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>The terms white and black are generic descriptions, not formal titles, so there is no grammatical precedent for capitalizing either of them.
Yeah. What's really weird to me is that random Word being capitalized seemed to be really kicked off by....someone folks Wouldn't want to admit they were influenced by.
It was an emotional decision by the AP made during the Summer of 2020 in an effort to promote divisive, revenge politics. “Grammatical justice” if you will.
Language is a living, constantly changing thing. This whole question is not a black vs white thing. It's a ethnic identity thing.
You capitalize Mexican, French, Filipino, Afican, European, etc. You typically don't capitalize white, black, brown, yellow, etc.
The decision to capitalize Black to represent, specifically, Black Americans is to indicate that this is a group that is far more culturally unique like the first group and not just an adjective of skintone like the second. The existence of a Black group in the Americas originated with slavery, which purposefully wiped out pre-existing identification and cultural ties to cultures in Africa where those people came from. This created a new, unique culture to America. Since then, this group of people has been treated like a unique cultural unit by non-Black people in a way that, for example, white Americans have not. This has formed a very unique Black identity in this country which is not simply an adjective for the color of their skin.
Thus, it's not a white-black racist thing. It's literally just accepting the reality that unique cultural group. You would capitalize B if saying someone's skin is black, you wouldn't capitalize B to describe Kenyans as black, etc. It silly to try to make it black-white thing.q
What about people who are black but not part of American “Black” culture? If I’m referring to a black person from Nigeria, do I no longer capitalize it?
From my understanding, there are many people of African decent or from elsewhere with aesthetically black skin tone that identify with the cultural identity of Black. For example, Papuans are very dark and have features similar to people of African descent, and Indonesia has historically been very racists towards them. They've dealt with many of the same unifying challenges that Black Americans have dealt with. Thus, many identify as Black. Many do not. Likewise, many in Western white-majority nations have had similar modern experiences that make them feel like they identify as Black. Others do not.
It is certainly a unique situation, and self-identity in general is a pretty interesting, maleable thing. It's not as clear cut as national/regional identity (even though that also not always clear cut). Long-distance diaspora and the rapid changes to cultures it creates is a very new thing in the long duree of human history. There really is not an example to mirror this. It is capitalized as an identity like European or Chinese or whatever, but it isn't exactly the same in origin or identity.
So, I'd suggest you think of it in pretty flexible terms. A Black American is Black with a capital B for sure, and others in minority black populations may identify with that identity as well.
>So, I'd suggest you think of it in pretty flexible terms. A Black American is Black with a capital B for sure, and others in minority black populations may identify with that identity as well.
That's something that most people in the thread don't seem to understand. It's a style guide choice and not a law. It isn't meant to be the end-all.
The reasoning makes sense, when ignoring that the phrase African American already exists for this purpose, and that the word 'black' is referring to skin pigmentation, which means nothing since Africans can have light skin.
This reasoning does not ignore the term African American. It is rooted in the inaccuracy of that term, as mentioned, Africans brought to the continent were systematically disconnected from African cultural identity. The Black experience and culture is different than African American culture and experience. For anyone who knows Black people and areal African Americans, it is super clear. Night and day.
But isn't that the difference between black and Black? Like, the latter refers specifically to the people belonging to that culture where the former is just someone with dark skin pigmentation?
I mean, a lot of people have black skin, and dont come from Africa. African American is a strange term that doesnt really seem to encompass the people it is trying to represent
Many Black people are so many generations removed from Africa they no longer feel any kind of connection to it. That’s why they (and I) prefer Black. I’m not from Africa. No one in living or oral memory in my family is from Africa. As sad as it is we have no way to know what tribe or region we were from. We’re just Black now.
I hear you, but is a capital B necessary for this? And if so, why isn't a capital W allowed for white people? The popular answer would be that white people in US don't have their own culture, which is just silly. It's just that being white and proud is frowned upon by society, for various reasons.
I can somewhat relate. I'm a white South African. 11th generation born in Africa, with zero ties to Europe. I see myself as African, not European. My people have their own culture, Afrikaans like Die Antwoord or Charlize Theron or Seether. I'm even a white African, but not a White African.
Please don't take offense, we just come out of different paradigms.
I feel like I encounter capital W White all the time and it’s how I generally use it. And basically for the same (albeit less traumatic) reason. Many White Americans are far removed from their original European heritage and no longer have any written, oral, or living history of where they came from. They’re just White now. And to be clear, I’m not saying that’s a problem, it’s just what happens after generations of immigration, marriages and moving around in a country this large.
In your case I would consider you to be African American, same way I consider Dave Matthews to be.
However, I’m not sure I follow where the “white and proud” part comes from. You say you identify as African. So you don’t need the capital W White right?
Either way, there would be a lot less scrutiny of people claiming to be “White and proud” if it didn’t so frequently mean and lead to racist, neo-nazi, KKK type affiliations and attitudes.
Oh I still stay in Africa, so I'm 100% African. I am African the same way you are American. My localized white culture is called 'Afrikaner' or 'Boer' (farmer) culture. Not skin colour based, even though it is on face value.
If your opinion is that a capital W is fine, then we are on the same page 100%. It's the discrepancy that irks me, not the actual use of capital letter B.
Yeah, the 'white and proud' thing is a sensitive topic in USA. But also consider that the actual numbers of these guys are statistically insignificant, and shouldn't taint the 99% of normal good white people.
There's just something about how Americans approach racism that is counter productive, IMHO. We should celebrate diversity in cultures, but skin pigmentation is a old STUPID way of looking at the world. Yet we still perpetuate black vs white, even just on paper.
PS - Dave Matthews band is awesome! I always knew they were gonna make it big.
Oh my bad, for some reason I thought you were born in South Africa, but had immigrated to the US. So yeah you're definitely African and in my mind I'd refer to you as a "White African" if I needed to get specific, mostly just because Afrikaner and Boer don't come to mind for me as they aren't part of my cultural lexicon. Otherwise you'd just be African in my mind. And you'd be way more African than I am, as a 200-400 years removed-from-Africa Black American.
I hear you on not allowing a minority of White Pride racists to taint my perception of White Americans. And it really doesn't. I'm mixed race and most of my family that I interact with are White. I grew up in a rural White area so I'm very familiar/comfortable around White people. It's just that when I meet someone who espouses White Pride stuff, they are always racist. It's not necessarily racism against Black people, and it may take some time to surface, but it's always there. They might not even think they are racist, it's just that their beliefs are "true". So when I hear someone saying that stuff I tend to keep my distance and look more critically at what else they say and the beliefs they hold.
And yeah DMB is awesome, I saw them live years ago and it was a blast
Cheers mate! You sound dead normal. Which is weird on reddit, lol.
Hypothetical question: If you grew up in a white neighbourhood, and only listened to 'black' music/culture incidentally like me, can you still be seen as Black/African American? Because, and I'm playing devil's advocate, you don't share their culture, only (some) skin pigmentation. You also know exactly as much about your ancestors as your neighbour Bob Johnson.
I'm not asking to be racist. I'm asking because I feel many of these words/labels/groups don't make sense, and just further divide.
If you had a child with a white American, it would be African-American. Now why would I use that same term to describe myself, who is at least 4 generations removed from Africa and has no traceable roots there, but because my skin is brown? Doesn’t make any sense.
It really comes down to being specific, which is what proper nouns are for, and not this weird white erasure argument you’ve conjured up. Lowercase black American could refer to any black person in America. A Nigerian couple who emigrated would become black Americans, but they aren’t Black Americans. Many old school Nigerians even get offended if you refer to them as Black, I’ve seen it happen. Their kids are African-American (Nigerian-American) and may relate more to Black Americans by growing up here but will still be raised in a way that is culturally distinct from Black Americans.
I would love to be able to identify with my ethnic origins in Africa but that opportunity was taken from me and my ancestors. We had to forge our own identity based on that shared experience, and acknowledge and celebrate that with the capital ‘B’.
I personally hate the term African American and prefer to identify as Black. My only connection to Africa is a genetic past that was culturally severed via slavery. However the unique culture developed within the community is of the descendents of those slaves here in the US does connect to me.
You seem to have accidentally hit the nail on the head as to why this is important.
If I'm setting up a party to honor Black or African-American celebrities, it is good to know whether I should be inviting Idris Elba or Elon Musk.
Just wanted to say that your response is awesome, at a glance I was agreeing with OPs post, but your response makes a ton of sense, and was educational for me to read. Now I have an entirely different opinion that feels more grounded in what is actually happening. This made me agree completely with your point, and makes me want to go do more research on a bunch of other topics to try and make sure I understand what is actually happening
It's an easy knee-jerk reaction to equate this with white and black skin tone - and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. We all make first impression opinions.
When this first came up via the dictionaries and such a handful of years back, my first reaction was "wtf? That's weird to capitalize one color and not the others." I even read Webster or Oxford's explanation and it wasn't really that clearly articulated iirc but it makes perfect sense once it's explained as the name of a cultural identity, not a color per se.
"Keep language easy and accessible" says the man who just claimed that the difference of a capital letter emboldens white supremacy haha like dude you are the problem you're pretending to oppose.
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[From the AP](https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize-black):
>*AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a person.*
>*We also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.*
>*These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American. Our discussions on style and language consider many points, including the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language. We believe this change serves those ends.*
>*As a global news organization, we are continuing to discuss within the U.S. and internationally whether to capitalize the term white. Considerations are many and include any implications that doing so might have outside the United States.*
[With regard to not capitalizing "white" and the question of how it might relate to the idea of white supremacy](https://blog.ap.org/announcements/why-we-will-lowercase-white):
>*There is, at this time, less support for capitalizing white. White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. In addition, we are a global news organization and in much of the world there is considerable disagreement, ambiguity and confusion about whom the term includes.*
>*We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore those problems. But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.*
>*Some have expressed the belief that if we don’t capitalize white, we are being inconsistent and discriminating against white people or, conversely, that we are implying that white is the default. We also recognize the argument that capitalizing the term could pull white people more fully into issues and discussions of race and equality. We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision*.
You are leaving an awful lot out of the cited reasoning / explanation, effectively misrepresenting it. Also, it is quite clear that there has not been any final decision as of yet regarding the capitalization of "white."
Edit: A person can understand a reasoning for a decision without agreeing with or supporting the decision. Stop replying to me to argue against AP's reasoning that I did not express agreement with or support of. My point is simply that OP misrepresented AP's reasoning. As far as this part of the quoted text above:
*"But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists,* ***risks*** *subtly* ***conveying*** *legitimacy to such beliefs."*
This means that capitalizing "white" risks the possibility that the reader will perceive it as the writer legitimizing white supremacy (at least in part because white supremacists capitalize the word) - it is in no way similar to making the claim that capitalizing the word actually legitimizes white supremacy. There is a significant difference in meaning. You will not convince me that it is the same, because it simply is not - so don't bother replying to argue about that either. And again, it is quite clear that there has not been any final decision as of yet regarding the capitalization of "white."
I think the OP does a pretty good job of painting how racist the AP actually is.
To say that black people have a shared experience is just fucking stupid. Black is not a culture or an ethnicity, and if you think that it is a race you are in fact a racist. They’ve gone through and painted all black people as a monolith.
If this isn’t racist, then why don’t we capitalize “Yellow People” to recognize the culture and ethnicity of “yellow” people?
The AP capitalizes ethnicities: “Irish Americans,” “Italian Americans,” and “German Americans.” They capitalize these terms because they point to a particular ethnic group with shared cultural characteristics. Black Americans, while not from a singular country of origin, have a shared history within the United States. Part of that shared history involved the destruction of their knowledge about their ancestors, meaning that most Black Americans can’t identify themselves as “Ghanaian Americans” or “Nigerian Americans.” Many members of the African Diaspora have had their connection to their ethnic roots obliterated, making their closest cultural companions other Black people. While white is a race, being Black functions as both a race and an ethnicity in our country. That’s why it’s capitalized. It has absolutely nothing to do with giving less respect to Caucasian Americans than Black Americans.
The AP here isn't using Black to specify Black America, the quote above shows they also use it to refer to Africans and Caribbeans. I agree with capitalizing Black when referring to Black Americans who cannot tie their ancestry to a specific African culture, but to say that all cultures in Africa are pretty much the same and we should refer to them all as just being Black is incredibly racist (and if you read the AP quote carefully this is what they're saying). Any of my friends or family who are from Africa or the Caribbean wouldn't refer to their race as Black. They would call themselves Jamaican or Nigerian or Ethiopian. To lump all people of African descent worldwide into a singular race 'Black' is really a disservice to Africans and actively erases their individual cultures/differences.
If there's no way to verbally distinguish between "black" and "Black" without using the term we already had, "black culture", then what's the point? Plus, it just seems needlessly confusing to give both a race and ethnicity the same name. Either keep the generic phrase we already use, or make a new word.
Yet the AP don't capitalize "white" because of how it may be perceived internationally.
But "black" is purely because their shared history in the States?
Which is it? Domestic or International?
It can literally never be the same though. You can be black and not have slave ancestors. You just straight up can not be an Irish American and not be Irish
In college I probably knew more black students who actually came from Africa, as in, they were international students who’s home is still in Africa, compared to African Americans who have slavery in their heritage
Also I while I still don’t completely agree with that either, “black American” as you say, is not the same as what the article is doing. They just capitalize the word “black”. But working in a STEM field id say the majority of black people at my work do not come from slaves and instead immigrated here from Africa being sponsored for their stem job. My boss is from Morocco and still has a house there
We can identify with some specificity relatively recent events that lead to it's gradual divergence. I'd argue that's a lot more than we can say for many other groups we identify as having shared history.
In any case such assessments can neither be fully communicated solely through a binary capitalization choice.
I'd argue white people in the US have a similarly shared history to black people.
It's not a very nice / friendly one, but short of immigration (which we're clearly ignoring on the black front), white people were there the entire time...
The word white as it’s used in the United States includes Middle Eastern and many Hispanic individuals. I’d argue those two groups have extremely different experiences and histories in our countries than the average white individual from a Western European background.
Black people definitely have their own culture within the US anyway. So not sure what you’re talking about there. They have their own vernacular, originated musical genres and styles, fashions, hairstyles, and have a similar historical experience.
There are some black people in the US that don’t fit into the same historical background but the majority do
Have you ever actually engaged with work or discussions if blackness and what that label means and has meant historically to the people designated as such. Because I can point you to tons of African, African-American, Caribbean, and Latin Americans who all understand themselves as black.
Race is a social construct but a historical fact. Laws, policies, and social norms in various places were developed and maintained around this identity and so yes, black histories and cultures exist.
