# Why capitalize "Black"? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 1, 2023, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455 "2023-01-01T09:50:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/81 "2023-01-01T20:51:45Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Here’s Romesh Ranganathan using it in a tweet: > > > Can you only like one brown comedian at a time? I don’t have full context there, but from what I can see it’s in the context of a “token brown person for woke PC purposes” type of conversation. It looks like exactly the mocking _ironic_ usage that I was talking about. It’s the implication that the ignorant person the tweet is directed at (so far as i can tell it’s a hypothetical “you” rather than directed at a specific person) sees a diversity of ethnicities as an _undifferentiated mass_ of “brown” people defined only by non-Whiteness. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/82 "2023-01-01T21:21:34Z")
I’ve seen Brown used a lot, but I’m in SoCal, and the usage is almost exclusively for Mexican-Americans and people from Central and South America. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/83 "2023-01-01T21:22:32Z")
I wouldn’t characterize that as _ironic_ usage, myself. And no, that tweet is directed at a particular real person, the Andrew Salter he @ed. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/84 "2023-01-01T21:27:03Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I wouldn’t characterize that as _ironic_ usage, myself. As a Brit who is well attuned to British irony and sarcasm, I’m fairly sure you’re wrong. I haven’t lived in the U.K. for 15 years, so I’m certainly open to the possibility that things may have changed. And of course it may be completely different in other English-speaking cultures. But so far as I’m aware calling someone a “brown person” in the U.K. is so highly offensive that it’s a caricature, it would be _assumed_ to be ironic unless the speaker were a drunk racist 80-year-old. In everyday speech (I don’t know about academic terminology) I don’t think any group self-identifies as “brown” except in the ironic manner (to mock ignorance) that I think is exemplified in that tweet. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/85 "2023-01-01T21:33:58Z")
The world is far more than just the USA. The rationale for capitalizing the b in black fails to take that into account and leads to ridiculous contradictions. I don’t capitalize adjectives if the adjective is a color. Just like I wouldn’t capitalize the ‘f’ in female or the ‘m’ in male. People are far more complex than an arbitrary identity and groups are far too complex to lazily reduce them to a supposed homogenous set aside from the very limited property that qualifies them as members of the group to begin with. To suggest that there is a vast array of properties for a diverse group of people that are common merely because of the commonality of skin tone strikes me as a harmful stereotype. The real reason major press and media took the stance they did was not because of deep reasoning. It was because it was an opportunity to jump on a band wagon after the murder of George Floyd. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/86 "2023-01-01T21:43:12Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > As a Brit who is well attuned to British irony and sarcasm, I’m fairly sure you’re wrong. I don’t think he’s being _entirely_ ironic. There is, on one level, the whole, “Racists can’t tell the difference between someone who’s Hispanic, versus Indian, versus Arab. To them, we’re all ‘brown’ people,” in which context identifying as “brown” would be ironic. But there’s also, “Given that racists can’t tell the difference between different ‘brown’ people, there’s a commonality of experience with being non-white in a predominantly white society that is actually valid and useful for building alliances and sharing resources between different minority groups.” And if you want a label to describe that group of people, well, “brown” is right there… I don’t recall ever hearing anyone refer to themselves non-ironically as “brown” as a singular identifier, but I have heard lots of unironic references to “brown people” as an unironic umbrella term for people who have been subject to racism against non-whites. I think it might be on the same trajectory that “queer” went through, from ironically “reclaiming” a slur, to being a useful catch-all term for allied groups with similar, but not identical, civil rights concerns. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/87 "2023-01-01T22:29:28Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I would certainly be shocked to hear anyone described unironically as a brown person in everyday conversation. …I’m brown. I’m Samoan. And Māori. We’ve called each other brown since-forever. > [@Riemann](#): > > I don’t think any group self-identifies as “brown” except in the ironic manner You would be wrong. Here is a video about a movie called “Brown Boys” that includes plenty of uses of the word “brown” unironically. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/N2PezN8PNnc/maxresdefault.jpg "NZ-Samoan film Brown Boys") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2PezN8PNnc) ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/88 "2023-01-01T22:31:14Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Yep, so if you’re saying “African” instead of “Black”, you’re excluding some of them. I’m confused. Which ones? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/89 "2023-01-01T22:40:19Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > You would be wrong. I would, except for the fact that you conveniently clipped this part of what I said to enable your smug gotcha: > [@Riemann](#): > > I haven’t lived in the U.K. for 15 years, so I’m certainly open to the possibility that things may have changed. **And of course it may be completely different in other English-speaking cultures.** ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/90 "2023-01-01T22:44:11Z")
