Anti-racist activity prioritizes the idea that while individuals reveal racist qualities and attributes, systemic and structural racism causes deeper damage and limits the full freedom and equality of opportunity for people of color.
Yet, to change systems, we must recalibrate individual consciousness. In the middle of the 1954 Supreme Court considering the case of Brown v Board decision, President Eisenhower said “Law and force cannot change a man’s heart.” Nine years later, in a different context, Dr. King aptly quipped that
“It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless.”
Thus, a paradox exists: systemic racism and injustice pervasively and negatively impact Black life, but those systems will likely not change without white recognition of their complicity – explicitly and in the implicitly via silence – in perpetuating those systems.
As a result of the expressions at daily street protests across the nation during the spring and summer of 2020 making clear that Black Lives Matter and demanding justice, white consciousness began to shift. One possibly critical aspect that arose was a subtle means to recognize the dignity of Black Americans by capitalizing the B.
Eventually, mainstream media accepted the B, but then vibrant debates emerged about White v. white. I remain uncertain about my position on this second topic, W vs. w. I know that capitalizing it makes me feel uncomfortable, but then I think that might reveal my own emerging consciousness of seeing white as a race, something I know I wasn’t trained to see.
Although this “debate” may not have the same urgency as reforming policing or securing decent housing, quality employment, good education, equality in healthcare, or environmental justice, I think it may help us think about recognizing the humanity of Black Americans.
This opinion article was written by Pete DiNardo, a high school teacher in Mt. Lebanon and founding member of M.O.R.E and its Anti-Racism Education Committee (AREC), and originally published by M.O.R.E on February 19, 2021. Photo by Tessa Watkins.
A set of brief excerpts defending “B” and “w”
“Why We’re Capitalizing Black” from The New York Times.
The Times has changed its style on the term’s usage to better reflect a shared cultural identity. Here’s what led to that decision.
The last time The New York Times made a sweeping call to capitalize how it referred to people of
African ancestry was nearly a century ago.
W.E.B. Du Bois had started a letter-writing campaign asking publications, including The Times, to capitalize the N in Negro, a term long since eradicated from The Times’s pages. “The use of a small letter for the name of twelve million Americans and two hundred million human beings,” he once wrote, was “a personal insult.”
The Times turned him down in 1926 before coming around in 1930, when the paper wrote that the new entry in its stylebook — its internal guide on grammar and usage — was “not merely a typographical change,” but “an act in
recognition of racial self-respect.” … “It seems like such a minor change, black versus Black,” The Times’s National editor, Marc Lacey, said. “But for many people the capitalization of that one letter is the difference between a color and a culture.”
“Why we capitalize ‘Black’ (and not ‘white’)” from Columbia Journalism Review.
AT THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, we capitalize Black, and not white, when referring to groups in racial, ethnic, or cultural terms. 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.
Note from M.O.R.E: we too will continue to capitalize Black and not white in all of our publications when referring to race, ethnicity, or culture.
Continue Learning:
- David Bauder, “AP says it will capitalize Black but not white” (Jul. 20, 2020). AP News.
- Ken Makin, “The case for uppercase: Commentary on style, dignity, and Black culture” (Jun. 12, 2020). The Christian Science Monitor.
- This is a short, wonderfully precise commentary in the Christian Science Monitor from Ken Makin that links B to dignity
- Nancy Coleman, “Why We’re Capitalizing Black” (Jul. 5, 2020). The New York Times.
- Mike Laws, “Why we capitalize ‘Black’ (and not ‘white’)” (Jun. 16, 2020). Columbia Journalism Review.
- Nell Irvin Painter, “Opinion: Why ‘White’ should be capitalized, too” (Jul. 22, 2020). The Washington Post.
- Historian Nell Irvin Painter argues for capitalized B and W.
- Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Case for Capitalizing the B in Black” (Jun. 18, 2020). The Atlantic.
- Professor of philosophy and law Kwame Anthony Appiah also argues for capitalized B and W, “Black and white are both historically created racial identities—and whatever rule applies to one should apply to the other.”
