Today the use of directional terms is nearly ubiquitous in the Blade. Of approximately 188,550 articles in the paper between November 2005 and November 2014, 21,667 or eleven percent, reference a directional term.[8] Of concern here is not simply the overall frequency of the use of these terms but their meaning: do they actually convey geographic information or do they instead signal racial meaning? To gauge the degree that the terms are used either directionally or racially, a data set was compiled by searching a nine year collection of Blade articles for the terms “north,” “west,” “south,” “east,” and “central” Toledo. For each story that used one of these directional references, full bibliographic data and the street address of its subject was recorded (nearly five percent of the total number of such directional references in the Blade during that span of time contained specific addresses).[9]

By plotting these directional references onto a map, the extent and consistency of the usage of these terms can be analyzed. (See Figure 4) While nearly all of the references to “West Toledo” are in the western half of the city, most of them are also in its northern half. In fact, the number of references to “West Toledo” in the northern half of the city vastly outnumber the number of references to “North Toledo.” Overall, a significant majority of the places called “West Toledo” are in fact more northern than the places called “North Toledo.”

“North Toledo” seems the most inaccurately named region, most of it extending along the eastern third of a central axis of the city, south of the I-75 interstate highway. Much of the region extending north of that same line is highly inconsistent in its nomenclature. Locations described as both “North Toledo” and “West Toledo” are jumbled together, especially in the neighborhoods bordering Detroit avenue that, while being clearly in the northern quadrant of the city, are majority white working class communities.

In addition to the cardinal directions, the Blade additionally refers to some subjects as being part of “Central Toledo” or the “Central City.” This is a geographically consistent area, as most of the references to it indeed fall in the central area of a map of the city. But while occupying an appropriate area it is also the least coherent area as a wide band of its boundaries are intermixed with other neighborhoods that the newspaper references as “Downtown,” “the Old West End,” as well as with “West Toledo” (See Figure 5).

The inconsistency of the application of these geographic terms, especially “North” and “West” Toledo, cannot be explained by reference to their historical origins. The original “North Toledo” was considerably east of the city and over a century migrated west and north. West Toledo was originally located in the northwestern area of the city and expanded both north, east and south to cover the largest area of any directional reference. “Central Toledo” or the “Central City” does not appear to have been employed for any purpose prior to the 1960s.

While the organization of these terms cannot be fully accounted for by geography or history, they do correlate highly with the segregated racial demographics of the city. To illustrate the overlap of these directional references and racial demographics, the specific location of each directional reference mentioned in the Toledo Blade from November of 2005 to November of 2014 was compared with the percentage of minority population in its associated census tract (See Table 1).

It is apparent from these figures that each of these directional terms, while not particularly effective as terms of direction, are effective at indicating each location’s proportion of racial minorities. Fewer than 15% of the places described as being in “West Toledo” have a majority nonwhite population compared with 82% of places described as “North Toledo” and 100% of those called “Central Toledo.”

While Toledo has dozens of neighborhoods known by name, the Blade regularly refers to only a handful of such neighborhoods, rolling the rest into its larger directional rubrics. Three small neighborhoods in particular are regularly referenced by their names rather than by the larger directionally-designated areas (“North,” “West,” etc.) that they are within. All three of these neighborhoods are white enclaves within communities of color.

A spit of land extending into Maumee Bay in the extreme northeastern part of the city known as “Point Place,” is usually indicated by this name rather than as being part of “North Toledo.” Unlike “North Toledo,” the neighborhood described as “Point Place” is overwhelmingly white. The boundary between “North Toledo” and “Point Place” is very ill-defined as the newspaper variously includes references to either place across a several square mile area in its vicinity.[12]

One white community, located in the heart of what is referred to as “North Toledo,” is routinely named separately from the black community that surrounds it. Rather, it is designated as the “Polish Village.” Typical is the headline, “Bank Branch Razed In Polish Village” that reported on a building at the corner of Lagrange and Central avenues (Blade, Mar. 18, 2010]). Sometimes the relationship between “Polish Village” and the surrounding neighborhood is described, such as in “North Toledo's Polish Village section” (Blade, July 20, 2008]). In other articles the distinction between the two is made more certain, as in “Polish Village and adjoining parts of northern Toledo” (Blade, Mar. 28, 2006). Generally, white residents of this neighborhood are reported as living in “Polish Village” while their black neighbors are described as living in “North Toledo.”