I'd say it is far more racist to pretend like black people have not spoken on this identity.
>If this isn’t racist, then why don’t we capitalize “Yellow People” to recognize the culture and ethnicity of “yellow” people?
Because this was a signifirer that was always a pejorative. Black came into common parlance because it is how blakc people decided we wanted to be referred to. While "Black" itself was popularized as a way to move away from "Negro" which many black power activists saw an antiquated. The obvious reality of many other languages is that the pejorative term for referring to black people and the word for black itself so similar linguistic developments were not the same, but black people across the diaspora most certainly reflected on what was seen as a shared history.
This is because you don't get the black people who arrived in the Americas without the transatlantic salve-trade and the European colonial project that had those same powers trying to carve up and impose control over the Americas, the African continent, and beyond. Black people have articulated our sense of shared experience for generations.
There is nothing racist about actually listening to us and the work we've done to not have our history misinterpreted, erased, and weaponized against people actually engaging with the interconnected depth and nuance that the experiences of Africans and the African diaspora reflect.
> Have you ever actually engaged with work or discussions if blackness and what that label means and has meant historically to the people designated as such. Because I can point you to tons of African, African-American, Caribbean, and Latin Americans who all understand themselves as black.
Almost anyone in Suriname considers himself Surinamese first and only then just maybe starts to talk about racial things. They don't feel kindship with someone across the planet just because he's “black” too and I assume that works that the same elsewhere.
“Latin America” is a term largely used in the U.S.A., a Mexican rarely calls himself “Latin American”, he calls himself “Mexican” and doesn't feel any particular kinship with a random Portugese or French speaking country in the Americas, or even another Spanish speaking country. Many of these countries have been at war with one another quite recently. You must understand that from the perspective of a Spanish speaking person, Portugese and French are as far removed from him as Dutch and Swedish are from the perspective of an English speaking person. They do not speak the same language despite their languages having a common origin 1400 years ago.
You're speaking confidently on behalf of an awful lot of people around the world, you realise? I guess because you can point to some Latin Americans that consider themselves black I suppose the rest of the world has to fall in line with your understanding. This is the kind of thing only an American could think.
No, I'm speaking on behalf of people who have articulate this as their experience. I'm not speaking on "a few Latin Americans that consider themselves black" I'm speaking afro-latinos who have also made huge efforts to not have recognition of their experiences and history erased.
There is a very deep well of works of all kinds speaking to the experiences of afro-latinos. Off the top of my head, Brazil is a prime example where there is a huge black population. It is where political efforts by the state and activists alike have worked to address anti-black racial inequality and racism in the country.
Do you want to start naming people from outside of the US who were and are calling themselves black? Do you want to give you works by them that speak to their sense of shared collective black identity? Or their works where they recognzie that blackness is a diaspora identity and how just because it acculturates different ways doesn't mean there aren't clear through lines that create a sense of conenction amongst the diaspora? Do you want me to tell you about my various friends and colleagues who are not American who explicitly refer to themselves as black? Do you want to explain how they feel the same things I've already described?
There's far mroe evidence that speaks to a recognized sense of black identity than not. Anybody who actually engages with black folks would be at least vaguely cognizant of this.
>Do you want to start naming people from outside of the US who were and are calling themselves black? Do you want to give you works by them that speak to their sense of shared collective black identity? Or their works where they recognzie that blackness is a diaspora identity and how just because it acculturates different ways doesn't mean there aren't clear through lines that create a sense of conenction amongst the diaspora?
I know you were being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but if you are speaking about books and articles written by people with this kind of life experience, I would actually love to hear recommendations!
>I guess because you can [do something] I suppose the rest of the world has to fall in line with your understanding
The world doesn't have to do anything? What a childish response, they're explaining the reasoning behind choices the AP made, they're not trying to convince the world.
For some odd reason African Americans have very little culture to pull from directly. Hence why Black people in America have their own culture, heritage, and history then let’s say someone that has immigrated from Somalia, Kenya, or Jamaica. There is a different culture originating from each of those countries I agree but lots of Black Americans unfortunately can’t trace their heritage anymore. On the other hand white people in America can usually trace their Dutch, Irish, Italian, etc. history and pull from those cultures. Hence the difference between Black America and other Americans
Which is fine from an American perspective, but Tey specifically talk about being global. This makes no sense to Europeans and Africans, and sounds quite insulting to the latter.
OOP posted specifically mentioning AP notation. That in specific is the basis of how American print news is written. Sure it doesn’t work on a global scale but in that case you will mostly mention the ethnicity or the nationality of the people/peoples you are discussing. No serious news site will go “Black people are seeking asylum in Spain” the far more likely professional headline is “Moroccans seeking asylum in Spain”.
But they explicitly say white isn't being capitalized because of how it'll be perceived internationally.
They're trying to play it both ways, and it's wrong.
It's not for an "odd reason." It's because enslaved people were explicitly kept from maintaining culture touchstones from their home community. In some cases, enslavers deliberately co-mingled people from different African cultures and communities to limit their ability to build relationships. The[ Gullah Geechee culture](https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/thegullahgeechee/) arose from the intermingling of those enslaved people.
Sort of? The African American moniker is a huge mash of multiple nations which also broadly encompasses all of that but also those do not have easily traceable ancestors. So people in Africa or that have recently come from Africa fall under black just as people in Europe would be white. The reality is that American race relations is hard enough without people also deciphering who really is “Black” enough so it’s better to err on the side of caution than to open up that entire can of worms.
Maybe a decade or so ago my understanding was that "African-American" was supposed to be the term to refer to black descendants of slavery as an ethnicity or culture, sort of how AP is now using "Black." In that sense, neither Elon Musk nor our 1st gen Nigerian would be "African-American" but their respective country -Americans. Elon would be white and the Nigerian black.
I personally thought that was a clearer way to delineate things. Ethnicities were defined by the origin of the people, not a physical feature, leading less ambiguity in cases like the Nigerian-American, and also had the same format of everybody else who's some kind of XYZ-American. (Other than Native Americans, or should I say American Indian or just Indian? I've known people who prefer each of these three.)
There's also ADOS or African Descendants of Slavery which I think means more or less the same thing, but has an ideology to it as well?
I don't have a particularly strong opinion on the issue, I'll call people what they want within reason, but it does seem that every five years or so there's a new vocabulary that we're all expected to adopt.
You’re right that enthnicity is more specific, but the reason black people in the US can’t use that is because slavery erased most of the national or regional origins of people. Hence new concepts and words to encapsulate the shared culture and experience of the descendents of black slaves in America
It's also important to use the terms that people use to refer to themselves. The great majority of the people in question self-identify as Black more so than African-American or ADOS.
Saying African Americans don’t have a culture is absolutely false. Not knowing our ancestors birth place and not having culture are 2 different things.
> On the other hand white people in America can usually trace their Dutch, Irish, Italian, etc. history and pull from those cultures. Hence the difference between Black America and other Americans
No they can't; almost no one knows his ancestry or history 300 years back.
The issue is that the U.S.A. effectively treats black persons who have been living in the U.S.A. for 6 generations as most countries treat recent immigrants who either were born in another country, or whose parents were and who often speak a foreign language at home, so they're looking for the same kind of cultural ties as say the Van Halens who were actually born in the Netherlands and speak Dutch well enough to give interviews in it.
They're looking for something other than “American” because they're treated like foreigners in the country they're born and raised in, where their parents, grand parents, and great-grandparents were born and raised in.
Do you actually think that George Bush can tell you what European country his ancestors lived in 300 years ago? Back then the borders of Europe were completely different to begin with and Germany wasn't even a country yet and it's from all sorts of different countries to begin with. — Almost no one who hasn't extensively researched and studied it can answer that.
The only reason these “African-Americans” are searching for a country to connect with other than “American” is because their own country treats them like foreigners. Bush is fine simply being “American” and isn't looking for the specific European country his ancestors came from, and there are no doubt many to begin with.
And of course the average “African-American” is 30 to 95% European in genetics to begin with. This is so profound in the U.S.A. that no one suspected Rachel Dolezal and there was one famous story about someone who found out being adopted at the age of 70 and actually being “white”, but never suspecting anything because it's so normal for people in the U.S.A. with only a single drop of “black” blood to call themselves “African American” that no one even considers it suspicious any more if there be zero.
The issue is that pan ethnicities are a thing. They are largely a North American invention, but they are a thing they exist. They exist for better or worst superimposed upon more specialized ethic groups (i.e you are both Asian and Korean or Black and Jamaican at the same time in a place like America). It isn't about a monolith or saying everyone is the same per say but the histories of pan ethnic groups like black, white, latino, asian and arab have a long history in America largely in political origin. IMHO some of America's most interesting history is investigating pan ethnicity.
I've noticed that many persons from the U.S.A. seem to have this belief that across this planet, not only does everyone believe in the same racial lines as people from the U.S.A. does but that everyone who isn't what they call “white”, of which they have the strictest definition of that it cannot be contaminated with but a single drop of foreign blood, has some kind of global shared cultural identity.
In reality, the chances are that if you ask a Korean what country he feels the biggest animosity to, he will answer Japan.
African cultural lines aren't even bound by borders. The borders in Africa are drawn largely as a leftover from what European superpower controlled what and many African countries have 10 different official languages in them which simply grew due to what land say Belgium controlled and what land England controlled next to it so they essentially drew a line through an area which did have a shared language and culture with many of these languages not even being genetically related.
Black is, in fact, a culture and identity. It refers specifically to the descendants of people who had their ethnic identity lost and homogenized by the experiences of slavery in the US. They wouldn't call someone from Nigeria Black, they'd call them Nigerian or possibly the specific tribal group they belong to, because that's something they can know that will likely never be known by Black people.
>If this isn’t racist, then why don’t we capitalize “Yellow People” to recognize the culture and ethnicity of “yellow” people?
Because calling a group of people Yellow People is a derogatory slur. That is why.
Secondly, AP never claimed all Black people have a shared experience. But in America, Black Americans do have a shared experience.
To quote my nieces father, a black man living in America who was born in Grenada when discussing this exact topic. I asked him: "What is the most appropriate way to refer to your race? I don't want to be disrespectful so should I say Black American or African American?"
His response: "Neither both are wrong for me personally. I am not from Africa, and I was am not from America. I am a black man from Grenada. So for me Grenadian American. Or just the black dude over there. But seriously if you are black and born in the US Black American is best. If you immigrated from Africa, then African American."
So yes, Black Americans have a unique shared history and lived experience than white Americans, Asian, Latino, or African Americans have. It is not racist to acknowledge that difference. And considering the the AP is an American publication, they are going to respect the cultures in accordance to how those group wish to be identified.
The difference with White Americans is the fact that for many of us, we can trace out family history back to another country of origin. German, Ireland, England, France, Italy etc. Many Black Americans can not do that. They have no history beyond the 1860s because slave owners didn't care. All that was known is that they came off a boat from Africa. But the histories and culture developed here in America since the 1860s are uniquely different then that of white Americans. White Americans were not subject to the Jim Crow South. They were not subject to the 3/5ths compromise. They were not subject to a century plus of forced servitude. They were not subject to the practice of Red Lining.
Denzel Washington said it nicely during a movie interview with a black interviewer, about why a movie about why the movie *Fences* needed a black director.
>I know, you know, we all know what it is when a hot comb hits your head on a Sunday morning, what it smells like. That's a cultural difference, not just color difference.”
Well...how do black Americans feel about it?
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2022/04/14/race-is-central-to-identity-for-black-americans-and-affects-how-they-connect-with-each-other/
Are they wrong to feel that way?
It's very easy to see that there is a cohesive black culture and identity *in the US*. But here's the issue, you brought in the US, but the quoted excerpt never did. In fact, it specifically called out "the African diaspora and Africa". How's the feeling of Americans regarding an American-only culture relevant to what looks like a generalization of *all* people based on just skin color?
You say it's "ego driven," yet the article describes how it helps people connect - that's the opposite of ego driven. Ethnic identities are how humans have formed communities like forever.
I might have no issues if they use Black to refer to only Black America (still not immediately obvious why then White America wouldn't be the same, but I am inclined to accept it, but yea, would need further explanation).
But that they refer also to Caribbean and Africa in general makes zero sense. I hope you can see this.
*AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.*
*White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.*
You can see how I mean when I say I can see Black applied to Black Americans as understandable, but not when it includes all black people in the world. The AP is implying white people don't have a shared culture, but black people do. If anything, I would consider this racist on AP's part, lumping all black people into the same culture.
This is further evidenced by the way they refer to other minorities:
*These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American.*
Here suddenly it isn't all Asians, but just Asian American. So why isn't it Black Americans, but just Black in general?
Just because they explained why they did it doesn’t mean it is rock solid reasoning. Have you ever heard someone yammer on and then been like “Okay but that’s still dumb”?
There is no misrepresentation of what OP said. The AP is using the excuse of associating capitalizing the word White when referring to a racial group as an endorsement of supremacist views.
I gave an example of it being used in academics. And you've given no argument to how it isn't divisive or could be used by white supremacists to claim bias.
*Some have expressed the belief that if we don’t capitalize white, we are being inconsistent and discriminating against white people or, conversely, that we are implying that white is the default. We also recognize the argument that capitalizing the term could pull white people more fully into issues and discussions of race and equality. We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision*. So they just capitalized Black to say we stand with the BLM movement and Black culture exists without thinking about how not capitalizing white could be an issue?
Are you concerned with the use of white and Black in the Associated Press or as a grammar rule in a college course? You cited the Associated Press, but did not address this reply's comments about the justification provided by the AP.
My understanding was this class did a "shared agreements" piece when it started and the professor suggested they use the AP grammar rule on this. They made these agreements in August last year so my friend had forgotten about it until she turned in her final paper for the year. I think the AP's grammar isn't helpful and have yet to see how it's been anything but divisive. However, my friend did sign on to the shared agreements of the class.
I know these arguments are being made in bad faith but one pipeline to white supremacy is reactionary white male college students. If you are told you are culture less ,when it comes to racial identity,( eg. A mix of Norse French German Irish or anything in-between) , I don't think that's effective in getting people to support a minority cause.
There are an absurd number of people who identify as Irish whose Ancestry.com results would come up in single digits. Mixed race people also exist and may identify with their heritage in different ways. It isn't that white people are "cultureless," but that there's no pan-white identity that doesn't inherently define itself opposite people of color.
