Capitalization of race

[MikeF]

I was watching some news channel the other day and the usual ticker tape or whatever it is called was moving across the bottom of the screen. I don’t recall what the story was but race was integral part, maybe a police shooting or something. I noticed that the b in a mid-sentence “black” was capitalized but the w in “white” was not. Is there some (un)official rule about this or was this just the bias of whoever was typing the copy showing through? I don’t recall ever seeing this before. And, no, I did not vote for Trump.

[DSeid]

Apparently there are conflicting unofficial rules about this.

… Most journalism-related style guides, like those of the Associated Press and New York Times, call for putting both “white” and “black” in all lowercase letters. Others, like The Chicago Manual of Style, allow capitalization if an author or publication prefers to do so. Dictionaries also allow both capitalization and lowercase versions. In other words, it’s fielder’s choice whether to capitalize “black” and “white” or not.

As the excellent Grammarphobia blog noted, The American Heritage Dictionary is conflicted on whether to capitalize “Black” but not “White.” “Orthographic evenhandedness would seem to require the use of uppercase White, but this form might be taken to imply that whites constitute a single ethnic group, an issue that is certainly debatable,” the dictionary says. …

So I guess yes, the choice is a matter of personal bias one way or the other.

The argument mainly goes for both upper or both lower or “Black” while “white” because the latter is a more diverse group of identities, in contrast, the former is “a people.” The argument is made in here:

When speaking of a culture, ethnicity or group of people, the name should be capitalized. Black with a capital B refers to people of the African diaspora. Lowercase black is simply a color. … If we’ve traded Negro for Black, why was that first letter demoted back to lowercase, when the argument had already been won? Publications like Essence and Ebony push back, proudly capitalizing the B. But claiming the uppercase as a choice, rather than the rule, feels inadequate. Black should always be written with a capital B. We are indeed a people, a race, a tribe. …

Of course some … pigment-challenged … Americans feel that they are a cohesive identity as well.

So it is pick your style guide and we can all agree there is confusion.

[Derleth]

@DSeid

The argument mainly goes for both upper or both lower or “Black” while “white” because the latter is a more diverse group of identities, in contrast, the former is “a people.” The argument is made in here:

Of course some … pigment-challenged … Americans feel that they are a cohesive identity as well.

Go-go Gadget Equivocation Fallacy!

Seriously, the issue they’re foundering on is that they want “Black” to mean “Black American” or “African-American” or “The cultural experience of growing up in the United States of America while dark-pigmented” but they (apparently) refuse to accept that, if you do that, “White” can just as easily mean “White American” or “European-American” or “The cultural experience of growing up in the United States of America while pinky-pale”. And, hey, if someone who grew up Black in 1950s Tuscaloosa is Black the way someone who grew up Black in 1990s Bridgeport, CT, is Black, then someone who grew up White in 1970s Detroit is White the way someone who grew up White in 1920s Havre, MT, is White.

It’s a shade away from claiming White People Have No Culture, because fish swim in a total vacuum and, hey, blindly assuming defaults isn’t making any of our problems worse.

[BigT]

I don’t think what you said in the last paragraph is untrue. I am white. But I do not experience any sort of white culture. I experience a hillbilly/Ozark culture, but not a white one. I have little in common with many white people in other cultures.

Minorities tend to develop an overarching culture out of necessity. Majorities don’t.

I’ve literally never heard of a white culture outside the concept white nationalism/supremacism.

[Derleth]

@BigT

Minorities tend to develop an overarching culture out of necessity. Majorities don’t.

This is what I disagree with, at least in this context: If there’s a single Black culture, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea, from Gullah to Hip-Hop, from the era of slavery to that of Jim Crow all the way to the era of Barack Obama, then there can be a single White culture. For the record, I’m skeptical of either overarching culture existing, in case I still haven’t made myself clear enough. The only times cultures should be so broad is in cases such as the Urnfield Culture or similar, where we honestly don’t know enough to break it down any finer.

I’ve literally never heard of a white culture outside the concept white nationalism/supremacism.

We can all agree this is neither here nor there.

[mbh]

@BigT

I’ve literally never heard of a white culture outside the concept white nationalism/supremacism.

You’ve never heard the campus radicals decrying the Dead White European Male culture in the English Lit and Music curricula?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@MikeF

I don’t recall ever seeing this before.

This has been standard since before either you or I were born.

And I’m old.