Yesterday, we had to come to a decision about capitalizing Black when referring to Black Americans, with Black History Month. We adopt Hart’s Rules, which is silent on the matter, but the Oxford English Dictionary, which needs to be referred to in tandem, does capitalize Black American, as of the 2011 revision. We were operating with older Oxford dictionaries and needed to bring ourselves up to date, though there have been many pre-2011 usages of the capitalized form, more so after movements such as Black Power. I should also note that my Black friends and colleagues tended to go with lowercase.
Generally, with many words, especially with ambiguity, we favour the lowercase, e.g. for seasons. Hart’s indicates this, as did any Oxford guide during my training. Typographically, lowercase is easier to read, we don’t pronounce capitalized words differently (usually), and the German convention of capitalizing nouns doesn’t look right to Anglophone readers. We might also have a democratic bent. Quite early on we anticipated usage based on historical precedent and went lowercase for internet, though OED notes that it began with lowercase in the 1970s.
Black has always been an interesting one because we write African American and Caribbean American who are parts of the Black American group. Logically, it didn’t seem right to have the greater group with lowercase, especially with the recognition of Black Americans as a unique entity. There is no convention in the OED, however, for capitalizing white in the same context; notwithstanding the issues of colonization, intersectionality and prejudice, there are already equivalent European American and Euro-American that are capitalized. At the end of the day, we stick to Hart’s and what the OED prescribes, and this was one where we had to play catch-up.
In the 2000s, Lucire’s features’ editor was Black, and we received a release from Black Fashion Week. I asked if there was an equivalent white group. He replied, ‘Yes, it’s called New York Fashion Week.’
You may also like