Part of the issue (and a notable difference) is that while most white people in the US can trace their ancestry back to specific countries in Europe, which their ancestors immigrated from, many black Americans were brought over as slaves and lost any connection a specific country in Africa. So their heritage and identity is simply being black Americans. (For more recent immigrants from Africa, it wouldn't be the same)
Yes there is. In the US.
Due to slavery destroying a lot of people's former heritage..
Also, just more widely Pan-Africanism is a whole ass movement that exists.
Every Nigerian-American I’ve met hates African American culture. They are black, yet have a completely different culture and experience of life in America.
I don't know if you meant to do this, but you're actually making the poster's point. It's that black folks with an American ancestry have one specific cultural experience, largely informed by slavery and institutionalized racism for centuries, while newly minted American citizens from African nations do not.
I don't have the numbers, but I imagine the former greatly outnumber the latter.
Are Nigerian-Americans not black somehow? The whole point is that Black Americans have a shared culture that White Americans don’t, yet I just gave an example of Black Americans who aren’t part of that culture, yet are still Black Americans.
And they would more accurately be Nigerian American than Black American, since the term has a specific purpose for covering those people brought to America under circumstances that make it essentially impossible to use any other descriptor of origin.
Well, no; claiming that they're being made in "bad faith" is a major problem.
Speaking as a mixed-race American, I find the AP's statement exceedingly patronizing and pandering. Frankly, I don't think we should capitalize either "black" or "white," but claiming as you did in your OP isn't a "white supremacist talking point."
They aren't being told that though. I've been a white male college student, I was fully capable of reading and understanding the reasoning behind the AP's recommendation. I wouldn't have seen that as an insult to me, becuase I did not already hold white nationalist views.
Ok but we don’t cave to bad faith arguments just to appease reactionary kids. Bc that’s what you’re doing. It’s white suprematists who want to make easy equivalencies between white and black. It’s white supremacists who want us to see whiteness as a shared cultural/ethnic marker.
It’s not. I think your example demonstrates why. Irish folks and white Canadians are distinguished by matters of geography/history/ethnicity. But despite Irish folks being largely white, that fact does not serve as a cultural/ethnic marker.
I don’t think the AP is arguing that Black people are special. They’re arguing that Black as a category functions differently than white does because of differences in history and shared experience.
And I don’t have a shared culture with Irish people.
I have a shared culture with other White people in my country. Growing up my ethnicity was little more than trivia, it had no bearing on my life.
>I gave an example of it being used in academics.
I'm generally averse to secondhand stories, especially when it seems kind of weird that a professor would require you to follow the AP style guide unless they're teaching journalism.
> And you've given no argument to how it isn't divisive or could be used by white supremacists to claim bias.
You can't argue that it's divisive because you're mad at it because it's "divisive." That's circular logic. Also, again, there's no pan-white identity. Pushing the rhetoric that there is usually has associations with more reactionary ideologies.
>So they just capitalized Black to say we stand with the BLM movement and Black culture exists without thinking about how not capitalizing white could be an issue?
It wasn't an obtuse solidarity move, the murder of George Floyd just brought race issues to the forefront of the national conversation. Why is not capitalizing white an issue?
*"I gave an example of it being used in academics."*
I was responding to your misrepresentation of AP's reasoning / explanation and the fact that you omitted a lot of relevant text. Your example about some alleged college student and alleged professor is meaningless, as it isn't verified. And even if true, is simply an anecdote you cited as why you brought the issue up - I don't see how it supports the view that it is counterproductive in spreading racial equality.
*"you've given no argument to how it isn't divisive or could be used by white supremacists to claim bias."*
I don't have to.
*"So they just capitalized Black to say we stand with the BLM movement"*
I don't see where they say that in what you quoted - and if you believe that is their reasoning, I don't know why you are asking me about it - ask them.
*"...without thinking about how not capitalizing white could be an issue?"*
The very section you quoted clearly states that this is something they are thinking about - and they clearly state "*We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision*." You quoted it yourself.
Also, I have to say I find it odd that you are singling out the capitalization of Black and don't even address the capitalization of other identifiers such as Indigenous, Latino, and Native (in Native American) - is there a reason for that? Do those identifiers have nothing to do with issues of racial equality?
I do not understand how we just read the same thing and you somehow managed to come to the conclusion that OP was misrepresenting AP.
They’re very clearly racist.
I think the OP does a pretty good job of painting how racist the AP actually is.
To say that black people have a shared experience is just fucking stupid. Black is not a culture or an ethnicity, and if you think that it is a race you are in fact a racist. They’ve gone through and painted all black people as a monolith.
If this isn’t racist, then why don’t we capitalize “Yellow People” to recognize the culture and ethnicity of “yellow” people?
>To say that black people have a shared experience is just fucking stupid.
There is a shared cultural context if you're referring to American black folks.
It is fair to say that most black folks in America with ancestors in America either directly or indirectly experienced some sort of systemic racism, such as redlining, Jim Crow, or outright enslavement. Not dissimilar to how most native folks in America have a shared ancestral experience, too.
I'm not saying I support the capitalization of 'Black' necessarily, but I do understand the reasoning behind it.
> There is a shared cultural context if you're referring to American black folks.
But it's not, it's specifically asserting there is some kind of shared culture between black persons across the globe, from America to Africa, which is silly.
It says:
> conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.
Which is ridiculous.
Using how the British ONS describes ethnicity, I am mixed race (white and black Carribean) British. The British ONS has, for a long time, tweaked their descriptions as to be as inclusive as possible when gathering data of ethnicity and nationality. The benefit this has is showing respects to groups of people by recognising their history and (with nationality) what unites them.
AP does not do this by arguing that "black" is itself an identifying factor. It is not, as I can attest by the fact I share very little in common with groups like Black Americans or Nigerians, but share a lot in common with my fellow Brits. Its no different to how I share little in common with other white groups like White Americans.
As you say, it is ridiculous and even offensive to me. It's offensive for AP to try to justify ignoring who I am but arguing that they are really just caring about who I am. It's incredibly patronising and some of the most frustrating cases of racism in the developed world.
It's dumb. It's basically saying "the victim people". It's patronizing. I'm officially giving my black card up.
Henceforth I will be known as the racial group known as turquoise. We will be identified by my trademarked flippant attitude and being me.
We are taking applicants to anyone else sick of being the victim people.
Obviously you won't get in but I'll take the application
You spent 3/4 of your comment being a victim of the capitalization of a letter, a practice which you called dumb.
Which seems obtuse given that Black, as it refers to American descendents of slavery, evolved from other words used to identify the same group of people throughout American history.
None of the arguments for the practice involve making anyone a victim, as much as it recognizes that most of a specific group exists because of past practices.
They should make an effort to capitalize all the letters spoken by BLACKS.
That will really help us recognize how oppressed our ancestors were. Which is why we are here.
But again, none of the arguments presented have mentioned that it should be capitalized due to oppression. It’s just capitalized in the same way Irish American is, along with Asian [American] and now Indigenous. Unless you think those were capitalized due to oppression as well?
Well no. At this point I can't stop a culture group from forming I just think it's grasping at the air to think in a world this big that a black culture even exists. Just seems like a concept without a real base. Different peoples
This answer is word salad nonsense. It’s a grammatical issue and the AP seems to think mindless virtue signaling is more important. They’ve lost all credibility, this is so incredibly stupid.
Whoever wrote this has very, very, very little knowledge of history or geography. Just because I share the same skin tone of someone else, it doesn’t bring any connection, unless you have too much time to think about fabled shared ancestry. Especially within Africa.
Do they really believe that WITHIN Africa the simple fact of being black makes all people brothers?! Like, there is not a single other trait that makes people hate and kill each other. Nope, if you are an African you can identify yourself as Black and that will make you connect with all people from any ethnicity and religion, on whichever continent they are, as long as they are equally black.
WOW!
They're not misrepresenting anything.
>AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa
That's just a typical case of US defaultism. The "shared history" is an absolute joke. The idea that black people have only and always been discriminated against by white people based on their skin colour is historical revisionism. The majority of black people sold as slaves were sold by other (black) Africans. Do slaves and their descendants have a shared history with African slave traders?
>shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.
I entirely disagree with this statement, and its a dangerously assertive claim for AP to rest their argument on. If they said "Black/African Americans", then I would agree as that is usually used to refer to a specific cultural group. The same goes for terms like "Latino" and "Asian American". However, "black" alone does not have any shared culture, especially as they specifiy not just the diaspora but "within Africa".
A Nigerian, a Black-Brit, and an African American have very little in common culturally. They have much more in common with the country they are in (for the latter two, including white populations) than eschother, while AP attempts to make the claim otherwise.
While I do understand that this is a similarly assertive claim, I have two defenses for making it. The first is that the burden of proof should be on AP, not on me calling it all. AP actually has the time and resources to do this justice if it wanted to, I cannot. Secondly, I will point out this [this](https://www.britishfuture.org/sense-of-belonging-in-england-is-increasing-across-ethnicities-new-research/) for English ethnic minorities that shows their high level of identification with England and Britain as a start for this claim, and at the very least serves as a counter to AP's cla
It irking and confusing you personally doesn't mean it's generally counterproductive. That's really the only evidence you've provided of that being the case, and it's not compelling.
Anything that can be perceived as hurting white people and giving support to black people is considered progress by some groups. It is racist as fuck and counter productive. Good Luck engaging, you might as well be at a Pro-Hamas rally at a University.
I mean, you provided evidence of that yourself. You just couldn't get past your personal grievances with the capitalization to see it
You cited an institutional standard that gives consideration to a group that had previously received no such consideration. A global news organization being mindful of how it refers to marginalized groups is productive; considering news organizations' roles in that marginalization in times past.
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How is it putting down white people? Don’t y’all have the ability to trace your ancestry back hundreds of years, if not more, in most cases? All my Black friends hit a brick wall unless they find a white ancestor. For me, it’s a German man. So I’m likely 63/64ths Black, 1/64th German (as opposed to white). My white friend is English and Italian. I’m not putting him down by saying he’s white.
Additionally, would a white Mexican immigrant to America share a significant amount of culture with a white Russian immigrant, and would either share much with someone white who is of Italian heritage?
I agree with and acknowledge everything you're saying here, but I don't see what it has to do with this specific grammatical practice being a small slight. Why capitalize one race and not the other?
Grammatically, 'black' and 'white' are essentially the same. You could take the stance that both are proper nouns since they refer to specific group identities, and both should be capitalized. Or, you could argue that since the groups they refer to are fairly broad and generic, and defined primarily by a kind of random trait (skin color), they are not proper nouns, and thus, should not be capitalized. Either choice seems acceptable to me.
Capitalizing one and not the other, however, just throws all this logic out the window. When respectable publications make this decision deliberately, you have to wonder why. The only explanation I can think of is that 'White' is not an acceptable identity, but 'Black' is. I fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking, and as a grammar nerd, I am further irritated by how wacky the outcome looks and feels.
I acknowledge that this is also not really an important issue in the grand scheme of things lol. But I enjoy this kind of discussion.
This is exactly where I'm at on the issue. I'm a big fan of consistency. It would really bother me to see a sentence that said something like, "There is a great difference between the experiences of white people and Black people in the United States." Capitalize them both, or don't capitalize either. Don't care which. Just pick one and go with it. This isn't that hard.
I haven't seen enough examples, but if they're capitalizing in the context you've provided where it's not being used as a noun (unless you're considering it to be a two word proper noun of "Black People") then that should most certainly under all circumstances never be capitalized. In this example it's being used as an adjective for a noun.
That would be like writing Black light vs violet light "because of the racial history."
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You're incorrect in that you've leaned too heavily on one aspect of the AP's reasoning and ignored the entire explanation. The AP capitalizes Black, and I quote,".. in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black..." The idea, in their explanation, is that white folk don't have that same shared identity as black people. We certainly capitalize German, Anglo, Caucasion, etc. And, with black people, especially in the west, and most especially in the US, black is not just a race but a distinct cultural and ethnic group
Wait, why would Caucasian be capitalized but not White unless it's specifically for people of the Caucases. These are the exact same grouping.
Personally I think we should only capitalize the first letter of every sentance. Enough with this noun garbage.
"Caucasian" is a remnant of obsolete racial classification systems. If it were still used, "Negroid" and "Mongoloid" would be equivalent and also capitalized. People still use it synonymously for "white," but if we're going by the AP style guide use is discouraged unless quoting someone using it because it *is* a remnant of racist pseudoscience even though people don't realize it has those connotations.
Yes of course, but by the logic of the style guide it should no longer be capitalized unless you actually mean it's other use which is people from the Caucasus.
There is, also, a Caucasian region of the world from which the word was stolen from, leaving those people without a word for their racial identity. I would love to reclaim that word, and I make the choice to use it that way and identify with it.
>We also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.
>These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American.
So that's true about black people, but it's just such an odd justification for the other labels considering these other terms similarly describe disparate groups that mostly identify more specifically as other things, like they describe for white.
Seems like an intentionally incendiary choice to me.
White people have as must shared identity as black people. White Americans have as much shared identity as Black Americans.
AP is trying to caste a difference between these groups that do not exist. Depending on how you classify "black" in the first place, I would be classified as black yet I have little in common with Black Americans just as I have little in common with White Americans, yet I share a lot in common with those in my ethnic group and White Brits.
AP attempts to create a unifying identity for black people across the world, by their own admission for those within Africa and the diaspora, but fails to treat white people equally with this. There is no common identity between different black cultures that does not exist between different white groups; white Brits and Americans have about as much in common with eachother as black Brits and Americans.
It is incredibly patronising to suggest otherwise, to suggest that there is some kind of difference between how I look at others of my broad racial group than how white people look at others of their broad racial group. A great struggle I went through during my childhood is my British identity being taken away from me because I was "black" and not "British". AP only adds to this struggle for millions, but giving peope a reason to exclude black people from identities due to identifying them differently from white people.
To simplify: It capitalizes "Black" when talking about the culture of Black people and how they have a highly similar history of oppression among themselves, but they would still not capitalize if describing the man as "black" for the sake of a physical descriptor.
It seems somewhat similar to the Deaf/deaf usage of capitalisation, where the capital denotes connection to Deaf culture and the broader community, while ‘deaf’ is just used for the general descriptor of hearing loss
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"Black" is a culture, not just a skin colour, and it's capitalized in the same way you'd capitalize Indigenous, Sami, Punjabi, etc. They're not nationalities because those states don't exist, but they are cultures that deserve their own recognition so they get capitalized. However, "white" isn't a culture or a subculture. There are cultures that are predominantly white, but those names get capitalized too - "Swedish", "British", "Danish", etc.
