The paper ran a recent AP story on the fallout of the Tiger Woods meltdown in the black community. Here’s a sample graf:

When three White women were said to be romantically involved with Woods in addition to his blonde, Swedish wife, blogs, airwaves and barbershops started humming, and Woods’ already tenuous standing among many Blacks took a beating.

(I can’t link to it because, as usual, the AZCentral web site doesn’t know what the paper prints.)

It got worse from there:

The darts reflect Blacks’ resistance to interracial romance. They also are a reflection of discomfort with a man who has smashed barriers in one of America’s Whitest sports …

“America’s Whitest sports”! Sounds like a variant of “American’s Next Top Model.”

Now, I know this style tic isn’t new. But to my knowledge it’s fairly unusual among major papers. Here’s a link to the original AP story on Tiger Woods, in which the words “white” and ‘black" aren’t capped, for example.

Now, despite the headline above, I know why the paper capitalizes “white” and “black.” While no serious news organization has ever done it, it became fashionable, decades ago, in some liberal and overly race-conscious circles to capitalize “black” in print as a sign of respect or pride when discussing racial issues.

Now, since Arizona has one of the smallest African-American populations in the country, you’d think this wouldn’t be an issue here. But apparently someone at the Republic decided, Yeah, we’ll capitalize “black”—but only if we capitalize “white” as well.

The years pass, and now it’s just another indicator of the paper’s lack of sophistication.

p.s. Why shouldn’t the words be capitalized? Because there’s no reason to. They aren’t proper names. Words like Hispanic are capitalized because they are derived from proper names. It’s just the way things are.