About a year ago I wrote my term paper for a class on the presence of medical racism in America. Specifically, my thesis focussed on the lack of trust between medical professionals and many Black Americans. During a peer-review, I expected to have to defend my position given that plenty of people simply don’t believe in this very real health crisis, but instead, I found myself defending an argument I didn’t even know I was presenting– whether or not the ‘B’ in “Black” was to be capitalized. My partner brought to my attention that she did not know whether or not it was to be capitalized therefore our professor probably didn’t know it either so I should just fix them to make it all lowercase. This confused me to no end– surely this wasn’t an actual point of confusion? I conducted some more research on my own and much to my disbelief, the capitalization of this word has been highly contested, especially within the last year.
Many major publications like the New York Times, Huffington Post, The Associated Press, and more have made official statements regarding their capitalization of “Black” in articles. The New York Times references W.E.B. DuBois’s 1926 bid to capitalize the ‘N’ in publications of the term “Negro”. DuBois states that the use of lowercase in a phrase meant to describe millions of people was insulting at the very least. Later in The Time’s article, they state that the 1930 stylebook update was not just a typographical or stylistic amendment, but an act of racial self-respect. I contend that this still holds true.
The ‘B’ in “Black” deserves to be capitalized just as the beginning of Native American, Latinx, Asian, and every other racial categorization should. The instance of Black rings especially meaningful because the difference in capitalization here holds the difference between a color and an entire population of people. In contrast, many editors have agreed that phrases like “white” and “brown” should remain lowercase due to their ambiguity. The underlying element in capitalized racial classifications is the shared history and culture. The capitalizing of racial and ethinic groups is an act of recognition and respect.