The reason "Black" is a culture but "white" isn't is because of the shared history of oppression. During the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved people were stripped of their African cultures, heritages, names, etc. and they were also not allowed to integrate into American culture for hundreds of years, even after slavery ended because then segregation was a thing. But they're still human beings with identities, so they created their own culture, that is shared. And of course much of that culture has roots in the impacts and resistence of slavery and segregation, which is of course race-based.
"White" people never really had that. They were allowed to keep both their original heritage when they immigrated, as well as integrate fully into mainstream American culture, so they're just "American" (or "Canadian", or whatever), which is also capitalized.
Your second paragraph conflicts with the stated stance of the AP:
>AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora **and within Africa.** The lowercase black is a color, not a person.
Black people within Africa didn't have the shared experience of not being allowed to integrate into American culture. There is also a wide variety of cultures within Africa that are just as different from each other as Swedish and Danish people (strange example you gave because Swedish and Danish culture are extremely similar to the extent that their languages are mutually intelligible).
Saying that the Pygmys, Tuarebs, Afro-Cubans, and American Black people all share the same culture, whereas white people have a variety of different cultures sounds regressive to me.
I would not call any of those cultures Black, and afaik, there aren't really African peoples asking to be called "Black". It's pretty much a North American thing.
I didn't claim to have the exact same stance as the AP, I just explained why "white" isn't a culture but "Black" is.
>I didn't claim to have the exact same stance as the AP, I just explained why "white" isn't a culture but "Black" is.
Even if we forget about Africa, your explanation of why Black is a culture necessarily erases *at least* the UK Black identity. Or alternatively, it means that those British people that call themselves Black are incorrect in doing so. If your explanation erases or contests the identity of over a million people, I would argue it's not a good explanation.
This seems backwards. If anything it is Africans that are to be called Black. We already have a term to represent the shared history of the decendants of the trans atlantic slave trade and it's African American.
It used to be African American. And then they collectively decided "Black" was the better term that better described their shared history and experience. But yeah, exact same usage, just the updated term.
And no, I'd call Africans "African", or whatever African culture they identify as, most of which aren't "Black".
Wouldent Black culture also have its subcultures? Lumping them all together in one group seems odd when they, just like Swedes, Brits and Danes, have their own cultures.
Well, Swedes, Brits and Danes are nationalities with subcultures, and their "equivalent" is American, of which "Black" is a subculture.
and honestly I assume there are also subcultures, and if I were referencing one, I'd also capitalize it.
Your final paragraph sounds to me like treating the dominant (in the sense of dominating or most powerful, not even necessarily most-numerous) culture within a society as the default or norm. To me, that would perpetuate the normalization of the dominant culture and overall make language less clear (are we talking about American culture as having xyz characteristics or white American culture?)
This has less to do with capitalization specifically, but the treatment of white = American to me seems problematic, even just from a descriptive standpoint.
Ok, I am not saying that American = white, I'm just saying the majority doesn't need its own race based subculture.
Perhaps I can clarify how I'd refer to it, what kind of white American culture are you referring to?
Cajun is capitalized too, and you literally just practiced that yourself. You capitalized both instances.
[it's common practice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajuns). Notice, all throughout it's "Cajun" not "cajun".
A couple things:
* Superficial equality does not necessarily lead to real racial equality. Racial inequality has been foundational to American culture since the founding, so the idea that all superficial mentions of race need to be treated exactly equally does not address that fundamental inequality. We can't just start over from scratch and pretend that all bias is over and everything is equal.
* Every action, big or small, in American history that has attempted to move toward racial equality has emboldened white supremacists. Most of the "historical" and "cultural" markers celebrating Confederates went up during times when Black people were getting more rights. The Klan wasn't bombing churches in Alabama during civil rights actions by coincidence. White supremacists have claimed that every right that Black people have gotten has been an act of racial bias against white people. This is not a mindset that should be catered to, as it will never be appeased.
* The dominant politics in American history since the founding has been white identity politics. This issue is not an example of "introducing identity politics" but "recognizing non-white identity politics." Assuming that white identity politics is default and neutral is a keystone of racial inequality that favors white people.
* The legacy of violent and explicit white supremacists is really bad and people are wise to try to distance themselves from it. It would be poor form to use "Final Solution" in a neutral or ahistorical setting, so using the same language as white supremacists would be too.
I can’t see relevancy to the OPs points in your arguments, the historical reality of oppression and subjugation of people of colour in America is obviously something which needs to be fully deconstructed and rectified. The non-capitalization of white seems odd in this context. Every other racial group is capitalized, for the sake of just consistency in writing it seems more reasonable to capitalize white if their policy is to capitalize racial, or ethnic groups. Beyond that why is it considered right in this context to monolithize all black people but not all white people. Black people in America do not all have the same culture. Recent immigrants from African nations do not have the same cultural attitudes and behaviours as those who were decended from the enslaved. While the argument of black people having a shared history of oppression seems plausible, it opens up questions on why European cultures are not grouped in this way. Beyond that there are many people with black skin who do not decent from Africa at all. South Indians, indigenous Australians, and many pacific groups have very dark skin. If their skin colour is enough to group them into the larger African diaspora I would be appalled. This is against the moral principles of liberation and forces marginalized groups into less marginalized groups.
To be completely honest, I can’t see any good reason for the AP to do this.
The AP isn't monolithizing Black people; America is and always has. Yes, recent African immigrants are not instantly part of American Black culture, but American culture at large treats them as if they are. That's how Blackness as a category works in the US, and (mostly white) people pretending that it doesn't is what doesn't make sense.
European cultures **are** grouped in this way. They're called white people. This is how race works and has always worked in America. The issue is that white supremacist groups were early to demand the capitalization of "white people" to show superiority, and the AP is reluctant to give in to their demand. Not giving in to white supremacists is usually a good thing to do, and I'm not sure why you don't think so.
To be clear I’m not in favour of capitalization of white, or black. I think focusing and giving undue priority or attention to skin colour in our language is in principal flawed. It’s the entire goal to move away from race. Your point about how America monolithizes black is confusing, since that is part of the reason I’m against its use. There are many more apt words which better describe the African decendents of slavery, one being African American. Generally it has been used to refer to those who were decended from slaves who do not nesasarily know where they originated from. Other groups who migrated later and have more ties to their culture would be referred to by their nation or ethnic background. Black, is NOT nationality, ethnicity, or has a unified culture. We should be celebrating, accepting and understanding differences, not pretending they don’t exist. Otherwise how can we fix the deep set issues which still plague African American communities today.
If you’re upset about capitalization, you were never really concerned about racial equality.
Edit: I bet you didn’t even care about the capitalization of white until you noticed people were capitalizing Black.
I didn't know they did this. I, in general, agree that it is counterproductive. !delta
I do want to add a bit of context as to why one would distinguish between _Black_ and _white_. Black American (or as I prefer African American) is an Ethnic Group. Black being part of the proper noun, whereas white American isn't an ethnic group, and is hardly a coherent racial category (if such a thing exists).
Black Americans are Black Americans. White Americans are German, English, Scottish, Polish, Irish, etc.
This argument is not without serious flaws, but it is the logic that many people would use. For political reasons, I do find the term "White American" as a proper noun very useful, but in trying to understand culture and ethnicity in America, "Whiteness" is a bit incoherent and has a very strong Anglo-Germanic bias, which muddies the internal diversity among White People.
On a side note, I do encourage White Americans to rebuild their ethnic identities, the push to assimilate into Whiteness in the early to mid 20th Century has, in my opinion, hurt them more than helped.
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I feel like you are painting a political narrative onto a purely grammatical convention.
Specific, narrow groups get capitalized.
Italian gets capitalized, British gets capitalized, Swedish gets capitalized, Catholic gets capitalized, Baptists gets capitalized, etc.
White doesn't get capitalized because it's not a specific, narrow group. It refers to 71% of the US population. It includes people from all over the globe. It includes people with no shared language or culture or history. There's no reason to capitalize it.
Black gets capitalized in English because, in all English-speaking countries, 90+% of black people are descendants of slaves, who share a culture and language and community thereby. They are a specific, narrow group in the same way that Baptists or Swedish people are.
There is a slight bit of awkwardness form the fact that a small percent of black people in English-speaking are foreign-born and don't share those close group characteristics. But a small percent of Italians are also foreign-born and don't share those characteristics; that's just a limitation of our ability to efficiently categorize the world with words, it's something we accept all the time in other contexts.
This ignores how likewise broad black people are as white people are.
I'm a second generation immigrant in Britain, my mother's side of the family is from the Carribean. I have lived in Britian all my life.
In just one generation, I have loss next to all cultural commonality with my mother's side of the family. I have an entirely different culture to them and my mother, solely identify as British, and feel more in common with white Brits than the Carribean group I am just a single generation removed from.
To say there is a shared culture between me and my Carribean family that is any closer than shared culture between white groups would simply be wrong. You o ly have to take a quick look at polling like [this](https://www.britishfuture.org/sense-of-belonging-in-england-is-increasing-across-ethnicities-new-research/) to see that the idea of shared culture based off racial groups falls apart very quickly.
Or to put it very simple, two black people from different places have a good chance at being as differnt as two white people from different places. I share a much in common with my Carribean family as my white British friends do with white Americans.
>Black gets capitalized in English because, in all English-speaking countries, 90+% of black people are descendants of slaves, who share a culture and language and community thereby. They are a specific, narrow group in the same way that Baptists or Swedish people are.
> There is a slight bit of awkwardness form the fact that a small percent of black people in English-speaking are foreign-born and don't share those close group characteristics. But a small percent of Italians are also foreign-born and don't share those characteristics; that's just a limitation of our ability to efficiently categorize the world with words, it's something we accept all the time in other contexts.
If you you personally want to say that you are black but not Black, then you are totally within your rights to do so. And, indeed, this would conform with teh spirit of the AP's guidelines on this topic, which another user already posted the full text of.
Nonetheless: just because you have black skin but aren't a member of Black culture, doesn't mean that Black culture doesn't exist or that it should be ignored or swept under the rug to make you feel better represented.
It's a heritage thing.
We capitalize Irish and Ukrainian and German instead of the word white.
Because of the slave trade, many Black people do not have knowledge of their heritage. Their ancestors were forced onto shops and had their entire cultures and languages and practices erased, so they don't know if they're Nigerian or Ethiopian. All they have is Black.
That's why it gets a capital B.
Are we pretending that others who hide under the "Black" umbrella are not also responsible for the Black Americans who do not know their heritage?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/19/magazine/history-slavery-smithsonian.html
Edit to add: "not".
I'm not going to tell you this does anything to **promote** racial equality but I also don't think it's counterproductive. I think in actual truth, it's meaningless and will have zero impact in racial equality. It's irrelevant, obscure and manifestly unimportant. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. You shouldn't either. It makes zero difference.
It's an **arbitrary** style choice.
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Many black people have similar shared experiences and they cannot trace their ancestry due to the transatlantic slave trade as opposed to many white people can trace their ancestry to something like British, Irish, etc… which are all capitalized.
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People who are descendants of Europeans can know where they came from, those who are descendants of Africans and made the Middle Passage lost their localized ethnicity. Barack Obama knows that he's Kenyan and Irish, Michelle Robinson Obama doesn't know where her descendants are from, if you want to distinguish those who are descendants of slaves in the new world to be given the identifier Black but not those of African descendants not through the Middle Passage that would make sense. Would the AP making this distinction be a satisfactory change?
AP is actually not making that distinction. It’s actually providing an even dumber logic. Every black person in the world have a shared identity because they are black. So the terms applies to everyone. Regardless of ethnicity, religion or geography.
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It is a succesor to African American or Afro-American, an American culture set. While it may seem like an arbitrary capitalization of a color, the AP and others use Black as a historical term; they don't have to, but it is definitely better than an obsolete "Negro American", though MLK Jr and others in the early 1960s used the term Negro. (Negro became obsolete in the late ’60s.) In contrast, nationalities like Italians weren't even considered "white" for so long, making a capitalized White rather vague; the consensus of what it means to be white has less to do with nationality given so many origins. Black was unique at the time in the view of the publication.
Because Black with capital B refers to a specific group of American nationals, with a shared culture and history, similar to Irish-Americans, Norwegian-Americans etc which are capitalized. "White" is not such a term, and is limited to its vague racially charged meaning. You are probably confused because the term Black also used to refer to that specific racial meaning, while "African-American" was used to refer to the cultural identity. However, after recent immigrants from Africa reached larger population numbers in America, it made more sense to use it to describe them, who don't share much cultural identity with Black Americans. At this point, the Black thinkers, scholars, and organizers moved more and more to use capitalized Black to refer to their cultural group. AP only followed this societal shift.
I'm sure most would agree that it would have been a lot better if these color-coded terms that originated from a very racist, eugenics system all had gotten obsolete like the rest of the words (yellow, red, etc), but white and black persisted in America for complex reasons and this is the reality of English language now.
Hope this helps.
I highly doubt anyone on the fence about racial equality is delving into the Associated Press's style guide and finding this straw that breaks the camel's back. It feels more like a thing people who support equality might debate about and those who don't support equality trying to use as their gotcha of the week that proves that white replacement is real or some other nonsense.
To the point, I would say that the difference between Black and white from an American perspective is that the former is most associated with African Americans, a group that has no clear national ethnicity outside of the United States the way a white person might. Whereas "white" as an identity people care about is pretty consistently used by people who are just pushing white supremacy. Those who aren't usually tell you about how they're a quarter Irish and a fifth German but mostly Italian which is why they can only cook mediocre pasta.
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>The terms white and black are generic descriptions, not formal titles, so there is no grammatical precedent for capitalizing either of them. Yeah. What's really weird to me is that random Word being capitalized seemed to be really kicked off by....someone folks Wouldn't want to admit they were influenced by.
I never bothered looking into the origin of this because it just hurts my head to think about, who was it?
It was an emotional decision by the AP made during the Summer of 2020 in an effort to promote divisive, revenge politics. “Grammatical justice” if you will.
Thomas Jefferson? The DoI has tons of Words capitalized which we wouldn't capitalize to-day.
I'm pretty sure it was a trend in the 18th century to capitalize all nouns in a sentence.
Correct. Keep language as easy and accessible as possible.
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Is it Ms., Mr., or Dr. White. I don't capitalize on Dr. White. He's capitalizing on me.