Likewise, the only neighborhood within the predominantly black region called “Central Toledo” that has a significant white population is inconsistently referred to by the Blade by its historic neighborhood name of the “Old West End.” When a bus driver pulled over his bus and rushed to save a suicidal woman he was in “Central Toledo,” but the Rosary cathedral next door is usually described as towering in the “Old West End” (Blade, Mar. 29, 2013; Apr. 9, 2007]). Likewise the mostly white St. Mark's Episcopal church is usually noted as being an Old West End landmark but the black Thomas Temple Church, just down a long block on Ashland Avenue, is in the “central city” (Blade, Jun 28, 2008; Dec. 26, 2008]). The Warren AME church, also on Collingwood avenue, whose congregation is mostly African American, stands in the “central city”[13] One mile north on Collingwood avenue stands the First Unitarian church, whose pews are mostly filled with white parishioners, but First Unitarian, like the other stately churches on surrounding corners, are rarely described as being in “central” Toledo. First Unitarian is mentioned as being in the Old West End or even as a “downtown” church (Blade, July 27, 2008]). However, these practices are not entirely consistent. The Bibleway Temple Church, across the street, was reported as being in the Old West End when it held a mass memorial service for victims of violence. (Blade, Nov. 9, 2006).

Over years of reporting on Toledo’s neighborhoods the Blade has developed a repertoire of terms that can be applied interchangeably to those neighborhoods where whites and blacks live in nearly equal numbers. Toledo institutions that are overwhelmingly white, such as the Toledo Club, though surrounded by locations referred to as the “central city” or “central Toledo” are rarely referred to as being in such a place. Rather they are described as being “downtown” (Blade, July 29, 2007; Apr. 29, 2006; Feb. 5, 2008; May 11, 2009; May 18, 2008]). 13th street is a cross-street that is almost always described as bisecting downtown, except at its southernmost point where a large public housing complex sits near the corner of Washington and Indiana streets. The Port Lawrence Homes, described as being in the “central city,” are one block from the “downtown” Easystreet Cafe and next door to the “downtown” historic St. Patrick’s church (Blade, Aug. 28, 2010; Dec. 27, 2011; Nov. 16, 2013; Mar. 17, 2007). Though, occasionally, Port Lawrence Homes is noted as being “near downtown” (Blade, Jan. 2013). Cherry street is the usual boundary of the downtown, but the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church which stands on the far side of Cherry street from the downtown (and therefore is in “North Toledo”), is usually described as being in “downtown” Toledo (Blade, Sep. 6, 2007; Sep. 7, 2014; Apr. 30, 2011; June 26, 2010; Sep. 4, 2008).[14]

Such discrepancies in the use of directional terms have not gone completely without notice by readers of the Blade. One Blade reader wrote to the paper in 2010: “Exactly where is central Toledo? Toledo media have been racial-profiling for years by using the terms ‘central city’ and ‘central Toledo.’ The media use these terms to identify race. If this is not true, someone should inform the public where central Toledo and the central city are located, by ZIP Code or precinct” (Blade, July 21, 2010]).

Similar anomalies are evident in neighborhoods to the west of the city. The Westmoreland neighborhood is generally described as being in “West Toledo,” though when a shooting occurred west of this area, in another “West Toledo” neighborhood, its location was referred to as being in “Central” Toledo (Blade, Aug. 18, 2014; Mar. 21, 2010). Likewise a series of strong-arm robberies that occurred a few blocks further west were also referred to as having taken place in the “central city” (Blade, Sept. 8, 2012). Westwood Avenue, like its name suggests, is usually considered in “West” Toledo but when a strangled body was found in the trunk of a car in a tow lot there it was reported as being found in “Central Toledo” (Blade, Mar. 2, 2006). The Village Players Theater, where mostly white local amateur thespians put on productions, is consistently referred to as being in “West Toledo,” but the convenience mart a couple of doors down on the corner of the same block was in “Central Toledo” when it was held up (Blade, Sept. 6, 2007).

The use of geographic euphemisms is a characteristic feature of racism in the Twenty-first century. Racism requires that race be marked as meaningful in public discussions but this marking has also to be deniably race-neutral on its face to be consistent with the myth that America is a color-blind society. Thus, in addition to using geographic terms to refer to areas of the city, the Blade routinely uses “North Toledo” or “Central Toledo” in order to identify something or someone as Black, and “West Toledo” when it wants to mark it or them as White. The whole system of geographic euphemism results in the systematic racial mapping of the community.

