4 ms·
This is now in the official style guides of several major media outlets. It emphasises blackness as an identity, i.e. it is a proper noun, the name of an ethni
by doubleunplussed 6y ago
This is now in the official style guides of several major media outlets.
It emphasises blackness as an identity, i.e. it is a proper noun, the name of an ethnic group, and not just an adjective describing their skin colour.
I can't say I agree that society should be fracturing into more identities instead of fewer, or that people should strongly identify with their race, but that's the trend and that's we're at with the terminology.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> This is now in the official style guides of several major media outlets. It's not particularly new; labels used as names of racial identity groups have been capitalized for a long time; “Black” as a proper noun or proper adjective in that context has been capitalized for a long time (used as a common adjective describing skin color it isn't, and the usages can be hard to differentiate otherwise.)
- TakuYam 6y agoIs blackness an identity though? I feels rather racist to diminish substantial cultural differences and experiences just because a group of people may have one common physical characteristic.
- croissants 6y agoI'm far from an expert on this topic, but I believe the reasoning is that (at least in the USA), African-American ancestral links don't necessarily go back far enough to identify an ethnic group because of slavery. In the absence of the ability to say e.g. "I'm from the Yoruba people", the primary group identification just becomes Black. I agree that it seems kind of reductive from the outside, but I'm mostly inclined to let people decide their own names.
- pseudalopex 6y agoDon't forget centuries of mixing and shared history.