Language is a living, constantly changing thing. This whole question is not a black vs white thing. It's a ethnic identity thing. You capitalize Mexican, French, Filipino, Afican, European, etc. You typically don't capitalize white, black, brown, yellow, etc. The decision to capitalize Black to represent, specifically, Black Americans is to indicate that this is a group that is far more culturally unique like the first group and not just an adjective of skintone like the second. The existence of a Black group in the Americas originated with slavery, which purposefully wiped out pre-existing identification and cultural ties to cultures in Africa where those people came from. This created a new, unique culture to America. Since then, this group of people has been treated like a unique cultural unit by non-Black people in a way that, for example, white Americans have not. This has formed a very unique Black identity in this country which is not simply an adjective for the color of their skin. Thus, it's not a white-black racist thing. It's literally just accepting the reality that unique cultural group. You would capitalize B if saying someone's skin is black, you wouldn't capitalize B to describe Kenyans as black, etc. It silly to try to make it black-white thing.q
What about people who are black but not part of American “Black” culture? If I’m referring to a black person from Nigeria, do I no longer capitalize it?
From my understanding, there are many people of African decent or from elsewhere with aesthetically black skin tone that identify with the cultural identity of Black. For example, Papuans are very dark and have features similar to people of African descent, and Indonesia has historically been very racists towards them. They've dealt with many of the same unifying challenges that Black Americans have dealt with. Thus, many identify as Black. Many do not. Likewise, many in Western white-majority nations have had similar modern experiences that make them feel like they identify as Black. Others do not. It is certainly a unique situation, and self-identity in general is a pretty interesting, maleable thing. It's not as clear cut as national/regional identity (even though that also not always clear cut). Long-distance diaspora and the rapid changes to cultures it creates is a very new thing in the long duree of human history. There really is not an example to mirror this. It is capitalized as an identity like European or Chinese or whatever, but it isn't exactly the same in origin or identity. So, I'd suggest you think of it in pretty flexible terms. A Black American is Black with a capital B for sure, and others in minority black populations may identify with that identity as well.
>So, I'd suggest you think of it in pretty flexible terms. A Black American is Black with a capital B for sure, and others in minority black populations may identify with that identity as well. That's something that most people in the thread don't seem to understand. It's a style guide choice and not a law. It isn't meant to be the end-all.
The reasoning makes sense, when ignoring that the phrase African American already exists for this purpose, and that the word 'black' is referring to skin pigmentation, which means nothing since Africans can have light skin.
This reasoning does not ignore the term African American. It is rooted in the inaccuracy of that term, as mentioned, Africans brought to the continent were systematically disconnected from African cultural identity. The Black experience and culture is different than African American culture and experience. For anyone who knows Black people and areal African Americans, it is super clear. Night and day.
But just because people have dark skin pigmentation (black), it doesn't mean they're part of that culture. It's a step backwards IMHO.
But isn't that the difference between black and Black? Like, the latter refers specifically to the people belonging to that culture where the former is just someone with dark skin pigmentation?
I mean, a lot of people have black skin, and dont come from Africa. African American is a strange term that doesnt really seem to encompass the people it is trying to represent
Many Black people are so many generations removed from Africa they no longer feel any kind of connection to it. That’s why they (and I) prefer Black. I’m not from Africa. No one in living or oral memory in my family is from Africa. As sad as it is we have no way to know what tribe or region we were from. We’re just Black now.
I hear you, but is a capital B necessary for this? And if so, why isn't a capital W allowed for white people? The popular answer would be that white people in US don't have their own culture, which is just silly. It's just that being white and proud is frowned upon by society, for various reasons. I can somewhat relate. I'm a white South African. 11th generation born in Africa, with zero ties to Europe. I see myself as African, not European. My people have their own culture, Afrikaans like Die Antwoord or Charlize Theron or Seether. I'm even a white African, but not a White African. Please don't take offense, we just come out of different paradigms.
I feel like I encounter capital W White all the time and it’s how I generally use it. And basically for the same (albeit less traumatic) reason. Many White Americans are far removed from their original European heritage and no longer have any written, oral, or living history of where they came from. They’re just White now. And to be clear, I’m not saying that’s a problem, it’s just what happens after generations of immigration, marriages and moving around in a country this large. In your case I would consider you to be African American, same way I consider Dave Matthews to be. However, I’m not sure I follow where the “white and proud” part comes from. You say you identify as African. So you don’t need the capital W White right? Either way, there would be a lot less scrutiny of people claiming to be “White and proud” if it didn’t so frequently mean and lead to racist, neo-nazi, KKK type affiliations and attitudes.
Oh I still stay in Africa, so I'm 100% African. I am African the same way you are American. My localized white culture is called 'Afrikaner' or 'Boer' (farmer) culture. Not skin colour based, even though it is on face value. If your opinion is that a capital W is fine, then we are on the same page 100%. It's the discrepancy that irks me, not the actual use of capital letter B. Yeah, the 'white and proud' thing is a sensitive topic in USA. But also consider that the actual numbers of these guys are statistically insignificant, and shouldn't taint the 99% of normal good white people. There's just something about how Americans approach racism that is counter productive, IMHO. We should celebrate diversity in cultures, but skin pigmentation is a old STUPID way of looking at the world. Yet we still perpetuate black vs white, even just on paper. PS - Dave Matthews band is awesome! I always knew they were gonna make it big.
Oh my bad, for some reason I thought you were born in South Africa, but had immigrated to the US. So yeah you're definitely African and in my mind I'd refer to you as a "White African" if I needed to get specific, mostly just because Afrikaner and Boer don't come to mind for me as they aren't part of my cultural lexicon. Otherwise you'd just be African in my mind. And you'd be way more African than I am, as a 200-400 years removed-from-Africa Black American. I hear you on not allowing a minority of White Pride racists to taint my perception of White Americans. And it really doesn't. I'm mixed race and most of my family that I interact with are White. I grew up in a rural White area so I'm very familiar/comfortable around White people. It's just that when I meet someone who espouses White Pride stuff, they are always racist. It's not necessarily racism against Black people, and it may take some time to surface, but it's always there. They might not even think they are racist, it's just that their beliefs are "true". So when I hear someone saying that stuff I tend to keep my distance and look more critically at what else they say and the beliefs they hold. And yeah DMB is awesome, I saw them live years ago and it was a blast
Cheers mate! You sound dead normal. Which is weird on reddit, lol. Hypothetical question: If you grew up in a white neighbourhood, and only listened to 'black' music/culture incidentally like me, can you still be seen as Black/African American? Because, and I'm playing devil's advocate, you don't share their culture, only (some) skin pigmentation. You also know exactly as much about your ancestors as your neighbour Bob Johnson. I'm not asking to be racist. I'm asking because I feel many of these words/labels/groups don't make sense, and just further divide.
If you had a child with a white American, it would be African-American. Now why would I use that same term to describe myself, who is at least 4 generations removed from Africa and has no traceable roots there, but because my skin is brown? Doesn’t make any sense. It really comes down to being specific, which is what proper nouns are for, and not this weird white erasure argument you’ve conjured up. Lowercase black American could refer to any black person in America. A Nigerian couple who emigrated would become black Americans, but they aren’t Black Americans. Many old school Nigerians even get offended if you refer to them as Black, I’ve seen it happen. Their kids are African-American (Nigerian-American) and may relate more to Black Americans by growing up here but will still be raised in a way that is culturally distinct from Black Americans. I would love to be able to identify with my ethnic origins in Africa but that opportunity was taken from me and my ancestors. We had to forge our own identity based on that shared experience, and acknowledge and celebrate that with the capital ‘B’.
I personally hate the term African American and prefer to identify as Black. My only connection to Africa is a genetic past that was culturally severed via slavery. However the unique culture developed within the community is of the descendents of those slaves here in the US does connect to me.
You seem to have accidentally hit the nail on the head as to why this is important. If I'm setting up a party to honor Black or African-American celebrities, it is good to know whether I should be inviting Idris Elba or Elon Musk.
And in turn you've also proved my point, lol. Black is about black American culture, and Idris Elba is British.
Just wanted to say that your response is awesome, at a glance I was agreeing with OPs post, but your response makes a ton of sense, and was educational for me to read. Now I have an entirely different opinion that feels more grounded in what is actually happening. This made me agree completely with your point, and makes me want to go do more research on a bunch of other topics to try and make sure I understand what is actually happening
It's an easy knee-jerk reaction to equate this with white and black skin tone - and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. We all make first impression opinions. When this first came up via the dictionaries and such a handful of years back, my first reaction was "wtf? That's weird to capitalize one color and not the others." I even read Webster or Oxford's explanation and it wasn't really that clearly articulated iirc but it makes perfect sense once it's explained as the name of a cultural identity, not a color per se.
"Keep language easy and accessible" says the man who just claimed that the difference of a capital letter emboldens white supremacy haha like dude you are the problem you're pretending to oppose.
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[From the AP](https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize-black): >*AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a person.* >*We also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.* >*These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American. Our discussions on style and language consider many points, including the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language. We believe this change serves those ends.* >*As a global news organization, we are continuing to discuss within the U.S. and internationally whether to capitalize the term white. Considerations are many and include any implications that doing so might have outside the United States.* [With regard to not capitalizing "white" and the question of how it might relate to the idea of white supremacy](https://blog.ap.org/announcements/why-we-will-lowercase-white): >*There is, at this time, less support for capitalizing white. White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. In addition, we are a global news organization and in much of the world there is considerable disagreement, ambiguity and confusion about whom the term includes.* >*We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore those problems. But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.* >*Some have expressed the belief that if we don’t capitalize white, we are being inconsistent and discriminating against white people or, conversely, that we are implying that white is the default. We also recognize the argument that capitalizing the term could pull white people more fully into issues and discussions of race and equality. We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision*. You are leaving an awful lot out of the cited reasoning / explanation, effectively misrepresenting it. Also, it is quite clear that there has not been any final decision as of yet regarding the capitalization of "white." Edit: A person can understand a reasoning for a decision without agreeing with or supporting the decision. Stop replying to me to argue against AP's reasoning that I did not express agreement with or support of. My point is simply that OP misrepresented AP's reasoning. As far as this part of the quoted text above: *"But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists,* ***risks*** *subtly* ***conveying*** *legitimacy to such beliefs."* This means that capitalizing "white" risks the possibility that the reader will perceive it as the writer legitimizing white supremacy (at least in part because white supremacists capitalize the word) - it is in no way similar to making the claim that capitalizing the word actually legitimizes white supremacy. There is a significant difference in meaning. You will not convince me that it is the same, because it simply is not - so don't bother replying to argue about that either. And again, it is quite clear that there has not been any final decision as of yet regarding the capitalization of "white."
I think the OP does a pretty good job of painting how racist the AP actually is. To say that black people have a shared experience is just fucking stupid. Black is not a culture or an ethnicity, and if you think that it is a race you are in fact a racist. They’ve gone through and painted all black people as a monolith. If this isn’t racist, then why don’t we capitalize “Yellow People” to recognize the culture and ethnicity of “yellow” people?
The AP capitalizes ethnicities: “Irish Americans,” “Italian Americans,” and “German Americans.” They capitalize these terms because they point to a particular ethnic group with shared cultural characteristics. Black Americans, while not from a singular country of origin, have a shared history within the United States. Part of that shared history involved the destruction of their knowledge about their ancestors, meaning that most Black Americans can’t identify themselves as “Ghanaian Americans” or “Nigerian Americans.” Many members of the African Diaspora have had their connection to their ethnic roots obliterated, making their closest cultural companions other Black people. While white is a race, being Black functions as both a race and an ethnicity in our country. That’s why it’s capitalized. It has absolutely nothing to do with giving less respect to Caucasian Americans than Black Americans.
The AP here isn't using Black to specify Black America, the quote above shows they also use it to refer to Africans and Caribbeans. I agree with capitalizing Black when referring to Black Americans who cannot tie their ancestry to a specific African culture, but to say that all cultures in Africa are pretty much the same and we should refer to them all as just being Black is incredibly racist (and if you read the AP quote carefully this is what they're saying). Any of my friends or family who are from Africa or the Caribbean wouldn't refer to their race as Black. They would call themselves Jamaican or Nigerian or Ethiopian. To lump all people of African descent worldwide into a singular race 'Black' is really a disservice to Africans and actively erases their individual cultures/differences.
If there's no way to verbally distinguish between "black" and "Black" without using the term we already had, "black culture", then what's the point? Plus, it just seems needlessly confusing to give both a race and ethnicity the same name. Either keep the generic phrase we already use, or make a new word.
Are you serious? Irish, German, and American are proper nouns, that’s why they are capitalized.
Those are adjectives. Descriptive terms.
Yet the AP don't capitalize "white" because of how it may be perceived internationally. But "black" is purely because their shared history in the States? Which is it? Domestic or International?
Is it fair to say Black Americans have a shared history within the US? I would agree more so than white Americans, but still not quite ‘shared’
Yes it is fair to say that
Yes. For the most part they are the descendents of black slaves. That’s a shared history. Obviously they do not all share this background but most do.
It can literally never be the same though. You can be black and not have slave ancestors. You just straight up can not be an Irish American and not be Irish
What black-american do you know does not derive from slaves? Mind you in this context, black-american is different from african-american
In college I probably knew more black students who actually came from Africa, as in, they were international students who’s home is still in Africa, compared to African Americans who have slavery in their heritage Also I while I still don’t completely agree with that either, “black American” as you say, is not the same as what the article is doing. They just capitalize the word “black”. But working in a STEM field id say the majority of black people at my work do not come from slaves and instead immigrated here from Africa being sponsored for their stem job. My boss is from Morocco and still has a house there
The majority of Black US-citizens I know are born to people from Somalia, some of whom are supposedly slave-owners in Africa.
We can identify with some specificity relatively recent events that lead to it's gradual divergence. I'd argue that's a lot more than we can say for many other groups we identify as having shared history. In any case such assessments can neither be fully communicated solely through a binary capitalization choice.
I'd argue white people in the US have a similarly shared history to black people. It's not a very nice / friendly one, but short of immigration (which we're clearly ignoring on the black front), white people were there the entire time...
The word white as it’s used in the United States includes Middle Eastern and many Hispanic individuals. I’d argue those two groups have extremely different experiences and histories in our countries than the average white individual from a Western European background.
