anywhere prominent.
Here in Germany, no ethnicity gets capitalized. We capitalize nouns, first words in a sentence and formal pronouns.
I know there's a lot of emotions in the US about race but I have the impression that in this specific case this alertness might stand in the way of genuine and curious conversation, which would be a cornerstone of every just and inclusive society.
I hope the damage you see caused by my question wasn't long lasting and I thought that I got some interesting, contentful and non-repetitive replies.
In my opinion, it’s far more damaging to the forum when moderators stifle all discussion of this issue. There are respectful and productive things to be said about it.
For one thing, the consensus among major newspapers on the capitalization of white/black is not absolute; the New York Times only capitalizes “Black,” while the Washington Post capitalizes both “Black” and “White.” For another thing, many white people find the selective capitalizing demonstrated in this article to be demeaning. I am one of them. Silencing that voice in particular strikes me as prejudiced moderation. Finally, non-Americans may be curious about this recent change in vernacular. They are entitled to answers.
It is prejudiced moderation in the sense that we're prejudiced against generic topics, ideological flamewar, and extreme repetition. This topic covers all three.
As long as it remains unresolved among publishers and society at large, I expect that this topic and questions related to it will continue to come up. Is there a gold-standard earlier discussion you could link when such questions do arise, to explain the situation to newcomers such as the GP commenter with less chance of a flame war?
Flamewar topics will always come up. Intellectual curiosity is plainly not motivating the desire to bring them up or argue about them, so they're not what HN is for. I don't see why HN needs to host 'gold-standard' discussions about this, or why people are entitled to answers can't look elsewhere.
If you're genuinely curious, there are ways of satisfying that which don't damage the forum, e.g. a web search.