Hello,
recently I’ve noticed something in a few books I was reading, namely, people of colour being referred to as “Black” etc. with a capital letter, while white people were referred to as “white” with a small letter. This was the case in “Summer sons” by Lee Mandelo and “The very secret society of irregular witches” by Sangu Mandanna. I was confused why this was so I’ve googled and found this:
>Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalised. 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, capitalise terms such as “Native American,” “Hispanic,” and so on.
>
>\-American Psychological Association
I haven’t seen anyone comment on this and I am curious why that is? At first I thought it was just a spelling mistake, but it kept happening so it must be on purpose. But why?
For context, I am from a European country where 98.2% (not 99.9%) of the population is the same race so we don’t really discuss racial issues on a national level.
edit: Thank you everyone for your replies. For anyone else who is confused by this like me, user starvaliant (thank you!) provided these links which explain this spelling practice:
[https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/glossary/african-american-african-american-black-2/](https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/glossary/african-american-african-american-black-2/)
[https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/glossary/white-white/](https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/glossary/white-white/)
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by Relevant_Choice1416
23 Comments
This is more of a grammar rule than anything else, and honestly, I’m not sure the average Joe has ever really needed to pay attention to it. Evidently, the APA, a major source of rulings for American English specifically for attributing to sources and authorship, argues they are proper nouns.
That aside, American English is more proper noun friendly than some other languages, alongside other capitalizing rules. For instance, we’ll capitalize nationalities (e.g. You, OP, are European.) where some languages like French and Spanish do not (Tu, OP, eres europeo.)
Black has a capital B as it is defined culturally, in that it describes western people descended from the African diaspora by the Atlantic slavetrade. These people had ancestors from all over Africa, but lost their varied cultural and religious heritage. They had different languages and customs etc but were collected and redistributed (sold!) purely because of their being black. Consequently they had to band together and form a new identity, which is what we think of as Black in the western world. They invented new names, fashions, music (jazz then rock n roll then Hip Hop hop!), and religions etc to redefine themselves and find new common ground.
White people are not grouped that way as they are more regularly socially grouped by nationality or religion, there is no homogenous white group. You have Irish, Scandinavian, Germanic whatever. White Europeans haven’t been forcibly (violently) ‘restructured’ in the same way, to create a single culture we can call White.
Apart from the very obvious landmine of “Black” being capitalized but “White” not (the poor excuse is that capitalizing white is used by white supremacists) It’s also, frankly, grammatically incorrect.
African-American = two continents, capitalized.
Asian = capitalized, continent.
Black and white should not be capitalized. Native /maybe/, but only if you want to specify “Native” as in “indigenous” and not “native”, like, native to the area. “She’s native.” Not capitalized.
Hispanic is from Hispania…you know…the name Spain was once called, a country. Latino = from Latin American (a continent!) Colors shouldn’t be capitalized. Fight me.
As someone who works in medical writing, we follow APA 7th rules on both “Black” and “White.” But I have heard some writers outside of that context wonder if capitalizing “White” is the right move, especially with all the CHUDs out there who revel in the magnificence of a kitbashed “White” identity.
To play on the posts above, while I believe “White” in America has led to the loss of distinct cultural identities, that came from the deliberate establishment of a hegemonic identity, rather than the forceful consolidation of cultures into one collapsed identity. There’s a lot of discourse on how long it took Irish and Italian people to be welcomed under the umbrella of “White.”
I say Black and White, I’m mixed-race and it doesn’t make sense to me to not capitalize both, but I’m not the spokesperson for any race and it’s really a matter of preference
If I recall correctly, in an episode of his Lexicon Valley podcast, John McWhorter points out “White,” with the capital letter, was first used by racist white people to connote a superiority of the white race, which is one reason some people avoid its use. I wasn’t able to find the exact episode though, sorry
I was always taught that Black is a race, as is Caucasian. Capitalized. White is not a race, but a description, therefore not capitalized.