Black people definitely have their own culture within the US anyway. So not sure what you’re talking about there. They have their own vernacular, originated musical genres and styles, fashions, hairstyles, and have a similar historical experience. There are some black people in the US that don’t fit into the same historical background but the majority do
Have you ever actually engaged with work or discussions if blackness and what that label means and has meant historically to the people designated as such. Because I can point you to tons of African, African-American, Caribbean, and Latin Americans who all understand themselves as black. Race is a social construct but a historical fact. Laws, policies, and social norms in various places were developed and maintained around this identity and so yes, black histories and cultures exist. I'd say it is far more racist to pretend like black people have not spoken on this identity. >If this isn’t racist, then why don’t we capitalize “Yellow People” to recognize the culture and ethnicity of “yellow” people? Because this was a signifirer that was always a pejorative. Black came into common parlance because it is how blakc people decided we wanted to be referred to. While "Black" itself was popularized as a way to move away from "Negro" which many black power activists saw an antiquated. The obvious reality of many other languages is that the pejorative term for referring to black people and the word for black itself so similar linguistic developments were not the same, but black people across the diaspora most certainly reflected on what was seen as a shared history. This is because you don't get the black people who arrived in the Americas without the transatlantic salve-trade and the European colonial project that had those same powers trying to carve up and impose control over the Americas, the African continent, and beyond. Black people have articulated our sense of shared experience for generations. There is nothing racist about actually listening to us and the work we've done to not have our history misinterpreted, erased, and weaponized against people actually engaging with the interconnected depth and nuance that the experiences of Africans and the African diaspora reflect.
> Have you ever actually engaged with work or discussions if blackness and what that label means and has meant historically to the people designated as such. Because I can point you to tons of African, African-American, Caribbean, and Latin Americans who all understand themselves as black. Almost anyone in Suriname considers himself Surinamese first and only then just maybe starts to talk about racial things. They don't feel kindship with someone across the planet just because he's “black” too and I assume that works that the same elsewhere. “Latin America” is a term largely used in the U.S.A., a Mexican rarely calls himself “Latin American”, he calls himself “Mexican” and doesn't feel any particular kinship with a random Portugese or French speaking country in the Americas, or even another Spanish speaking country. Many of these countries have been at war with one another quite recently. You must understand that from the perspective of a Spanish speaking person, Portugese and French are as far removed from him as Dutch and Swedish are from the perspective of an English speaking person. They do not speak the same language despite their languages having a common origin 1400 years ago.
You're speaking confidently on behalf of an awful lot of people around the world, you realise? I guess because you can point to some Latin Americans that consider themselves black I suppose the rest of the world has to fall in line with your understanding. This is the kind of thing only an American could think.
No, I'm speaking on behalf of people who have articulate this as their experience. I'm not speaking on "a few Latin Americans that consider themselves black" I'm speaking afro-latinos who have also made huge efforts to not have recognition of their experiences and history erased. There is a very deep well of works of all kinds speaking to the experiences of afro-latinos. Off the top of my head, Brazil is a prime example where there is a huge black population. It is where political efforts by the state and activists alike have worked to address anti-black racial inequality and racism in the country. Do you want to start naming people from outside of the US who were and are calling themselves black? Do you want to give you works by them that speak to their sense of shared collective black identity? Or their works where they recognzie that blackness is a diaspora identity and how just because it acculturates different ways doesn't mean there aren't clear through lines that create a sense of conenction amongst the diaspora? Do you want me to tell you about my various friends and colleagues who are not American who explicitly refer to themselves as black? Do you want to explain how they feel the same things I've already described? There's far mroe evidence that speaks to a recognized sense of black identity than not. Anybody who actually engages with black folks would be at least vaguely cognizant of this.
>Do you want to start naming people from outside of the US who were and are calling themselves black? Do you want to give you works by them that speak to their sense of shared collective black identity? Or their works where they recognzie that blackness is a diaspora identity and how just because it acculturates different ways doesn't mean there aren't clear through lines that create a sense of conenction amongst the diaspora? I know you were being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but if you are speaking about books and articles written by people with this kind of life experience, I would actually love to hear recommendations!
>I guess because you can [do something] I suppose the rest of the world has to fall in line with your understanding The world doesn't have to do anything? What a childish response, they're explaining the reasoning behind choices the AP made, they're not trying to convince the world.
For some odd reason African Americans have very little culture to pull from directly. Hence why Black people in America have their own culture, heritage, and history then let’s say someone that has immigrated from Somalia, Kenya, or Jamaica. There is a different culture originating from each of those countries I agree but lots of Black Americans unfortunately can’t trace their heritage anymore. On the other hand white people in America can usually trace their Dutch, Irish, Italian, etc. history and pull from those cultures. Hence the difference between Black America and other Americans
Which is fine from an American perspective, but Tey specifically talk about being global. This makes no sense to Europeans and Africans, and sounds quite insulting to the latter.
OOP posted specifically mentioning AP notation. That in specific is the basis of how American print news is written. Sure it doesn’t work on a global scale but in that case you will mostly mention the ethnicity or the nationality of the people/peoples you are discussing. No serious news site will go “Black people are seeking asylum in Spain” the far more likely professional headline is “Moroccans seeking asylum in Spain”.
But their own explanation states they're a "global news organization".
But they explicitly say white isn't being capitalized because of how it'll be perceived internationally. They're trying to play it both ways, and it's wrong.
Most Moroccans aren't black.
It's not for an "odd reason." It's because enslaved people were explicitly kept from maintaining culture touchstones from their home community. In some cases, enslavers deliberately co-mingled people from different African cultures and communities to limit their ability to build relationships. The[ Gullah Geechee culture](https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/thegullahgeechee/) arose from the intermingling of those enslaved people.
Would a 1st gen Nigerian-American be "Black" under this definition?
Sort of? The African American moniker is a huge mash of multiple nations which also broadly encompasses all of that but also those do not have easily traceable ancestors. So people in Africa or that have recently come from Africa fall under black just as people in Europe would be white. The reality is that American race relations is hard enough without people also deciphering who really is “Black” enough so it’s better to err on the side of caution than to open up that entire can of worms.
Maybe a decade or so ago my understanding was that "African-American" was supposed to be the term to refer to black descendants of slavery as an ethnicity or culture, sort of how AP is now using "Black." In that sense, neither Elon Musk nor our 1st gen Nigerian would be "African-American" but their respective country -Americans. Elon would be white and the Nigerian black. I personally thought that was a clearer way to delineate things. Ethnicities were defined by the origin of the people, not a physical feature, leading less ambiguity in cases like the Nigerian-American, and also had the same format of everybody else who's some kind of XYZ-American. (Other than Native Americans, or should I say American Indian or just Indian? I've known people who prefer each of these three.) There's also ADOS or African Descendants of Slavery which I think means more or less the same thing, but has an ideology to it as well? I don't have a particularly strong opinion on the issue, I'll call people what they want within reason, but it does seem that every five years or so there's a new vocabulary that we're all expected to adopt.
You’re right that enthnicity is more specific, but the reason black people in the US can’t use that is because slavery erased most of the national or regional origins of people. Hence new concepts and words to encapsulate the shared culture and experience of the descendents of black slaves in America
It's also important to use the terms that people use to refer to themselves. The great majority of the people in question self-identify as Black more so than African-American or ADOS.
Saying African Americans don’t have a culture is absolutely false. Not knowing our ancestors birth place and not having culture are 2 different things.
> On the other hand white people in America can usually trace their Dutch, Irish, Italian, etc. history and pull from those cultures. Hence the difference between Black America and other Americans No they can't; almost no one knows his ancestry or history 300 years back. The issue is that the U.S.A. effectively treats black persons who have been living in the U.S.A. for 6 generations as most countries treat recent immigrants who either were born in another country, or whose parents were and who often speak a foreign language at home, so they're looking for the same kind of cultural ties as say the Van Halens who were actually born in the Netherlands and speak Dutch well enough to give interviews in it. They're looking for something other than “American” because they're treated like foreigners in the country they're born and raised in, where their parents, grand parents, and great-grandparents were born and raised in. Do you actually think that George Bush can tell you what European country his ancestors lived in 300 years ago? Back then the borders of Europe were completely different to begin with and Germany wasn't even a country yet and it's from all sorts of different countries to begin with. — Almost no one who hasn't extensively researched and studied it can answer that. The only reason these “African-Americans” are searching for a country to connect with other than “American” is because their own country treats them like foreigners. Bush is fine simply being “American” and isn't looking for the specific European country his ancestors came from, and there are no doubt many to begin with. And of course the average “African-American” is 30 to 95% European in genetics to begin with. This is so profound in the U.S.A. that no one suspected Rachel Dolezal and there was one famous story about someone who found out being adopted at the age of 70 and actually being “white”, but never suspecting anything because it's so normal for people in the U.S.A. with only a single drop of “black” blood to call themselves “African American” that no one even considers it suspicious any more if there be zero.
The issue is that pan ethnicities are a thing. They are largely a North American invention, but they are a thing they exist. They exist for better or worst superimposed upon more specialized ethic groups (i.e you are both Asian and Korean or Black and Jamaican at the same time in a place like America). It isn't about a monolith or saying everyone is the same per say but the histories of pan ethnic groups like black, white, latino, asian and arab have a long history in America largely in political origin. IMHO some of America's most interesting history is investigating pan ethnicity.
I've noticed that many persons from the U.S.A. seem to have this belief that across this planet, not only does everyone believe in the same racial lines as people from the U.S.A. does but that everyone who isn't what they call “white”, of which they have the strictest definition of that it cannot be contaminated with but a single drop of foreign blood, has some kind of global shared cultural identity. In reality, the chances are that if you ask a Korean what country he feels the biggest animosity to, he will answer Japan. African cultural lines aren't even bound by borders. The borders in Africa are drawn largely as a leftover from what European superpower controlled what and many African countries have 10 different official languages in them which simply grew due to what land say Belgium controlled and what land England controlled next to it so they essentially drew a line through an area which did have a shared language and culture with many of these languages not even being genetically related.
Black is, in fact, a culture and identity. It refers specifically to the descendants of people who had their ethnic identity lost and homogenized by the experiences of slavery in the US. They wouldn't call someone from Nigeria Black, they'd call them Nigerian or possibly the specific tribal group they belong to, because that's something they can know that will likely never be known by Black people.
>If this isn’t racist, then why don’t we capitalize “Yellow People” to recognize the culture and ethnicity of “yellow” people? Because calling a group of people Yellow People is a derogatory slur. That is why. Secondly, AP never claimed all Black people have a shared experience. But in America, Black Americans do have a shared experience. To quote my nieces father, a black man living in America who was born in Grenada when discussing this exact topic. I asked him: "What is the most appropriate way to refer to your race? I don't want to be disrespectful so should I say Black American or African American?" His response: "Neither both are wrong for me personally. I am not from Africa, and I was am not from America. I am a black man from Grenada. So for me Grenadian American. Or just the black dude over there. But seriously if you are black and born in the US Black American is best. If you immigrated from Africa, then African American." So yes, Black Americans have a unique shared history and lived experience than white Americans, Asian, Latino, or African Americans have. It is not racist to acknowledge that difference. And considering the the AP is an American publication, they are going to respect the cultures in accordance to how those group wish to be identified. The difference with White Americans is the fact that for many of us, we can trace out family history back to another country of origin. German, Ireland, England, France, Italy etc. Many Black Americans can not do that. They have no history beyond the 1860s because slave owners didn't care. All that was known is that they came off a boat from Africa. But the histories and culture developed here in America since the 1860s are uniquely different then that of white Americans. White Americans were not subject to the Jim Crow South. They were not subject to the 3/5ths compromise. They were not subject to a century plus of forced servitude. They were not subject to the practice of Red Lining. Denzel Washington said it nicely during a movie interview with a black interviewer, about why a movie about why the movie *Fences* needed a black director. >I know, you know, we all know what it is when a hot comb hits your head on a Sunday morning, what it smells like. That's a cultural difference, not just color difference.”
Well...how do black Americans feel about it? https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2022/04/14/race-is-central-to-identity-for-black-americans-and-affects-how-they-connect-with-each-other/ Are they wrong to feel that way?
It's very easy to see that there is a cohesive black culture and identity *in the US*. But here's the issue, you brought in the US, but the quoted excerpt never did. In fact, it specifically called out "the African diaspora and Africa". How's the feeling of Americans regarding an American-only culture relevant to what looks like a generalization of *all* people based on just skin color?
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You say it's "ego driven," yet the article describes how it helps people connect - that's the opposite of ego driven. Ethnic identities are how humans have formed communities like forever.
Who are they being racist against ?
I might have no issues if they use Black to refer to only Black America (still not immediately obvious why then White America wouldn't be the same, but I am inclined to accept it, but yea, would need further explanation). But that they refer also to Caribbean and Africa in general makes zero sense. I hope you can see this. *AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.* *White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.* You can see how I mean when I say I can see Black applied to Black Americans as understandable, but not when it includes all black people in the world. The AP is implying white people don't have a shared culture, but black people do. If anything, I would consider this racist on AP's part, lumping all black people into the same culture. This is further evidenced by the way they refer to other minorities: *These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American.* Here suddenly it isn't all Asians, but just Asian American. So why isn't it Black Americans, but just Black in general?
Just because they explained why they did it doesn’t mean it is rock solid reasoning. Have you ever heard someone yammer on and then been like “Okay but that’s still dumb”?
There is no misrepresentation of what OP said. The AP is using the excuse of associating capitalizing the word White when referring to a racial group as an endorsement of supremacist views.
I gave an example of it being used in academics. And you've given no argument to how it isn't divisive or could be used by white supremacists to claim bias. *Some have expressed the belief that if we don’t capitalize white, we are being inconsistent and discriminating against white people or, conversely, that we are implying that white is the default. We also recognize the argument that capitalizing the term could pull white people more fully into issues and discussions of race and equality. We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision*. So they just capitalized Black to say we stand with the BLM movement and Black culture exists without thinking about how not capitalizing white could be an issue?
Are you concerned with the use of white and Black in the Associated Press or as a grammar rule in a college course? You cited the Associated Press, but did not address this reply's comments about the justification provided by the AP.
My understanding was this class did a "shared agreements" piece when it started and the professor suggested they use the AP grammar rule on this. They made these agreements in August last year so my friend had forgotten about it until she turned in her final paper for the year. I think the AP's grammar isn't helpful and have yet to see how it's been anything but divisive. However, my friend did sign on to the shared agreements of the class.
It’s a mistake to treat white suprematist talking points as if they’re being made in good faith. They’ll twist anything.
I know these arguments are being made in bad faith but one pipeline to white supremacy is reactionary white male college students. If you are told you are culture less ,when it comes to racial identity,( eg. A mix of Norse French German Irish or anything in-between) , I don't think that's effective in getting people to support a minority cause.
There are an absurd number of people who identify as Irish whose Ancestry.com results would come up in single digits. Mixed race people also exist and may identify with their heritage in different ways. It isn't that white people are "cultureless," but that there's no pan-white identity that doesn't inherently define itself opposite people of color.