The [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2020/07/29/washington-post-announces-writing-style-changes-racial-ethnic-identifiers/) uses both Black and White. > The Washington Post will uppercase the B in Black to identify the many groups that make up the African diaspora in America and elsewhere. > The use of Black is a recognition and acknowledgment not only of the cultural bonds and historical experiences shared by people of African heritage, but also the shared struggles of the descendants of enslaved people, families who immigrated generations ago and more recent immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and other corners of the world. > > Stories involving race show that White also represents a distinct cultural identity in the United States. In American history, many White Europeans who entered the country during times of mass migration were the targets of racial and ethnic discrimination. These diverse ethnicities were eventually assimilated into the collective group that has had its own cultural and historical impact on the nation. As such, White should be represented with a capital W. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/91 "2023-01-01T23:01:26Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I would, except for the fact that you conveniently clipped this part of what I said to enable your smug gotcha: …full quotes, for context: > [@Riemann](#): > > I don’t know what you mean by “the sphere of identity politics”. As a technical term in academia? > > I would certainly be shocked to hear anyone described unironically as a brown person in everyday conversation. As a Brit, that’s something I’d associate with the racism compounded by ignorance of \>3 generations ago. I don’t think I’ve _ever_ heard it in the U.S., the racists here tend to make their ignorance apparent by mis-guessing someone’s ethnicity in their choice of derogatory epithet. > > I do see from a quick google that there are a few situations where people now or historically may have self-identified as brown, obviously I’ve never encountered any in my own life, I guess I just have the association with racism. > [@Riemann](#): > > Is brown used in anything other than a derogatory sense? I’m not sure it’s really even used by racists, I’ve most often heard it used to _mock_ racists for how they view POC generically, lacking any awareness of their actual ethnicity. I would be shocked to hear someone actually described as a “brown person” unironically. > [@Riemann](#): > > I don’t have full context there, but from what I can see it’s in the context of a “token brown person for woke PC purposes” type of conversation. It looks like exactly the mocking _ironic_ usage that I was talking about. It’s the implication that the ignorant person the tweet is directed at (so far as i can tell it’s a hypothetical “you” rather than directed at a specific person) sees a diversity of ethnicities as an _undifferentiated mass_ of “brown” people defined only by non-Whiteness. > [@Riemann](#): > > As a Brit who is well attuned to British irony and sarcasm, I’m fairly sure you’re wrong. > > I haven’t lived in the U.K. for 15 years, so I’m certainly open to the possibility that things may have changed. And of course it may be completely different in other English-speaking cultures. But so far as I’m aware calling someone a “brown person” in the U.K. is so highly offensive that it’s a caricature, it would be _assumed_ to be ironic unless the speaker were a drunk racist 80-year-old. In everyday speech (I don’t know about academic terminology) I don’t think any group self-identifies as “brown” except in the ironic manner (to mock ignorance) that I think is exemplified in that tweet. I didn’t “smugly” clip a single sentence that recontextualised what it was you were saying. I clipped a whole lot of sentences, as is common practice when posting on the internet. It was plainly obvious what you were arguing, and a single disclaimer won’t change that. This is an international board, and your experiences in the UK are valid. But don’t get offended when brown people (who are still living with the legacy of UK colonialism) tell you plainly that you’ve gotten it wrong about brown people. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/92 "2023-01-01T23:04:32Z")
> [@sciurophobic](#): > > > [@Washington Post](#): > > > > In American history, many White Europeans who entered the country during times of mass migration were the targets of racial and ethnic discrimination. These diverse ethnicities were eventually assimilated into the collective group that has had its own cultural and historical impact on the nation. As such, White should be represented with a capital W. Which neatly encapsulates the idea that the waves of e.g. Irish, Italian, and German immigrants which faced discrimination did not become Capital-W white until they’d been assimilated. Before that they were Those People, something unpalatable to White company. Regardless of the fact that nobody can tell e.g. immigrant Irish skin from e.g. native English skin. Nor immigrant German from native Dutch. Somebody upthread mentioned “a nice shade of mocha” a couple centuries from now. If we get there (and speed the day!) I guess we’ll all be Capital-W White then, despite there then being zero people actually the shade of current lower-case-w white people. That’s a sad commentary on what stupid monkeys we collectively are. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/93 "2023-01-01T23:04:42Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > I didn’t “smugly” clip a single sentence that recontextualised what it was you were saying. I clipped a whole lot of sentences, as is common practice when posting on the internet. It was plainly obvious what you were arguing, and a single disclaimer won’t change that. > > This is an international board, and your experiences in the UK are valid. But don’t get offended when brown people (who are still living with the legacy of UK colonialism) tell you plainly that you’ve gotten it wrong about brown people. It is completely unambiguous from what I wrote that I’m talking specifically about my own experiences the U.K. I explicitly acknowledged (more than once) that other cultures are different. You clipped those parts and _misrepresented_ what I said as a universal claim in order to tell me I’m wrong. I’m not going to dispute this further with you. People can read. I’m _interested_ in what you have to say from a different cultural perspective, but you make it difficult to listen when you persistently feel the need to be such a jerk about it. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/94 "2023-01-01T23:08:16Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I’m _interested_ in what you have to say from a different cultural perspective, but you make it difficult to listen when you persistently feel the need to be such a jerk about it. > [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …I’m brown. I’m Samoan. And Māori. We’ve called each other brown since-forever. > > > [@Riemann](#): > > > > I don’t think any group self-identifies as “brown” except in the ironic manner > > You would be wrong. > > Here is a video about a movie called “Brown Boys” that includes plenty of uses of the word “brown” unironically. …what part of this post do you consider being a jerk? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/95 "2023-01-01T23:09:37Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > What part of this post do you consider being a jerk? As I said, the part where you feel the need to misrepresent me as making a universal claim in order to tell me I’m wrong; rather than just adding your own perspective to the conversation. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/96 "2023-01-01T23:16:56Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > As I said, the part where you feel the need to misrepresent me as making a universal claim in order to tell me I’m wrong; rather than just adding your own perspective to the conversation. …I didn’t misrepresent you. Brown people call each other brown in the UK. > **[After coronavirus, black and brown people must be at the heart of Britain's...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/coronavirus-black-brown-people-britain-ethnic-minorities)** > > Ethnic minorities’ help to rebuild postwar Britain was erased. Today, as our doctors and nurses give their lives, we cannot have a repeat, says Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch > **[The black British history you may not know about](https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-52939694)** > > From the black Britons in Roman times, to Henry VIII's trumpeter and our very own bus boycott. > **[My Experiences of Being Brown: The Realities of Race and Racism in the U.K.](https://thoughteconomics.com/my-experiences-of-being-brown/)** > > I was only a child when my Mum and Dad took me to ride the 'space tower' at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.  This 48-metre-high rotating observation deck gave a panoramic view of all the attractions at the theme park, and seemed to be a great way to... None of that was ironic. You are just wrong. Brown people aren’t black. They aren’t white. We are brown. That’s why we call ourselves brown. It really is as simple as that. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/97 "2023-01-01T23:22:38Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > You are just wrong. And you _still_ seem incapable of adding anything to the conversation except in a jerkish confrontational manner. > [@Riemann](#): > > I haven’t lived in the U.K. for 15 years, so I’m certainly open to the possibility that things may have changed. How many disclaimers does someone have to make about the fact that they are talking about their own cultural experience and are open minded to hearing new information and other perspectives before you’re prepared to interact with them without being a jerk? I guess I have learned that I can accurately call you a _brown_ jerk without racial disparagement. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/98 "2023-01-01T23:27:36Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > And you _still_ seem incapable of adding anything to the conversation except in a jerkish confrontational manner. …its the fucking pit. What the fuck are you expecting? > [@Riemann](#): > > How many disclaimers does someone have to make about the fact that they are talking about their own cultural experience and are open minded to hearing new information and other perspectives before you’re prepared to interact with them without being a jerk? How about just admitting that your anecdotal experiences don’t appear to be reflective of the reality of the situation? Why are you being so jerkish about this? This was always a racist bait thread and it was started in the pit and I’ve got every fucking right to be angry about it. And if you are going to be spouting off blatantly ignorant opinions here and you think “you are wrong” is being jerkish then I will politely ask you to “take off the tone police hat” and kindly fuck all the way off. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/99 "2023-01-01T23:30:17Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > How about just admitting that your anecdotal experiences don’t appear to be reflective of the reality of the situation? I wonder how I might do that? Perhaps I could have said something like, um… > [@Riemann](#): > > I haven’t lived in the U.K. for 15 years, so I’m certainly open to the possibility that things may have changed. And of course it may be completely different in other English-speaking cultures. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2023, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455/100 "2023-01-01T23:31:58Z")
I alternate between caps for black depending on the context. I capitalize white only when referring to a certain subset of white people. I think it’s handy in referencing those who are starting to think, act, and vote as if they were members of a minority group, which they are. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-capitalize-black/977455.md?page=6)