These patterns are evident not only from the anecdotal disparities in directional terms applied to the same neighborhoods, as noted above, but from the overall pattern of stories found in the last nine year run of the paper. Since November of 2006, 21,667 Toledo Blade stories containing directional references to north, east, south, or west have been archived in the ProQuest Newsstand database. Approximately one in five of the stories that included directional references associated with predominantly white areas (west, south, and east) also included terms that indicated some act of violence (shot, shooting, robbery, stabbing, rape, murder, beating, arson). However, the frequency of similar references to violent crimes were far higher for those directional references associated with majority black neighborhoods (north and central). Compared with “West Toledo” the rate of reference to violent crimes was nearly fifty percent higher for “North Toledo” and for “Central Toledo.” (See Table 2).

While disparities in crime reporting by neighborhood could be function of higher crime rates in those neighborhoods most frequently identified by directional references, crime rate data for Toledo does not support this hypothesis. A comparable crime rate for each directional section of the city was calculated by averaging together the overall crime rate of the census tract containing each specific street address mentioned in a Blade story. While the number of stories involving crimes identified as taking place in “North” Toledo was twice that of similar stories in “West” Toledo, overall crime rates in the locations referenced in those stories was less than 10% greater than crime rates in the “West.” Likewise, twice as many crime stories were located in the “Central” city while the average crime rates of all the locations mentioned was less than 10% greater than those parts of the “West” city deemed newsworthy. Such results point to the greater likelihood that a story will include reference to a majority black community (by way of directional proxy) if the story includes a crime.

Additionally, there is a clear disparity in the proportion of crime stories that employ directional terms as personal adjectives between white and black neighborhoods (See Table 3). Far fewer crime stories, as a proportion of overall stories, refer to a “West Toledo man” or a “West Toledo woman” than use directions as an adjective to refer to other areas of the city. Use of the personal adjectival form was two and half times more common for references to men or women of “Central Toledo” than of “West Toledo.” This would seem to indicate that the association of particular people with particular areas of the city, thereby marking them by race, was much more common for people from majority African American communities than those from majority white ones.

The current pattern of use of directional proxies for race seems to have arisen in fairly recent times. Judging by the frequency of a sample of stories found through a search of issues of the Toledo Blade archived by Google, the practice of using directional references increased dramatically beginning in the 1970s. While references to North Toledo increased modestly, those for West Toledo saw a significant jump beginning in the 1970s and continuing for the next twenty years. The term “Central Toledo” or “Central City” seems to only have come into infrequent usage beginning in the 1960s and became common in the 1990s. Likewise, older names for smaller white neighborhoods located within “North” or “Central” Toledo, such as Point Place, the Old West End, and especially Polish Village, seem to all have jumped in usage in the 1990s.[17] (See Figures 6 & 7).

This timeline showing a substantial increase in the use of these directional terms is consistent with the overall demographic history of the city. Unlike many of its neighboring midwestern cities, Toledo had a relatively small black population until the end of World War Two. The black population only reached ten percent of the total city population in the 1950s and even as late as 1970 amounted to only 13.8 percent of the population. But through the 1970s and into the 1990s a steady growth of the black population was accompanied by the rapid flight of whites from the city to surrounding suburbs. By 1990 the black population neared 20 percent of Toledo’s population and by 2000 amounted to nearly one-in-four city residents (See Table 4).

Journalistically, the most rapid growth in the proportion of black citizens of Toledo occurred precisely at the moment when, due to the Civil Rights Movement, many newspaper editors consciously worked to scrub gratuitous racial references from their pages. However, the public’s demand for news conveyed in a manner that matched their racial conceptions did not similarly lessen. Between the pressures to report news that conformed to popular psychological maps of the community and the restraint of newly colorblind journalistic standards a dilemma was created that racial proxies were able to resolve. Over the last quarter of the century a new journalistic habit of using directional euphemisms became ubiquitous.

