1001 Ways to Avoid Calling Something Racist

A picture of the Associated Press styleguide

In completely unrelated news, only 22.6 percent of workers in U.S. newsrooms in 2018 were people of color!

NEW YORK, NY — Since the election of Donald Trump, the nation has seen a rise in public declarations and demonstrations in favor of white supremacy. For many journalists and media outlets, the problem lies not in the racism itself, but what to call it. Thus, The Associated Press is releasing a new style guide, "1001 Ways to Avoid Calling Something Racist," at the beginning of the new year.

“The only thing that makes people more uncomfortable than racial segregation, disenfranchisement, and economic exploitation is racial language,” Associated Press chairman Steven Swartz says. “As a news agency, we move with the times, and now is not the time to be calling people racist.”

Susan Sullivan, a senior employee in the standards division at NBC News, has applauded the move. Earlier this week, the company received flack for sending internal memos that encouraged avoiding the use of the word racism in reporting.

“We then reverted to spraying journalists with water any time they uttered the word racist,” Sullivan explained. “But honoring this style guide will allow us to avoid reliance on Pavlovian methods. It will also reinforce our misguided reporting ethics, in which ‘objectivity’ relies on the false equivalence inherent to ‘both sides’ rhetoric, but that’s just an added bonus.”

In a Twitter review of the book, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a racism by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The Associated Pressreached out to the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Native American Journalists Association for comment. However, following the lead of fellow media outlets, we decided their racial bent renders their perspectives biased and therefore unfit for inclusion in this article.

A sampling of The Associated Press stylebook’s anti-racist racial vocabulary can be found below: