As in this article:
I’ve seen it a few times recently and I don’t remember it being the case (heh) in the past but then I could be clueless. I saw a tweet with “Woman” capitalized as well. Is this maybe a result of camel-casing Twitter hashtags that have made it into general usage?
I was the copy editor of my college newspaper in 1986-87 and noticed “Black” being used rather than “black” even then. But I haven’t been able to find when this usage started.
Huh, ok. So the answer is: yes, I’m clueless. Thanks!
Not every publication uses the capital B, so it’s possible that the ones you read do not. (So you might not be as clueless as you think.)
Standard practice is that while modifiers of common nouns (in this case adjectives) are not capitalized; nationalities and ethnic groups are. Black people are black people, or, Blacks are black.
There’s no “standard” practice. It depends entirely on the style guide used by the publication in question. For example, although the Chicago Manual of Style recommends the capitalization of ethnic groups and nationalities, it says “Common designations of ethnic groups by color are usually lower cased unless a particular publisher or author prefers otherwise.” (Section 8.39 in my edition.) The New York Times also uses lowercase for “black” as an ethnic group.
BTW, I don’t have access to the AP Stylebook, but I learned from a Google search that they made changes last year to address race-related terms. I believe their standard is to use lowercase b but they also said not to use “blacks” or “whites” as nouns.
Here’s an informative overview on the history of the lower-case/capitalization issue.
Lower-case terms for Americans of African ancestry were the norm through the 1920s. W.E.B. DuBois had to fight for years to get newspapers, including the NYT, to capitalize “Negro.” When the Encyclopedia Britannica told him it would change the capital-N version in DuBois’ article to lower-case, DuBois responded
I don’t know which version is more popular, but the author of the linked op-ed, who’s a professor of journalism at Temple University, says
Seems relevant. To our readers: Why we’re now capitalizing the ‘B’ in Black - Chicago Sun-Times staff
*Off-topic: Would the Sun-Times copyright sue the Straight Dope for extensive quoting its articles? Kinda “cutting off one’s nose” if they are both corporately related (I have no idea about US law, nor the current state of SDMB/Sun-times relationship).
“Other” would include the Deaf community.
So, that must mean Donald Trump is an “Orangeman” with an upper case “O”. :eek:
Ochre-American.
Moderator Note
Let’s refrain from political cracks in GQ. No warnings issued.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
“Orangeman” is already a term used for Protestant Irish.
I think capitalizing Black became a thing like… 10 years ago? capitalizing “woman” is not a thing.
Mainstream newspapers lowercased black, but African-American newspapers often capitalized it. Other non-mainstream newspapers sometimes did likewise for other groups. I was always a little taken aback to see Gay capitalized in The Washington Blade.
The same battle may well have been fought a century ago over Negro.
The style manual at my college newspaper (circa 1982) recommended capitalizing it. I forget which manual it was; I seem to recall it was either New York Times or Washington Post. It wasn’t *Chicago Manual of Style.
*
Magazines, too, I think. I recall seeing it capitalized when thumbing through issues of Ebony or whatever in doctors’ waiting rooms.
I remember in decades past hearing white people complaining about it and saying things like, If they’re going to that then they better capitalize ‘white’ as well!” I don’t know if the issue still cheeses white people off so much.
I remember seeing it all the way back in the 1970s.
When you were seeing it used in the 1970s, was this in Black media, like say Ebony magazine? Because I imagine they would be in the forefront of such a change.