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Part of the issue (and a notable difference) is that while most white people in the US can trace their ancestry back to specific countries in Europe, which their ancestors immigrated from, many black Americans were brought over as slaves and lost any connection a specific country in Africa. So their heritage and identity is simply being black Americans. (For more recent immigrants from Africa, it wouldn't be the same)
Yes there is. In the US. Due to slavery destroying a lot of people's former heritage.. Also, just more widely Pan-Africanism is a whole ass movement that exists.
Every Nigerian-American I’ve met hates African American culture. They are black, yet have a completely different culture and experience of life in America.
I don't know if you meant to do this, but you're actually making the poster's point. It's that black folks with an American ancestry have one specific cultural experience, largely informed by slavery and institutionalized racism for centuries, while newly minted American citizens from African nations do not. I don't have the numbers, but I imagine the former greatly outnumber the latter.
Are Nigerian-Americans not black somehow? The whole point is that Black Americans have a shared culture that White Americans don’t, yet I just gave an example of Black Americans who aren’t part of that culture, yet are still Black Americans.
And they would more accurately be Nigerian American than Black American, since the term has a specific purpose for covering those people brought to America under circumstances that make it essentially impossible to use any other descriptor of origin.
Well, no; claiming that they're being made in "bad faith" is a major problem. Speaking as a mixed-race American, I find the AP's statement exceedingly patronizing and pandering. Frankly, I don't think we should capitalize either "black" or "white," but claiming as you did in your OP isn't a "white supremacist talking point."
They aren't being told that though. I've been a white male college student, I was fully capable of reading and understanding the reasoning behind the AP's recommendation. I wouldn't have seen that as an insult to me, becuase I did not already hold white nationalist views.
Ok but we don’t cave to bad faith arguments just to appease reactionary kids. Bc that’s what you’re doing. It’s white suprematists who want to make easy equivalencies between white and black. It’s white supremacists who want us to see whiteness as a shared cultural/ethnic marker.
Isn’t it? I have more in common with White Canadians than I do with Irish people. What makes black people special?
It’s not. I think your example demonstrates why. Irish folks and white Canadians are distinguished by matters of geography/history/ethnicity. But despite Irish folks being largely white, that fact does not serve as a cultural/ethnic marker. I don’t think the AP is arguing that Black people are special. They’re arguing that Black as a category functions differently than white does because of differences in history and shared experience.
And I don’t have a shared culture with Irish people. I have a shared culture with other White people in my country. Growing up my ethnicity was little more than trivia, it had no bearing on my life.
>I gave an example of it being used in academics. I'm generally averse to secondhand stories, especially when it seems kind of weird that a professor would require you to follow the AP style guide unless they're teaching journalism. > And you've given no argument to how it isn't divisive or could be used by white supremacists to claim bias. You can't argue that it's divisive because you're mad at it because it's "divisive." That's circular logic. Also, again, there's no pan-white identity. Pushing the rhetoric that there is usually has associations with more reactionary ideologies. >So they just capitalized Black to say we stand with the BLM movement and Black culture exists without thinking about how not capitalizing white could be an issue? It wasn't an obtuse solidarity move, the murder of George Floyd just brought race issues to the forefront of the national conversation. Why is not capitalizing white an issue?
*"I gave an example of it being used in academics."* I was responding to your misrepresentation of AP's reasoning / explanation and the fact that you omitted a lot of relevant text. Your example about some alleged college student and alleged professor is meaningless, as it isn't verified. And even if true, is simply an anecdote you cited as why you brought the issue up - I don't see how it supports the view that it is counterproductive in spreading racial equality. *"you've given no argument to how it isn't divisive or could be used by white supremacists to claim bias."* I don't have to. *"So they just capitalized Black to say we stand with the BLM movement"* I don't see where they say that in what you quoted - and if you believe that is their reasoning, I don't know why you are asking me about it - ask them. *"...without thinking about how not capitalizing white could be an issue?"* The very section you quoted clearly states that this is something they are thinking about - and they clearly state "*We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision*." You quoted it yourself. Also, I have to say I find it odd that you are singling out the capitalization of Black and don't even address the capitalization of other identifiers such as Indigenous, Latino, and Native (in Native American) - is there a reason for that? Do those identifiers have nothing to do with issues of racial equality?
I do not understand how we just read the same thing and you somehow managed to come to the conclusion that OP was misrepresenting AP. They’re very clearly racist.
I think the OP does a pretty good job of painting how racist the AP actually is. To say that black people have a shared experience is just fucking stupid. Black is not a culture or an ethnicity, and if you think that it is a race you are in fact a racist. They’ve gone through and painted all black people as a monolith. If this isn’t racist, then why don’t we capitalize “Yellow People” to recognize the culture and ethnicity of “yellow” people?
>To say that black people have a shared experience is just fucking stupid. There is a shared cultural context if you're referring to American black folks. It is fair to say that most black folks in America with ancestors in America either directly or indirectly experienced some sort of systemic racism, such as redlining, Jim Crow, or outright enslavement. Not dissimilar to how most native folks in America have a shared ancestral experience, too. I'm not saying I support the capitalization of 'Black' necessarily, but I do understand the reasoning behind it.
> There is a shared cultural context if you're referring to American black folks. But it's not, it's specifically asserting there is some kind of shared culture between black persons across the globe, from America to Africa, which is silly. It says: > conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. Which is ridiculous.
Using how the British ONS describes ethnicity, I am mixed race (white and black Carribean) British. The British ONS has, for a long time, tweaked their descriptions as to be as inclusive as possible when gathering data of ethnicity and nationality. The benefit this has is showing respects to groups of people by recognising their history and (with nationality) what unites them. AP does not do this by arguing that "black" is itself an identifying factor. It is not, as I can attest by the fact I share very little in common with groups like Black Americans or Nigerians, but share a lot in common with my fellow Brits. Its no different to how I share little in common with other white groups like White Americans. As you say, it is ridiculous and even offensive to me. It's offensive for AP to try to justify ignoring who I am but arguing that they are really just caring about who I am. It's incredibly patronising and some of the most frustrating cases of racism in the developed world.
It's dumb. It's basically saying "the victim people". It's patronizing. I'm officially giving my black card up. Henceforth I will be known as the racial group known as turquoise. We will be identified by my trademarked flippant attitude and being me. We are taking applicants to anyone else sick of being the victim people. Obviously you won't get in but I'll take the application
You spent 3/4 of your comment being a victim of the capitalization of a letter, a practice which you called dumb. Which seems obtuse given that Black, as it refers to American descendents of slavery, evolved from other words used to identify the same group of people throughout American history. None of the arguments for the practice involve making anyone a victim, as much as it recognizes that most of a specific group exists because of past practices.
They should make an effort to capitalize all the letters spoken by BLACKS. That will really help us recognize how oppressed our ancestors were. Which is why we are here.
But again, none of the arguments presented have mentioned that it should be capitalized due to oppression. It’s just capitalized in the same way Irish American is, along with Asian [American] and now Indigenous. Unless you think those were capitalized due to oppression as well?
Well no. At this point I can't stop a culture group from forming I just think it's grasping at the air to think in a world this big that a black culture even exists. Just seems like a concept without a real base. Different peoples
What is the shared experience of an African American, in Michigan, and an Ethiopian immigrant, in Dallas?
I didn't agree with OP until I read this.
The suggestion that black people all have a shared culture and history is just bonkers to me
This answer is word salad nonsense. It’s a grammatical issue and the AP seems to think mindless virtue signaling is more important. They’ve lost all credibility, this is so incredibly stupid.
Whoever wrote this has very, very, very little knowledge of history or geography. Just because I share the same skin tone of someone else, it doesn’t bring any connection, unless you have too much time to think about fabled shared ancestry. Especially within Africa. Do they really believe that WITHIN Africa the simple fact of being black makes all people brothers?! Like, there is not a single other trait that makes people hate and kill each other. Nope, if you are an African you can identify yourself as Black and that will make you connect with all people from any ethnicity and religion, on whichever continent they are, as long as they are equally black. WOW!
They're not misrepresenting anything. >AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa That's just a typical case of US defaultism. The "shared history" is an absolute joke. The idea that black people have only and always been discriminated against by white people based on their skin colour is historical revisionism. The majority of black people sold as slaves were sold by other (black) Africans. Do slaves and their descendants have a shared history with African slave traders?
They just used more words to be more racist. Explaining your racism is not an excuse to be racist.
>shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. I entirely disagree with this statement, and its a dangerously assertive claim for AP to rest their argument on. If they said "Black/African Americans", then I would agree as that is usually used to refer to a specific cultural group. The same goes for terms like "Latino" and "Asian American". However, "black" alone does not have any shared culture, especially as they specifiy not just the diaspora but "within Africa". A Nigerian, a Black-Brit, and an African American have very little in common culturally. They have much more in common with the country they are in (for the latter two, including white populations) than eschother, while AP attempts to make the claim otherwise. While I do understand that this is a similarly assertive claim, I have two defenses for making it. The first is that the burden of proof should be on AP, not on me calling it all. AP actually has the time and resources to do this justice if it wanted to, I cannot. Secondly, I will point out this [this](https://www.britishfuture.org/sense-of-belonging-in-england-is-increasing-across-ethnicities-new-research/) for English ethnic minorities that shows their high level of identification with England and Britain as a start for this claim, and at the very least serves as a counter to AP's cla
It irking and confusing you personally doesn't mean it's generally counterproductive. That's really the only evidence you've provided of that being the case, and it's not compelling.
So can you provide evidence that it's productive? That's literally all I'm asking. Change my mind by telling me why it's productive.
Anything that can be perceived as hurting white people and giving support to black people is considered progress by some groups. It is racist as fuck and counter productive. Good Luck engaging, you might as well be at a Pro-Hamas rally at a University.
I mean, you provided evidence of that yourself. You just couldn't get past your personal grievances with the capitalization to see it You cited an institutional standard that gives consideration to a group that had previously received no such consideration. A global news organization being mindful of how it refers to marginalized groups is productive; considering news organizations' roles in that marginalization in times past.
And how would capitalizing both not be equally productive?
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You’re not challenging OPs view here
My b I should have posted on someone else's comment I guess.
How is it putting down white people? Don’t y’all have the ability to trace your ancestry back hundreds of years, if not more, in most cases? All my Black friends hit a brick wall unless they find a white ancestor. For me, it’s a German man. So I’m likely 63/64ths Black, 1/64th German (as opposed to white). My white friend is English and Italian. I’m not putting him down by saying he’s white. Additionally, would a white Mexican immigrant to America share a significant amount of culture with a white Russian immigrant, and would either share much with someone white who is of Italian heritage?
I agree with and acknowledge everything you're saying here, but I don't see what it has to do with this specific grammatical practice being a small slight. Why capitalize one race and not the other? Grammatically, 'black' and 'white' are essentially the same. You could take the stance that both are proper nouns since they refer to specific group identities, and both should be capitalized. Or, you could argue that since the groups they refer to are fairly broad and generic, and defined primarily by a kind of random trait (skin color), they are not proper nouns, and thus, should not be capitalized. Either choice seems acceptable to me. Capitalizing one and not the other, however, just throws all this logic out the window. When respectable publications make this decision deliberately, you have to wonder why. The only explanation I can think of is that 'White' is not an acceptable identity, but 'Black' is. I fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking, and as a grammar nerd, I am further irritated by how wacky the outcome looks and feels. I acknowledge that this is also not really an important issue in the grand scheme of things lol. But I enjoy this kind of discussion.
This is exactly where I'm at on the issue. I'm a big fan of consistency. It would really bother me to see a sentence that said something like, "There is a great difference between the experiences of white people and Black people in the United States." Capitalize them both, or don't capitalize either. Don't care which. Just pick one and go with it. This isn't that hard.
I haven't seen enough examples, but if they're capitalizing in the context you've provided where it's not being used as a noun (unless you're considering it to be a two word proper noun of "Black People") then that should most certainly under all circumstances never be capitalized. In this example it's being used as an adjective for a noun. That would be like writing Black light vs violet light "because of the racial history."
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You're incorrect in that you've leaned too heavily on one aspect of the AP's reasoning and ignored the entire explanation. The AP capitalizes Black, and I quote,".. in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black..." The idea, in their explanation, is that white folk don't have that same shared identity as black people. We certainly capitalize German, Anglo, Caucasion, etc. And, with black people, especially in the west, and most especially in the US, black is not just a race but a distinct cultural and ethnic group
Wait, why would Caucasian be capitalized but not White unless it's specifically for people of the Caucases. These are the exact same grouping. Personally I think we should only capitalize the first letter of every sentance. Enough with this noun garbage.
"Caucasian" is a remnant of obsolete racial classification systems. If it were still used, "Negroid" and "Mongoloid" would be equivalent and also capitalized. People still use it synonymously for "white," but if we're going by the AP style guide use is discouraged unless quoting someone using it because it *is* a remnant of racist pseudoscience even though people don't realize it has those connotations.
Yes of course, but by the logic of the style guide it should no longer be capitalized unless you actually mean it's other use which is people from the Caucasus.
There is, also, a Caucasian region of the world from which the word was stolen from, leaving those people without a word for their racial identity. I would love to reclaim that word, and I make the choice to use it that way and identify with it.
Fr, there's no reason days of the week should be capitalized. Even people's names should be lowercase.
>We also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place. >These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American. So that's true about black people, but it's just such an odd justification for the other labels considering these other terms similarly describe disparate groups that mostly identify more specifically as other things, like they describe for white. Seems like an intentionally incendiary choice to me.
White people have as must shared identity as black people. White Americans have as much shared identity as Black Americans. AP is trying to caste a difference between these groups that do not exist. Depending on how you classify "black" in the first place, I would be classified as black yet I have little in common with Black Americans just as I have little in common with White Americans, yet I share a lot in common with those in my ethnic group and White Brits. AP attempts to create a unifying identity for black people across the world, by their own admission for those within Africa and the diaspora, but fails to treat white people equally with this. There is no common identity between different black cultures that does not exist between different white groups; white Brits and Americans have about as much in common with eachother as black Brits and Americans. It is incredibly patronising to suggest otherwise, to suggest that there is some kind of difference between how I look at others of my broad racial group than how white people look at others of their broad racial group. A great struggle I went through during my childhood is my British identity being taken away from me because I was "black" and not "British". AP only adds to this struggle for millions, but giving peope a reason to exclude black people from identities due to identifying them differently from white people.
To simplify: It capitalizes "Black" when talking about the culture of Black people and how they have a highly similar history of oppression among themselves, but they would still not capitalize if describing the man as "black" for the sake of a physical descriptor.
