Why I don’t believe the word ‘black’ should always have a capital ‘b’
A nti-racism. Allyship. Accountability. These are some of the key words that have accompanied the Black Lives Matter protests over the past year. But one little-noticed change is to the word black itself. Since the protests, people have started to capitalise the “b” when writing about black people.
The Associated Press updated its influential style guide, known as a “bible for journalism”, to capitalise the “b”, stating that “the lowercase black is a color, not a person”. A significant number of news agencies, magazines, universities, publishers and cultural institutions followed suit.
This may all seem fairly insignificant, but the small typographical change has wider implications. For centuries, black people have had to conform and contort themselves into harmful and limiting racial categorisations. If anti-racism achieves its goal, there will eventually be new, imaginative ways to talk about race, and black people will have the power to shape their own identities. It is therefore right to ask, after a year of renewed protests: does capitalising the “b” in “black” help the anti-racism cause?
In my view, I’m afraid the answer is no. Rather than empowering black people, these stylistic changes simply show how the conversations about race are circular and repetitive. Even when they are in favour of black liberation, they still inadvertently narrow the black experience.
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