# Is capitalizing the 'B' in "Black" a new thing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 3, 2020, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984 "2020-06-03T15:38:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/21 "2020-06-18T19:11:04Z")
It’s an old thing that is new again. The capitalized Black was first used, IIRC, in the 1960s by the Black Power movement and it leaked into popular usage (this is from my personal experience so I don’t have cites). It quickly became the preference over “Negro,” a term used as late as 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have a Dream” speech. I’m not sure when the B became b. Sometime after that came “African-American,” but “black” never completely went away. Now Black is back. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2020, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/22 "2020-06-18T19:31:39Z")
> [@ALOHA\_HATER](#): > > I think capitalizing Black became a thing like… 10 years ago? Where are you getting that from? The first response in this thread is a cite from its use over thirty years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2021, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/23 "2021-01-10T05:56:26Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > 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. At both the English-language daily newspapers I worked at in Bangkok, the written guidelines covered this. At both of them, “Black” was capitalized, while “white” was not. Unless they both appeared in the same sentence, in which case both were capitalized. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/24 "2021-01-11T10:14:40Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > was this in Black media, like say Ebony magazine? Is this usage correct? Capitalizing the noun (especially the plural) is one thing; capitalizing the adjective is quite another. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/25 "2021-01-11T13:30:51Z")
The adjective is capitalized in the quote used in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/26 "2021-01-11T15:48:05Z")
There’s definitely a new emphasis on capitalizing the “B” in “Black”. I know, because I didn’t capitalize it throughout my last book, and the editors asked me if I had any objection to changing it to the capitalized form. I agreed, provided they didn’t simply use a simple “replace black with Black”, because there are plenty of others uses for the word. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/27 "2021-01-11T19:28:26Z")
I suppose it is reasonable to distinguish a black thing from a Black thing or a Cajun thing? ---
**Author:** ![jebert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ec9cab/32.png) [@jebert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jebert)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/28 "2021-01-16T21:08:23Z")
I recently saw an article in the NY Times including a sentence referring to " … Black and brown people … " - upper-case Black, lower-case brown. Why would the two minorities be treated differently? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/29 "2021-01-16T21:12:55Z")
“The Times also looked at whether to capitalize white and brown in reference to race, but both will remain lowercase. Brown has generally been used to describe a wide range of cultures, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Corbett said in their memo to staff. As a result, its meaning can be unclear to readers; white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups.” From [here](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html). Paywall warning, obviously. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/30 "2021-01-16T21:14:37Z")
I’ve seen it off and on over the years, and I definitely noticed that my local newspaper started doing it when Kamala Harris became a Veep candidate. ---
**Author:** ![jebert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ec9cab/32.png) [@jebert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jebert)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/31 "2021-01-16T21:38:53Z")
> Blockquote " Brown has generally been used to describe a wide range of cultures, …" I think Black cultures cover a wide range as well. To my eye the culture of Chicago Blacks differs significantly from the culture of Masai Blacks. To use “wide range of cultures” as a reason to capitalize one and not the other is a distinction without a difference. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2021, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/32 "2021-01-16T23:32:23Z")
> [@jebert](#): > > I think Black cultures cover a wide range as well. To my eye the culture of Chicago Blacks differs significantly from the culture of Masai Blacks. Hmm, I don’t generally see “blacks” or “Blacks” used as the primary noun for African peoples such as the Masai. Black Africans are typically just called “Africans”, or by an ethnonym or national term like “Masai”, “Nigerians”, “Yoruba”, “Congolese”, etc. As I understand it, the anomaly that makes ethnonym choice challenging in the case of descendants of enslaved Africans is the fact that they were deracinated during their enslavement: taken out of their birthright kinship and ethnic and linguistic groups, and left with no easily identifiable ethnic heritage beyond being “black” or “African”. Hence the emergence of the terms “black”, “Black”, and “African-American” (earlier “Afro-American”) as a kind of general stand-in for specific ethnic heritages. All or almost all Black Americans do share some particular ethnic heritage(s) with some African group(s), but nobody knows which anymore. The term “brown”, on the other hand, seems to be a much more generic “umbrella” designation covering a whole lot of identifiable ethnic groups that do have distinct known ethnic heritages. So, for example, “brown people” may include Central Americans, South Asians, Pacific Islanders, Middle Easterners, and so on. It doesn’t really make sense in that case to treat “Brown” as an ethnonym in its own right. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/33 "2021-01-17T02:56:41Z")
Threadjack: The late, great Rush drummer Neil Peart took a bicycle trip through Cameroon in the late 1980s, and wrote his first book about it. One of his fellow travelers (ha) was a black man, and everywhere he went, the natives would ask him what tribe he was from. He couldn’t seem to explain to them that he didn’t know, and Americans blacks don’t do tribal identification anyway, and then it occurred to him to say he was from the California tribe. That placated them. > **[The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa: Peart, Neil: 9781550226652:...](https://www.amazon.com/Masked-Rider-Cycling-West-Africa/dp/1550226657)** > > The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa \[Peart, Neil\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984/34 "2021-01-17T06:39:37Z")
I suppose there is black humor and then there is Black humor. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-a-new-thing/854984.md?page=1)