This survey of articles in the Toledo Blade strongly indicates that the newspaper routinely employs terms such as “North Toledo” or “Central Toledo” to signal to readers that the subject of a story is African American, and the term “West Toledo,” to signal that the subject is White. Evidence of this purposeful signaling is that none of these terms are employed in a consistent directional context (as evidenced visually on a map) and that the locations of references to “North Toledo” and “Central Toledo” are associated with an overrepresentation of African American subjects compared both with their total share of the metropolitan population and their share of even those census tracts with the most concentrated minority population in the city. Moreover, of the scores of proper names for city neighborhoods, only those that are used to signal whiteness in a majority nonwhite community, such as “Old West End,” “Downtown,” and “Polish Village,” are regularly employed in the newspaper.

In the Twenty-First century the use of explicit racial language has declined under the pressure of a reigning ethos of color-blindness. In place of sustaining racist stereotypes of black criminality and shiftlessness by directly referring to the race of individuals or communities being reported about, code words that appear on their face to be race neutral have gained currency instead. Scholars such as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva have shown that the use of such coded language effectively transmits racial meaning while maintaining the appearance of color-blindness [Bonilla-Silva 2010] l [Campbell 1995] [Entman 2006]. Teun A. van Dijk reminds media scholars that news is not just a matter of what is printed on the page or projected on the screen, but is an entire system of discourse involving both the conventions of journalism and the social knowledge and the historically constructed frameworks through which readers decode the news text. Racial marking through geographic proxies only functions because news consumers supply their own racial assumptions about their community and successfully decode these cues through a racist frame. Thus, even without explicitly using race as a descriptor, news stories can effectively convey that race is a salient element to the story, or even the central aspect of the story itself [van Dijk 2000].

Geographic marking is not the only form of racial proxy in common use today. Nellie Tran and Susan Paterson have documented how whites denied their racial privilege and maintained their performance of color-blindness by employing the word “American” as a proxy for “white.” By switching American for white such individuals allowed themselves to think in terms of racial norms and desired racial privileges while denying racism as a force in society [Tran et al 2015].

Martin Conboy’s observation of how the news socially functions to define community by reinforcing the feelings of belonging of some and symmetrically categorizing others as outside this core, which he calls “narratives of exclusion” while originally applied to distinctions of national versus foreign, also applies to how news reporting marks its subjects racially through the mechanism of proxy terms. “One important way of identifying outsiders is not in the direct reporting of the facts of the case but in the metaphorical cluster of words used to generate an implicit picture of the groups described.”  [Conboy 2007].[19] In this way the use of racial proxies works to establish an imagined racial community that reinforces the racial frames that themselves are central to this system.

Many studies have documented the powerful role media racial stereotyping plays in reinforcing negative racial perceptions among whites [Arendt 2013] [Dixon 2006] [Domke et al 1999] [Gilliam et al 1996] [Oliver 1999] [Oliver et al 2002] [Romer et al 1998] [Dixon et al 2005]. While researchers have documented how such words as “welfare,” “felon,” and “food stamps” have been racially coded, no research has yet been done to discover if even less politically-charged language, such as directional references, have also assumed such a role [Gilens 1996] [Domke et al 1999] [Gilliam et al 1996] [Entman et al 2000].

It is beyond the scope of this study to judge the impact of these journalistic practices upon the culture and consciousness of the readers of this newspaper. However, it should be feasible for future researchers using a survey or focus group methodology to delineate the borders and boundaries of Toledoans’ mental geography of race and crime. Likely these lines would align closely to those commonly designated by the directional proxy terms regularly employed in the Toledo Blade, which would seem to both reflect and reinforce the predominate prejudices of the majority white community.

It is not this author’s contention that these practices are conscious ones or matters of formal policy. It is more likely that the newspaper’s practices mirror the prevailing implicit biases common at the time and place in which they operate. Any particular news outlets’ continued relevance to its readership depends upon its stories being written in such a way that the values and meanings most important to these readers is conveyed. In spite of the widespread belief that America today is a colorblind society and in spite of a public culture praising diversity and tolerance, Americans continue to view their communities through racialized lenses. As long as the underlying demand for news that is parsed according to race continues, the use of various euphemisms and proxies for race will also continue.

It is unlikely that the Toledo Blade engages in this practice uniquely or even to any greater extent than any other metropolitan news outlet. As stated earlier some cities have more well defined and specific neighborhood names that serve the same function as directional references in the Toledo Blade. While the journalistic conventions of any particular community will vary for reasons of history and locale, the imperative to racially mark stories for a white readership that implicitly associates crime with nonwhite populations probably is not restricted to Northwest Ohio.