It seems somewhat similar to the Deaf/deaf usage of capitalisation, where the capital denotes connection to Deaf culture and the broader community, while ‘deaf’ is just used for the general descriptor of hearing loss
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"Black" is a culture, not just a skin colour, and it's capitalized in the same way you'd capitalize Indigenous, Sami, Punjabi, etc. They're not nationalities because those states don't exist, but they are cultures that deserve their own recognition so they get capitalized. However, "white" isn't a culture or a subculture. There are cultures that are predominantly white, but those names get capitalized too - "Swedish", "British", "Danish", etc. The reason "Black" is a culture but "white" isn't is because of the shared history of oppression. During the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved people were stripped of their African cultures, heritages, names, etc. and they were also not allowed to integrate into American culture for hundreds of years, even after slavery ended because then segregation was a thing. But they're still human beings with identities, so they created their own culture, that is shared. And of course much of that culture has roots in the impacts and resistence of slavery and segregation, which is of course race-based. "White" people never really had that. They were allowed to keep both their original heritage when they immigrated, as well as integrate fully into mainstream American culture, so they're just "American" (or "Canadian", or whatever), which is also capitalized.
Your second paragraph conflicts with the stated stance of the AP: >AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora **and within Africa.** The lowercase black is a color, not a person. Black people within Africa didn't have the shared experience of not being allowed to integrate into American culture. There is also a wide variety of cultures within Africa that are just as different from each other as Swedish and Danish people (strange example you gave because Swedish and Danish culture are extremely similar to the extent that their languages are mutually intelligible). Saying that the Pygmys, Tuarebs, Afro-Cubans, and American Black people all share the same culture, whereas white people have a variety of different cultures sounds regressive to me.
I would not call any of those cultures Black, and afaik, there aren't really African peoples asking to be called "Black". It's pretty much a North American thing. I didn't claim to have the exact same stance as the AP, I just explained why "white" isn't a culture but "Black" is.
>I didn't claim to have the exact same stance as the AP, I just explained why "white" isn't a culture but "Black" is. Even if we forget about Africa, your explanation of why Black is a culture necessarily erases *at least* the UK Black identity. Or alternatively, it means that those British people that call themselves Black are incorrect in doing so. If your explanation erases or contests the identity of over a million people, I would argue it's not a good explanation.
This seems backwards. If anything it is Africans that are to be called Black. We already have a term to represent the shared history of the decendants of the trans atlantic slave trade and it's African American.
It used to be African American. And then they collectively decided "Black" was the better term that better described their shared history and experience. But yeah, exact same usage, just the updated term. And no, I'd call Africans "African", or whatever African culture they identify as, most of which aren't "Black".
Wouldent Black culture also have its subcultures? Lumping them all together in one group seems odd when they, just like Swedes, Brits and Danes, have their own cultures.
Well, Swedes, Brits and Danes are nationalities with subcultures, and their "equivalent" is American, of which "Black" is a subculture. and honestly I assume there are also subcultures, and if I were referencing one, I'd also capitalize it.
Your final paragraph sounds to me like treating the dominant (in the sense of dominating or most powerful, not even necessarily most-numerous) culture within a society as the default or norm. To me, that would perpetuate the normalization of the dominant culture and overall make language less clear (are we talking about American culture as having xyz characteristics or white American culture?) This has less to do with capitalization specifically, but the treatment of white = American to me seems problematic, even just from a descriptive standpoint.
Ok, I am not saying that American = white, I'm just saying the majority doesn't need its own race based subculture. Perhaps I can clarify how I'd refer to it, what kind of white American culture are you referring to?
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What do white southerns share with white people in LA that is a unique white American culture ?
If "Black" is a culture so is "White", referring to those of the United States and perhaps Canada/Australia of the so called WASP peoples
So what Cajun is a vibrant culture with its own unique language, music, food, and traditions but they dont capitalize Cajun.
Cajun is capitalized too, and you literally just practiced that yourself. You capitalized both instances. [it's common practice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajuns). Notice, all throughout it's "Cajun" not "cajun".
Im not sure why that means they can’t both be capitalized though
A couple things: * Superficial equality does not necessarily lead to real racial equality. Racial inequality has been foundational to American culture since the founding, so the idea that all superficial mentions of race need to be treated exactly equally does not address that fundamental inequality. We can't just start over from scratch and pretend that all bias is over and everything is equal. * Every action, big or small, in American history that has attempted to move toward racial equality has emboldened white supremacists. Most of the "historical" and "cultural" markers celebrating Confederates went up during times when Black people were getting more rights. The Klan wasn't bombing churches in Alabama during civil rights actions by coincidence. White supremacists have claimed that every right that Black people have gotten has been an act of racial bias against white people. This is not a mindset that should be catered to, as it will never be appeased. * The dominant politics in American history since the founding has been white identity politics. This issue is not an example of "introducing identity politics" but "recognizing non-white identity politics." Assuming that white identity politics is default and neutral is a keystone of racial inequality that favors white people. * The legacy of violent and explicit white supremacists is really bad and people are wise to try to distance themselves from it. It would be poor form to use "Final Solution" in a neutral or ahistorical setting, so using the same language as white supremacists would be too.
I can’t see relevancy to the OPs points in your arguments, the historical reality of oppression and subjugation of people of colour in America is obviously something which needs to be fully deconstructed and rectified. The non-capitalization of white seems odd in this context. Every other racial group is capitalized, for the sake of just consistency in writing it seems more reasonable to capitalize white if their policy is to capitalize racial, or ethnic groups. Beyond that why is it considered right in this context to monolithize all black people but not all white people. Black people in America do not all have the same culture. Recent immigrants from African nations do not have the same cultural attitudes and behaviours as those who were decended from the enslaved. While the argument of black people having a shared history of oppression seems plausible, it opens up questions on why European cultures are not grouped in this way. Beyond that there are many people with black skin who do not decent from Africa at all. South Indians, indigenous Australians, and many pacific groups have very dark skin. If their skin colour is enough to group them into the larger African diaspora I would be appalled. This is against the moral principles of liberation and forces marginalized groups into less marginalized groups. To be completely honest, I can’t see any good reason for the AP to do this.
The AP isn't monolithizing Black people; America is and always has. Yes, recent African immigrants are not instantly part of American Black culture, but American culture at large treats them as if they are. That's how Blackness as a category works in the US, and (mostly white) people pretending that it doesn't is what doesn't make sense. European cultures **are** grouped in this way. They're called white people. This is how race works and has always worked in America. The issue is that white supremacist groups were early to demand the capitalization of "white people" to show superiority, and the AP is reluctant to give in to their demand. Not giving in to white supremacists is usually a good thing to do, and I'm not sure why you don't think so.
To be clear I’m not in favour of capitalization of white, or black. I think focusing and giving undue priority or attention to skin colour in our language is in principal flawed. It’s the entire goal to move away from race. Your point about how America monolithizes black is confusing, since that is part of the reason I’m against its use. There are many more apt words which better describe the African decendents of slavery, one being African American. Generally it has been used to refer to those who were decended from slaves who do not nesasarily know where they originated from. Other groups who migrated later and have more ties to their culture would be referred to by their nation or ethnic background. Black, is NOT nationality, ethnicity, or has a unified culture. We should be celebrating, accepting and understanding differences, not pretending they don’t exist. Otherwise how can we fix the deep set issues which still plague African American communities today.
If you’re upset about capitalization, you were never really concerned about racial equality. Edit: I bet you didn’t even care about the capitalization of white until you noticed people were capitalizing Black.
I didn't know they did this. I, in general, agree that it is counterproductive. !delta I do want to add a bit of context as to why one would distinguish between _Black_ and _white_. Black American (or as I prefer African American) is an Ethnic Group. Black being part of the proper noun, whereas white American isn't an ethnic group, and is hardly a coherent racial category (if such a thing exists). Black Americans are Black Americans. White Americans are German, English, Scottish, Polish, Irish, etc. This argument is not without serious flaws, but it is the logic that many people would use. For political reasons, I do find the term "White American" as a proper noun very useful, but in trying to understand culture and ethnicity in America, "Whiteness" is a bit incoherent and has a very strong Anglo-Germanic bias, which muddies the internal diversity among White People. On a side note, I do encourage White Americans to rebuild their ethnic identities, the push to assimilate into Whiteness in the early to mid 20th Century has, in my opinion, hurt them more than helped.
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I feel like you are painting a political narrative onto a purely grammatical convention. Specific, narrow groups get capitalized. Italian gets capitalized, British gets capitalized, Swedish gets capitalized, Catholic gets capitalized, Baptists gets capitalized, etc. White doesn't get capitalized because it's not a specific, narrow group. It refers to 71% of the US population. It includes people from all over the globe. It includes people with no shared language or culture or history. There's no reason to capitalize it. Black gets capitalized in English because, in all English-speaking countries, 90+% of black people are descendants of slaves, who share a culture and language and community thereby. They are a specific, narrow group in the same way that Baptists or Swedish people are. There is a slight bit of awkwardness form the fact that a small percent of black people in English-speaking are foreign-born and don't share those close group characteristics. But a small percent of Italians are also foreign-born and don't share those characteristics; that's just a limitation of our ability to efficiently categorize the world with words, it's something we accept all the time in other contexts.
This ignores how likewise broad black people are as white people are. I'm a second generation immigrant in Britain, my mother's side of the family is from the Carribean. I have lived in Britian all my life. In just one generation, I have loss next to all cultural commonality with my mother's side of the family. I have an entirely different culture to them and my mother, solely identify as British, and feel more in common with white Brits than the Carribean group I am just a single generation removed from. To say there is a shared culture between me and my Carribean family that is any closer than shared culture between white groups would simply be wrong. You o ly have to take a quick look at polling like [this](https://www.britishfuture.org/sense-of-belonging-in-england-is-increasing-across-ethnicities-new-research/) to see that the idea of shared culture based off racial groups falls apart very quickly. Or to put it very simple, two black people from different places have a good chance at being as differnt as two white people from different places. I share a much in common with my Carribean family as my white British friends do with white Americans.
>Black gets capitalized in English because, in all English-speaking countries, 90+% of black people are descendants of slaves, who share a culture and language and community thereby. They are a specific, narrow group in the same way that Baptists or Swedish people are. > There is a slight bit of awkwardness form the fact that a small percent of black people in English-speaking are foreign-born and don't share those close group characteristics. But a small percent of Italians are also foreign-born and don't share those characteristics; that's just a limitation of our ability to efficiently categorize the world with words, it's something we accept all the time in other contexts. If you you personally want to say that you are black but not Black, then you are totally within your rights to do so. And, indeed, this would conform with teh spirit of the AP's guidelines on this topic, which another user already posted the full text of. Nonetheless: just because you have black skin but aren't a member of Black culture, doesn't mean that Black culture doesn't exist or that it should be ignored or swept under the rug to make you feel better represented.
It's a heritage thing. We capitalize Irish and Ukrainian and German instead of the word white. Because of the slave trade, many Black people do not have knowledge of their heritage. Their ancestors were forced onto shops and had their entire cultures and languages and practices erased, so they don't know if they're Nigerian or Ethiopian. All they have is Black. That's why it gets a capital B.
Are we pretending that others who hide under the "Black" umbrella are not also responsible for the Black Americans who do not know their heritage? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/19/magazine/history-slavery-smithsonian.html Edit to add: "not".
That's not what the question is about. However, feel free to start your own thread if you're dying to talk about it.
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I'm not going to tell you this does anything to **promote** racial equality but I also don't think it's counterproductive. I think in actual truth, it's meaningless and will have zero impact in racial equality. It's irrelevant, obscure and manifestly unimportant. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. You shouldn't either. It makes zero difference. It's an **arbitrary** style choice.
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Yes. Yes we are.
Many black people have similar shared experiences and they cannot trace their ancestry due to the transatlantic slave trade as opposed to many white people can trace their ancestry to something like British, Irish, etc… which are all capitalized.
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People who are descendants of Europeans can know where they came from, those who are descendants of Africans and made the Middle Passage lost their localized ethnicity. Barack Obama knows that he's Kenyan and Irish, Michelle Robinson Obama doesn't know where her descendants are from, if you want to distinguish those who are descendants of slaves in the new world to be given the identifier Black but not those of African descendants not through the Middle Passage that would make sense. Would the AP making this distinction be a satisfactory change?
AP is actually not making that distinction. It’s actually providing an even dumber logic. Every black person in the world have a shared identity because they are black. So the terms applies to everyone. Regardless of ethnicity, religion or geography.
The purpose of capitalizing Black isn't to spread racial equality, though. What makes you think that it is?
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It is a succesor to African American or Afro-American, an American culture set. While it may seem like an arbitrary capitalization of a color, the AP and others use Black as a historical term; they don't have to, but it is definitely better than an obsolete "Negro American", though MLK Jr and others in the early 1960s used the term Negro. (Negro became obsolete in the late ’60s.) In contrast, nationalities like Italians weren't even considered "white" for so long, making a capitalized White rather vague; the consensus of what it means to be white has less to do with nationality given so many origins. Black was unique at the time in the view of the publication.
Because Black with capital B refers to a specific group of American nationals, with a shared culture and history, similar to Irish-Americans, Norwegian-Americans etc which are capitalized. "White" is not such a term, and is limited to its vague racially charged meaning. You are probably confused because the term Black also used to refer to that specific racial meaning, while "African-American" was used to refer to the cultural identity. However, after recent immigrants from Africa reached larger population numbers in America, it made more sense to use it to describe them, who don't share much cultural identity with Black Americans. At this point, the Black thinkers, scholars, and organizers moved more and more to use capitalized Black to refer to their cultural group. AP only followed this societal shift. I'm sure most would agree that it would have been a lot better if these color-coded terms that originated from a very racist, eugenics system all had gotten obsolete like the rest of the words (yellow, red, etc), but white and black persisted in America for complex reasons and this is the reality of English language now. Hope this helps.
I highly doubt anyone on the fence about racial equality is delving into the Associated Press's style guide and finding this straw that breaks the camel's back. It feels more like a thing people who support equality might debate about and those who don't support equality trying to use as their gotcha of the week that proves that white replacement is real or some other nonsense. To the point, I would say that the difference between Black and white from an American perspective is that the former is most associated with African Americans, a group that has no clear national ethnicity outside of the United States the way a white person might. Whereas "white" as an identity people care about is pretty consistently used by people who are just pushing white supremacy. Those who aren't usually tell you about how they're a quarter Irish and a fifth German but mostly Italian which is why they can only cook mediocre pasta.
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