Because then it would say “women.”
Yes.
No. If so, the headline would read “Two women seek to become firsts in SC runoff” or "“Two women, one of them black, seek to become firsts in SC runoff.”
Obviously not black, and thus immaterial because it’s not being regarded as a significant “first.”
Obviously not female, as it’s listed separately from the woman.
Now that sounds like a neat trick! 
In the UK we’re Asian. Most Americans don’t see it that way.
When I saw it I suspected that they knew very well that she was brought up as a Sikh, but figured their audience didn’t know what that was and they did know that Buddhists worship naked Santa Claus.
It is is an odd usage. Maybe it’s not intended to be racist, but it looks racist. The word ‘wog’ has even fewer letters, but you wouldn’t use that; keeping the headline short is of lower priority than getting your meaning across. In any case, even without the racism it’s a terrible headline because it looks like black could be an adjective.
Yeah - I’d say it’s because of things like that where ‘black’ is used in contrast, not to ‘white,’ but to ‘normal person.’ Black as a noun carries a lot of baggage with it.
I don’t think the film ever explicitly mentioned that the family was Sikh, so half the US newspaper reading public probably guessed Muslim or Hindu.
Well, there was one scene where Jess was talking about who she would be allowed to marry, and she said that a Muslim boy would be right out, so she couldn’t have been Muslim. The strongest clue to their religion would have been the picture of the Sikh Guru hanging up in their living room, which was occasionally addressed by Jess’s mother.
Sure, but how many Americans have even heard of Guru Nanak?
Wasn’t he a character on DS9?
Hardly matters - I doubt people who would be seriously upset that a political candidate might be a stealth Buddhist watched a furrin movie about furrin people.
I’d say for me that “white” used in the same way that “black” is in this context would bother me. I wouldn’t get offended and pitch a fit, but it would make me wary of the person using it as a possible bigot. It just seems somehow dehumanizing in a way I can’t quite place.
I didn’t realize that the headline was about two people, either since I skimmed over the “s” in firsts. YMMV, though, since there are a great number of headlines that make no sense to me upon first reading them.
Having taken a university course that covered headline writing, I’d say this was a terrible decision on the part of the editor (who’s probably the one who wrote the headline). If anybody wants a professional opinion, I could try dropping a line to my old professor.
Not by ye olde officiale racial theory. People from the India are Caucasian. (Causing all sorts of hilarity during poorly designed “racial sensitivity” type work exercises, where someone like my half-Pakistani friend gets to mark Caucasian as her race and put in the same bin with the people of entirely European background.)
I just think the headline was shortened to the point of confusion. It may technically be able to be parsed, but that isn’t the point of a headline. Now that we aren’t competing for space considerations, the point of using as few words as possible is to make it a fast read. This fails at that. Adding 3 letters and a space is worth it for clarity.
If “black” were used where it were more obviously a noun, then I wouldn’t have a problem with it, unless, like Jap, the people it is describing would be offended, which I take is not the case.
I’m filling out an employment application form at the moment, and the EO form puts East Indian under the Asian category, with White/Caucasian as a different category. I suppose it varies.
It’s kind of amazing how many people haven’t. A few years ago a very nice lady of my acquaintance told a story in which she assumed that the turbaned men she saw were Muslim. I had to tell her they were Sikhs and explain what that is–and there is a sizeable, long-established Sikh population in a nearby town.
I think its because it sounds antiquated, and even though its not racist, I think refering to someone as “a black” or “a white” sounds like something you’d hear in a book or movie that dates back to when a lot of people were racist.
Sorta like calling a black person “colored”. Its not exactly racist (ask the NAACP), but its still a word that gets associated in my head with old-timey racists, just because of the setting I associate it with.
Also agree with others that putting aside the racial component, the headline also takes some extra effort to parse and would be a lot easier to read with the addition of the word “man”.
Things have to work in headlines when they don’t have to work anywhere else.
That said, I love the phrase “black as a noun.” I am trying to figure out how to use it in a sentence.