It’s not rocket science. It’s not new. It’s not complicated. It’s not up for discussion or debate. It’s simple grammar and it’s been decided. Apparently we are slow to catch on. Let’s do better. If you need more, google is your friend.
Do you capitalize a person's race?
Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. Therefore, use “Black” and “White” instead of “black” and “white” (do not use colors to refer to other human groups; doing so is considered pejorative). Likewise, capitalize terms such as “Native American,” “Hispanic,” and so on.
For the record — anyone is free to capitalize white as well as Black when talking about groups of people or a person or a particular culture, etc. There is no penalty against it, but it is not required, and there are some legitimate reasons to consider not doing so. This article from the Columbia Journalism Review explains them, it’s worth a visit.
Why we capitalize ‘Black’ (and not ‘white’)
At the Columbia Journalism Review, we capitalize Black, and not white, when referring to groups in racial, ethnic, or cultural terms. For many people, Black reflects a shared sense of identity and community. White carries a different set of meanings; capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists.
In deciding on a styling, fusspot grammarians and addled copy editors generally fall back on a pair of considerations. The first is broad adherence to a general rule—like, say, the Chicago Manual of Style’s (§8.38) edict that “Names of ethnic and national groups are capitalized.” (Though Chicago still generally mandates lowercasing both black and white, it does include the proviso that the rule can be suspended if “a particular author or publisher prefers otherwise.”) The second thing we look for is attestation. In this case, it’s instructive to turn not to the largely lilywhite mainstream press (nor to the style guides that govern their renderings), but to writers of color and to alternative stylebooks. The Diversity Style Guide (2019), produced by Rachele Kanigel in consultation with some fifty journalists and experts, takes it as a given that Black ought to be capitalized. Sarah Glover, a past president of the National Association of Black Journalists, wrote in a recent piece for the New York Amsterdam News, a historically Black weekly, that “capitalizing the ‘B’ in Black should become standard use to describe people, culture, art and communities.” After all, she pointed out, “We already capitalize Asian, Hispanic, African American and Native American.”
www.cjr.org/...
Language is changing in the academic world as regards history and journalism, even as science deniers and history revisionists play recklessly with facts and censor true knowledge. The fact that academia continues to progress is a good thing. We are a progressive site. Our writing should reflect that.
Black with a capital 'B': Why it took news outlets so long to make a change that matters to so many
Slow change:
In 1930, American activist W.E.B. Du Bois was successful in getting the New York Times to start writing the word "Negro" with a capital N.
He had been campaigning for the change since the 1920s. He called the use of a "small letter for the name of 12 million Americans and 200 million human beings a personal insult."
Many Black people have been writing Black with a capital "B" since the 1960s, inspired by the Black Power movement started by civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael.
There have been calls for publications to follow suit for the past two decades.
The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement not only in the U.S. but in more than 60 countries worldwide, including here in Canada.
It’s true that a lot of the fervor and hope for racial change that occurred after the killing of George Floyd has died down. Tragically so. So many new worries, and yet Black struggles, over-policing, and unequal conviction continue. Let’s do our part to be sure this small yet important piece of progress isn’t going to be “taken back,” like so many things. They are taking books off shelves, forbidding the teaching of honest history! Let’s support this very sound decision and remember to capitalize the B when we are talking about Black folk, friends, communities and leaders.
Thanks for reading.