That was quick – so much for the debate I had hoped for! The New York Times will from henceforth capitalize Black when referring to people or cultures of African origin. (To which I made a rare comment asking for clarification concerning, for instance, indigenous Australians – being most certainly black/Black but not of African origin or least ways no more so than everybody else and not in the sense that the Times means. Suffice to say, no clarification was received!).
One could quibble endlessly with the (not very satisfactory) reasoning given, but it makes not much sense to do so – it is their publication and their choice, and certainly one that most reasonable people can live with.
I would only say, the debate may have lasted months in the newsroom (as per the internal letter to staff), but the public discussion certainly was not very long at all – we are just the loyal readers I suppose!
Herewith, a little digression in the interest of another of my grammatical eccentricities (faults!), and that is a tendency to be inconsistent with words with an -ise or -ize suffix – the former favoured/favored [sic] in British English, the latter American English. This comes to mind because I see now, in my first blog entry on this matter, I wrote capitalise and here capitalize.