I’ll write it however everyone wants, but I sort of thought it was some idea from the New York Times and not necessarily what the black community wants per se.
Dunno why you’d capitalize black unless it was at the start of a sentence. No one capitalizes white.
Even if you’re in America not all black people are African Americans. Black ppl come from all over the world. (Duh.)
Stupid designations about something that doesn’t matter, but they’re the best we’ve got.
This was a decision that I think the NY Times made to start capitalizing, and I’ve never understood why, but editors of books and articles all use it now, I saw it in a Stephen King story recently.
Language does change, a book by the trans writer Jennifer Finney Boylan about her own transition published in 2001 used transgendered through the book simply because that’s what was used then, and now it’s proper to say transgender; Jenny’s book was released for an anniversary edition and she addressed that in the foreword, that she had left it as written but with some hesitation that people would be offended, which I think would be silly because it was never a slur, it simply was the language then, and before that trans people were called transsexual, and that also wasn’t a slur. So terminology can and does evolve, but it’s just so random in the case of capitalization and nobody has ever explained why.
I swear no one else in the world manages to.be so obsessed with race than US… Come the fuck on…
Yeah I wonder why…
Surely nothing to do with 400 years of slavery followed by Jim Crow and permanent systemic racism.
I’m not American. I honestly just wondered because the first time I saw this used it was the NY Times saying they were doing it from now on.
One guy I know likes to be called Steve
Who are you?
How do we know each other?What’s his name?
I know one word I’ll never call them, capital or not. It’s also why I can’t sing along with Busta Rhymes songs, if I’m being honest.
I know, I am not very comfortable.
Hold on, let me ask the black hivemind.
We are the Blarg. Resistance is futile.
Black*
Bless your heart.
Wow that’s kinda fucked up. Did he really deserve to be devastated like that?
Black hive mind
Am black. Doesn’t matter so long as it’s consistent (i.e. black and white or Black and White).
How do you feel about the 2001 game “Black & White” by Lionhead Studios?
Funny you say that, because the generally accepted style is Black and white. Here’s Microsoft’s style guide for another example.
Generally speaking, capital “W” White tends to have supremacist overtones in print.
Lots of generally accepted bigotry throughout society, even in the constitution
US race relations are really, really weird.
I just only seem to think it came from some idea from the NY Times, and I don’t think anyone says White, so it just seems, off kilter I guess I’d say. Of course I will say whatever is proper, but it’s just, odd.
I’m a white guy, but that seems weird to me. We capitalize a country or origin (e.g., English, African), but not a description. We don’t capitalize “redhead” or “tall.”
We do capitalise community names though - like deaf vs Deaf.
This is the same, it’s not being used as a description of how someone looks, but to what community they belong.
We also capitalize the Native in Native American even though it’s just an adjective.
TIL. Thank you.
Never seen that anywhere before. I don’t think your ‘we’ is the same as our ‘we.’
I agree, I would use a capital when writing about “the Black community”. Otherwise it would be lowercase (“a black person/a white person”)
Interesting, never heard that with respect to Deaf or whatever.
Depends where you are
It’s common for Australian Aboriginals to call their community Blak
some do, some don’t








