> Donald Barthelme in particular praised you for writing about things readers had never heard before between Black and white characters.
It's bizarre to me that in certain circles some Colors are capitalized, while other colors are not.
It's bizarre to me that in certain circles some Colors are capitalized, while other colors are not.
I encourage you to consider and understand the perspectives of those who do capitalize the word.
This serves as an introduction to some people's thinking:
https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php
Note, the standard practice to capitalize ethnic groups: For example jewish would be considered incorrect. There are those who consider Black to be an ethnic group, hence, capitalizing it encompasses a way to "describe the people, culture, art and communities" that make up the ethnic group. In which case, it's not a color, exactly, which I think is what you may be missing, when you consider why some capitalize the word.
Case in point: We already capitalize many other groups that are often associated with "color." Color, of course, being a construct we often see as "real," when in fact it is a cultural interpretation.
> After all, she pointed out, “We already capitalize Asian, Hispanic, African American and Native American.”
Are we really pretending it's a coincidence all the time?
This naivety is rightfully never applied to right wing bigotry.
I'm not white myself but I'm genuinely confused as to why this kind of blatant ethnic antagonization is so normalized in western elites and extremely taboo to point out.
To consider this further, shift the power structures and see how whiteness changes. Who is considered "white" in the historic USSR and contemporary ex-bloc states is radically different than the usage in America at the same time. This is even more complicated in places like Central or South America, India, and parts of Asia. I guarantee that - if you weren't versed with local power dynamics and colorism history - you wouldn't be able to classify who on the street is generally considered "white" in Buenos Aires.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
All of the definitions are contested and subject to localities, not just whiteness.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263722423_Not_black...
>is that "white" isn't an ethnic group with an actual cultural or racial lineage.
None of them are. There's more genetic diversity in sub Saharan Africa than in any other place on earth. People from Asia and people from Africa don't identify as black or asian as a consistent racial lineage.They're also a western ad hoc hodge podge just as much as whiteness is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people
None of your explanations single out white people as an especially fake identity inconsistent with asian or black.
"Black" as used in the editorial above is a very specific usage - replacing "African American" for the critical reasons outlined. The reason this group is unique as an ethnicity w.r.t. recategorization is because the structure and violence of slavery isolated them from historic ethnicities and forcefully regrouped them under a new one. This is why in that Habecker paper, peoples with dark skin and african heritage who were not part of that system try to separate themselves from that identity - that's why it exists!
I'd also argue that "Asian" probably _shouldn't_ be capitalized, and there are some theorists who agree. Really, asian only really exists as an ethnic category because Americans historically (and even now) couldn't really be assed to learn the basic geography of Asia and grouped it all.
"is that "white" isn't an ethnic group with an actual cultural or racial lineage".
"The reason this group is unique as an ethnicity w.r.t. recategorization is because the structure and violence of slavery isolated them from historic ethnicities and forcefully regrouped them under a new one."
Conflicting statements.
According to you white people don't have historic ethnicities but black people also don't because of slavery and that is why they deserve capitalization?
There's a case to be made - and some theorists do - that black and Black are different identities in America, the second directly corresponding to that shared loss of history.
Right, but are those sub-groups still all that relevant in the context of race in America?
It's been a long time since Irish-Americans have been treated differently than British-Americans, for example.
I would say grouping all white sub-groups together makes as much sense as grouping all black or Asian sub-groups together because generally racial dynamics today are viewed as occurring between White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American groups. Further granularity is rarely considered in informal language.
"For many people, Black reflects a shared sense of identity and community. White carries a different set of meanings; capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists."
I don't find that thoughtful.
The argument further erodes when they also capitalize "Asian", which is described as "groups that include myriad ethnic identities united by shared race and geography and, to some degree, culture" - How does that not apply equally to "white" also?
Black usually means the descendant of slaves. When Obama was starting his political career there was some debate in the Black community about if he really counted as Black, since he didn't really have much contact with the Black community until his 20s and his history is quite different.
White typically means descendants of various waves of settlers with limited ties to any specific European country. Generally they can trace their lineage to a mix of early and later arrivals. With a strong bias towards northern Europe.
Hispanic generally meant Mexican, Cuban, or Puerto Rican. Which were fairly geographically distinct communities in the 90s so one word for all three didn't cause much confusion.
Hispanic is a newer term, minted during my lifetime. I know older people who used to be white until they were relabeled as Hispanic.
https://daily.jstor.org/where-did-the-term-hispanic-come-fro...
https://www.history.com/news/hispanic-latino-latinx-chicano-...
The Irish were white.
Does one hold that all the diverse peoples of Africa can be considered with a shared group identity, which deserves acknowledgement and respect, and do you simultaneously hold that white people of Europe can be grouped together, but that grouping is undeserving of the same validity and respect.
If someone is willing to engage in this Act of cognitive dissonance, they can be considered part of the political in-group or at least sufficiently compliant to be trusted.
It is absolutely an example of the liberal racism that Powell is talking about and straight out of 1984.
We have words for those people.
African. European.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here? It's confusing.
Maybe the problem here seems to be that "white" is implied to be the umbrella term for "European." It's not, nor do I believe very many people think it should be. We don't want to go back to the Pre-WW2 eugenics thinking. That pretty much tore the continent apart.
So is shared White identity across nationalities and ethnicities. But identifying with the shared White experience of White supremacy has a substantially different character than identifying with the shared Black experience of White supremacy.