Capitalizing “Black” in Race-Related Coverage, Part 1: A “Conferral of Dignity” or a Matter of Style?
The AP Stylebook recently changed its guidance on capitalizing “black” in race-related coverage. Previously, it had recommended lowercasing “black.” Now it recommends capitalizing “Black” but retains its recommendation to lowercase “white.”
Is the change to “Black” a way of showing respect to a group of people who often have been treated poorly in the US and elsewhere? And, conversely, does continuing to lowercase “white” show disrespect to people of European descent?
From a style perspective, the answer to both questions is “not really.”
Kwame Anthony Appiah explains that some “consider the capital letter to be a conferral of dignity.” For instance, many Christians capitalize pronouns for God to show respect. I don’t object to this as a way to cultivate piety and reverence. But styling God’s pronouns as “He/Him/His” conflicts with the conventions of the English language as they have developed since the eighteenth century. (Before then, capitalization rules were far from standardized.)
The general rule in English today is to capitalize the first words of sentences, proper nouns, and words derived from proper nouns (such as “Hispanic”). To capitalize more than that is considered distracting.
The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style puts it well: “Contrary to popular perception, capitalization is not used in English as a way to confer respect or honor (we capitalize both God and Satan, Churchill and Hitler equally). In general our language uses capitalization to distinguish specific things . . . from general things” (145).
However, in colloquial English, there has long been a sense that capitalization can show respect. When the public learned that Ulysses S. Grant was gravely ill in 1885, a little girl from Kentucky wrote to him: “I hop you will live to be even older than that old rebel jeff davis. He don’t even deserve to have his name spelt in capitale” (Grant’s Final Victory, 168). Capitalizing any word midway through a sentence makes it stand out, just as lowercasing the kind of word that’s generally capitalized, like a name, draws attention to it. It’s easy to make the leap from drawing attention (or not drawing attention) to giving honor (or dishonor).
But to make this idea a standard in formal English would raise many inconsistencies: Should we start lowercasing “Hitler” to avoid endorsing him? Or do capitals only convey respect sometimes—and how do we know when?
Capitalization in modern English is deliberately value-neutral. To lowercase “white” is not inherently demeaning to white people, and to uppercase “Black” doesn’t assign extra value to those of African descent.
So why did The AP Stylebook make this change?
The idea is that “Black” signifies a distinct cultural identity like “Latino” and “Asian,” and therefore should be capitalized. “White,” on the other hand, is not a cultural identity. We’ll evaluate this rationale from a style perspective next time.
Continuing to beat through the thicket of English, with careful use of capitals,
Rebekah Slonim
