I’d see no problem with the word burly,” she wrote in an email. “If the articles were describing the actor James Earl Jones or William (the Refrigerator) Perry, Yonette Joseph, a news desk editor who is black, said that the use of “burly” depends on context. Was a staple in rhetoric surrounding lynchings.Įditors on the news desk noted that “burly” has many apt synonyms, and though no official proclamation was made, word went out to Times reporters and copy editors to find alternatives. “The phrase does have a very long history as a stereotypical label,”Ī quick Google search confirms a wide perception that the word is racially loaded, and several online sources linked the use of “burly” to the so-called “black beast stereotype.” The term He said he supposed that “burly” was just a descriptive word now, but he couldn’t put aside its coded baggage.
Brock, who is white, recalled the use of “the term ‘burly Negro’ (well, with a derivation of the N-word) Calling on his upbringing in 1960s Mississippi, Mr. McBride’s message to the news desk, which (among other things) speaks to questions of Times style, tone, fairness Greg Brock, a senior Times editor who oversees corrections and other reader concerns, forwarded Mr. The Times’s stylebook is silent on the subject. Several publications have had formal or informal strictures against using the phrase, but not all were codified in stylebooks. “IĪsked my father, a Journal reporter, why that expression was singled out, and he explained that it was a racial stereotype.” “As far back as my childhood in the 1950s or early ’60s, I remember the Milwaukee Journal stylebook stating that the phrase ‘burly Negro’ was not to be used,” Mr. Brown as “burly,” apparently meant nothing more.Ī reader named Joseph McBride pointed out that the word was often used as a racially loaded term in the Jim Crow South, and elsewhere, and conveyed the idea that big black men are especially fearsome and threatening. 16 that referred to Captain Johnson and Mr. Burly means stout, heavy or muscular.Īlan Blinder, along with Tanzina Vega, Timothy Williams and Erik Eckholm, who wrote the two articles on Aug. So here is the tale of a troublesome word with a fraught history and how The Times came to reconsider its use. Readers wrote to say that “burly” has long been a racial stereotype the word hasn’t appeared in this context in The Times since the readers’ notes. Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol, are black. Brown and the state police captain overseeing security in the case as “burly.”īoth Mr. He has worked at The Times since 1999.Īs protests raged after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., two articles in The Times on Aug.
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