Jamaican runner Usain Bolt has been called African American several times by newsreaders.
—–
Edited to clarify Bolt is purely Jamaican, my mistake adding any British (colonizer) connection.
Overall, it’s racist against Black people to capitalize Black but not White.
It treats White people as a default, whereas others need special designations.
And all the same justifications for treating Black people as one group apply to White people as well – for example, a person of color would have a similar feeling when seeing someone with that skin color whether the White person is from the US or Australia or South Africa.
Im black and lowercase black so it’s black “person” and not “Black” person. Black is an adjective not a race. Idk what the justification could even be.
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The Chicago Manual of Style determines and defines grammar standards for the US. MLA and APA are derivatives of the Chicago Manual of Style.
Traditionally, they have not capitalized black or white when referring to race/ethnicity. But due to recent cultural shifts, they have changed that.
You can read about their decision here:
[https://cmosshoptalk.com/2020/06/22/black-and-white-a-matter-of-capitalization/](https://cmosshoptalk.com/2020/06/22/black-and-white-a-matter-of-capitalization/)
Ultimately, it will depend on the author and editor(s). The main key is consistency throughout the work. If you’re going to ‘break the rules’ or work in a ‘grey area,’ you have to be consistent with your decision.
I worked as an editor on my university’s publications and school journals for a few years.
It will be down to either the author’s preference or their publisher’s house style guide.
A good resource with explanations of the thinking behind it is diversitystyleguide.com. These two entries elaborate on it quite a bit:
https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/glossary/african-american-african-american-black-2/
https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/glossary/white-white/
It’s worth noting that this capitalisation is only done in the United States and Canada. The rest of the English-speaking world does not capitalise Black or White when referring to people.
In the summer of 2020, the New York Times declared they would capitalize “Black” for cultural values and not just as a racial signifier. This was pretty much during the George Floyd protests and COVID shutdowns.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html
Before that, I saw it usually lowercase and usually Black writers themselves would only capitalize it.
Good ol racism
Because some people think it’s cultural even though black people have vastly different cultures so it doesn’t actually make sense
It’s just straight-up racism. I think the AP has it in their style guide.
It’s excused as being because Black people have been oppressed, while White people are privileged, so the word “White” should be written “white” to compensate.
Because Americans are completely obsessed with race and, to a lesser extent, ethnicity. Black and white (White?) are such crappy descriptors. According to the APA a Russian can be labeled with the same label as an Irish or Italian person. They are all “White”. The same goes for Jamaican, Surinamese and Madagascarian people: all black (Black?) according to the APA.
I really don’t know why they don’t just use ethnicity as the main indicator with skin color as an adjective. Like black South-African.
I don’t get it. When someone here explains it’s because of the homogenous culture and people then point out that a) black people do have differing cultures, even within the US and b) white people do have a somewhat homogenous culture in the US, people switch and say „no no, it’s about the *experience*, but then the same point still stands. Even white people have a shared experience in the US, if you wanna call it white privilege or something else. And they do have a similar culture, the ones not immigrating to the US at least. As an outsider I‘d say the US has their own culture.
To me it’s the same wishy-washy explanation as to how people consider someone from Hungary white for example, while others don‘t. Just points out that race is a social construct that is based on pseudo science and needs to be gone. It has no purpose other than to divide us even further. We only need „race“ as physical descriptors sometimes and there we should stick to physical features like skin tone. People can choose ethnicities for themselves and identify with a culture, I‘d say that’s enough and more clear than whatever this is.
When I’m writing about race, I use Black and White (capitalized). If I’m mentioning white supremacy, it’s lower case out of pointed disrespect.
While it’s valid grammar observation, races do not exist and is a dispensable concept to refer to other human beings. It’s a toxic residue and should not be invested in.
The capitalization of Black is somewhat recent, but using that convention as how we refer to races, with capped names—Black, Asian, Native American—then White should also be capped, and I have recently edited a book using that logic.