World, Writing, Wealth discussion

Lately - probably within the last couple years - I have been seeing the word "black" when it refers to a person, printed with an upper case B. For example - The Black man was wearing a black raincoat."
I think it looks odd. especially when other common adjectives - brown, white - are not capitalized. And it's not standard English usage. I pulled some older books I have from the shelves ( I have kind of a library at home) to see if this was the thing a few decades ago, and didn't see it.

If that’s a policy change, sounds superfluous and irregular, perpetualizing a once touchy issue

Plain wrong - suspired the grammar police have not had a heart attack...

Note - I am seeing it in fiction and non fiction.

I thought that adjectives were only capitalized when they are derived from proper nouns.

African American people vs. black people
Caucasian people vs. white people

It's the new okay term for diversity. It's also a sad day for the written word.

I’ve noticed this just this past year. It caught my attention when I read a statement similar to this: “When white people and Black people have such disparate incomes, it causes resentment.” I wondered why one was capitalized and the other wasn’t.

J. wrote: "I thought that adjectives were only capitalized when they are derived from proper nouns.

African American people vs. black people
Caucasian people vs. white people"

You're right. That's textbook, standard English. It used to be a priority with editors.

I have not heard of this at all. Is it in books or is it articles or both?

It's in books and articles. I also saw it in a letter to the editor somewhere recently, where the LW referred to herself as a black woman but it was Black woman. I wondered if it was how she wrote the letter or if it was an editorial decision made by the publisher of the column.

So I guess I'm a White woman.

I want to be known as a white Woman.

It happened a couple of years ago when it became the standard of different news publishers.

"In some ways, the decision over “white” has been more ticklish. The National Association of Black Journalists and some Black scholars have said white should be capitalized, too.

We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore these problems,” John Daniszewski, the AP’s vice president for standards, said in a memo to staff Monday. “But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/202...

Give me and all other White women a break. We're not white supremacists, we just want equality.

Thanks for the link.
If to believe it's accurate, it reflects different editorial policies indeed:
"Columbia Journalism Review, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News and Chicago Tribune are among the organizations that have recently said they would capitalize Black but have not done so for white.

“White doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does,” The New York Times said on July 5 in explaining its decision.

CNN, Fox News and The San Diego Union-Tribune said they will give white the uppercase, noting it was consistent with Black, Asian, Latino and other ethnic groups. Fox cited NABJ’s advice.

CBS News said it would capitalize white, although not when referring to white supremacists, white nationalists or white privilege."

What has happened to my language...

Philip wrote: "What has happened to my language..."

Critical Race Theory

J. wrote: "Philip wrote: "What has happened to my language..."

Critical Race Theory"

Noun or adjective and should that be capitalised too?
Is it a proper noun? Does it mean I'm critical of race theory? Perhaps, race theory is critical? Maybe, its a critical race theory? i.e. an idea about who is going to come first in the Tour De France.

Where are the grammar Nazis when we need them?

I do not want to dismiss the terrible injustices of racism but...
“White doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does,” is just as racist and generalist as many other statement. There is no global shared black history. Hundreds of millions of Africans have no shared culture or history with current black (no capital) Americans. Nigerians do not have a common history with Egyptians, Congolese, Ugandans or South African's. Recent black American immigrants do not necessarily share any of the history of slavery.

Surely there are more important race issues in the USA except grammar.

Shouldn't we have tall, fat, slim, green-eyed all capitalised to demonstrate shared culture of tall people....

Likewise, billions of Asians do not share a single culture. As for white or Caucasian, we barely get on in this forum! Again no shared culture so at least that statement is partially correct.

I despair. Maybe our American contributors could write/email to the journals pointing out the inconsistency and illogical approach. I will watch out for incursions in the UK in English.

This is the same system that graduated a woman into a writing career while believing that hamster was spelled 'hampster'. She called her mother to yell at her boss. And the Mom did it!

Charissa wrote: "This is the same system that graduated a woman into a writing career while believing that hamster was spelled 'hampster'. She called her mother to yell at her boss. And the Mom did it!"

While the philosophy is repugnant to me, the phrase "Critical Race Theory" is a name and therefore should be capitalized as a proper noun.

Unsurprisingly, I have seen it capitalized or uncapitalized in different ways by the various available sources. What happened to the bad old days when the hardest part of grammar was deciding between commas, semicolons, and colons?

Maybe if everyone really looked behind the curtain, they would see what is really going on....

Charissa wrote: "This is the same system that graduated a woman into a writing career while believing that hamster was spelled 'hampster'. She called her mother to yell at her boss. And the Mom did it!"

In school, I was taught dilemMa was spelled dilemNa. I was around 60 when I learned that during my time in grade school a major publisher of school text books spelled the word wrong resutling in a large portion of my age group in the NE part of the country spelling dilemma wrong. I spelled it with an N during my career and no one ever told me it was wrong. When word spellcheck came up, I "fixed" it to spell it correctly. lol.

Better late than never :)