It never pays to be pedantic but enough is enough. I try not to sound off on how others write, spell, punctuate or capitalize. I can make my own mistakes. And if I get on my high horse, the wife calls me ‘Anal Alan’ after the role of the brother in “Two and a Half Men.”
But I was reading an article by the Washington bureau chief of the Toronto Star the other day and I found he was capitalizing the colour black as though it was a proper name. He even wrote about Barack Obama as the first “Black president.” He capitalized the colour instead of ‘President.’ How far do we go?
The next thing we know, the Toronto Star will be referring to me as “that darn White man.” After all English is a living language. You have to keep up with the times!
I thought the Toronto Star only let writers of colour capitalize on being black.
Though the Star should be pleased with its writers who helped end the very successful program of having police officers in some Toronto’s public schools. Despite majority approval for the program, Star writers complained that some black students felt intimidated. Well, maybe they should be. You would think that we would be smart and find out what is intimidating about the program?
The cops are there to build better relationships with our young people and the empirical evidence is that this has been very successful. If we have the majority of the kids happy with the cops being there, we have a major win on our hands. And to kill the program is colossally stupid.
If we kept one kid from joining a gang today, what is that worth? If we discouraged one kid from thinking of stealing, what is that worth? If we got a few kids to think of becoming a police officer after they have finished school successfully, what is that worth?
And what our kids really need to see is that police can be of any colour, any ethnic background, any sex and lead surprisingly normal lives. That seems to be worth a lot.
And before we take the word of some group saying they represent the black community or this ethnic group or that group, you should check it out. It is amazing how many of these groups are self appointed.
-30-
Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]