Not a loaded question and not an accusation of error. It was a line of enquiry precisely in keeping with what I’d already said about the usage being OK in some cases, not OK in others and the difficulty of coming up with a universal recommendation. I was interested in how you satisfy yourself that it is was a useful concept in the way that you apply it. It seems like you were not happy to be asked any further questions. Certainly not by me.
And what actually was my response to your answer in that case? That should tell you all you need to know about whether it was loaded or not.
But what is the point of that explanation? By your own admission you aren’t taking my words on their own merits are you? You assumed my posts were insincere from the off and responded unhelpfully accordingly. When I realised I wasn’t going to get any sort of a useful response I was ready to drop it but then comes the typical accusation of insincerity and a very strange reference to “the Empire”. I assume that is supposed to carry some sort of historical racial significance that applies to me.
I have a genuine question/request for advice (I haven’t read the rest of the thread so I apologize if this has already been asked/answered.). When do I capitalize Black? Do I say Eddie Murphy is a Black entertainer or a black entertainer? is there an easy “trick” for lack of a better term to use in these situations?
He’s a Black entertainer. When talking about culture or identity, capitalize. When you are actually describing a color (Eddie Murphy wore a black shirt) use the lowercase. It’s pretty rare to describe a person by color rather than identity, but if you wanted to say, “that man’s skin was so dark it actually looked black, not brown, like most Black people’s skin” you could use the lowercase.
Right. “Listen to people” is a great idea, and is orthogonal to the topic of this thread.
So far, your examples of listening to people seem to indicate that you called a South Asian guy with dark skin who isn’t Black, “Black”, and he objected. And somehow you thought that was related to whether to capitalize “Black”. That suggests you don’t listen to people, or don’t process what they say.
No, i don’t care that you claim i am wrong. i am aware that i smudged some of the details of your anecdote. It may have been a coworker, or even HR, who called the south Asian employee “Black”. The key point is that you somehow thought this was related to whether to capitalize the word when it’s used to describe people who actually identify as Black, and then went on to lecture a group of people having a reasonable conversation about the thread topic, based on your irrelevant story.
Never noticed or care about capitalizing either black or white. The one that grinds my goat are right wingers who think “country” should be capitalized, as in “I hate what Biden is doing to our Country”.
Of course you don’t. The facts of what I said are not important to you are they? It isn’t even a “claim” that you are wrong, you simply are flat-out wrong. You can’t even bring yourself to admit it.
But without an understanding of the facts how can you fully understand the point? As you’ve clearly shown, even with it written down in black and white and with the opportunity to go back and check you can’t be trusted to give an accurate reading of what I’ve said let alone give an open-minded and fair interpretation of what I mean.
The thread was not purely about people who positively self identify as capital B “Black” though is it? Clearly those who wish to have that applied to them are entitled to do so and we should respect their wishes. As I said, right at the beginning. (perhaps another thing you may want to refresh your memory of)
However It is also relevant to discuss those occasions when it is used for people for whom it doesn’t apply, for whom it is the wrong label, for whom it may even be offensive and inappropriate and how do you navigate those waters?
Those are relevant issues and what I said was relevant to that discussion.
Those having a reasonable discussion on that very topic included you me and others, no rancour, plenty of agreement, no problems with understanding and people making some of the same points that I was. No “lecturing” at all.
By not mislabeling them. Not by deciding to use a lower case version. Honestly, it’s totally irrelevant whether you capitalize the word if you are using it to describe people who don’t identify as Black (or black, although I’ve yet to meet anyone who has preference for “black”.)
You really really really don’t get it. Or you are pretending not to get it because you like to lecture people.
My big annoyance is how the U.S. military capitalizes “Soldier”. Other countries may have soldiers, but America has Soldiers with a capital S. Because they’re so badass.
You didn’t “smudge some details” you got it completely wrong. You had me being the person doing the mislabelling. That isn’t a “smudge”.
Even when referring to it a second time, (after you had time to check), you still got it wrong.
Correct, and what is the best way to find out how a person prefers to be (or not to be) labelled?
If that is what they prefer I really hope you would do so.
How does that square with your previous suggestion that we should not mislabel people?
If they prefer not be labelled “Black” you think it is irrelevant that you still insist on labelling them “Black” ? How does that work?
Let me be the second,
No, Elon Musk is not African American.
We do have term that’s specific to Americans descended from slaves, who, because of the specifics of that enslavement do not, unlike Elon Musk, know which country(s) in Africa their ancestors come from . . . African American.
Calling Whites born in Africa that emigrate to and become citizens of the United States African Americans is yet another example of, far more often than not, right-wing racism. It’s as if folks didn’t understand that Africa is a continent and not a country.
