Difference between revisions of "Black capitalized or black"
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Latest revision as of 01:20, 14 July 2015
Black is commonly capitalized, white is normally not capitalized.
The Case for Black With a Capital B |NYT
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In the mid-1920s, W. E. B. Du Bois began a letter-writing campaign, demanding that book publishers, newspaper editors and magazines capitalize the N in Negro when referring to Black people. Even though Du Bois himself didn’t use the word Negro consistently — one of his most famous works, after all, is “The Souls of Black Folk” — it was the official name for the race, and as such, Du Bois wanted that word to confer respect on the page as well as in daily life.
In 1926, The New York Times denied his request, as did most other newspapers. In 1929, when the editor for the Encyclopaedia Britannica Informed Du Bois that Negro would be lowercased in the article he had submitted for publication, Du Bois quickly wrote a heated retort that called “the use of a small letter for the name of twelve million Americans and two hundred million human beings a personal insult.” The editor changed his mind and conceded to the capital N, as did many other mainstream publications including The Atlantic Monthly and, eventually, The New York Times.
On March 7, 1930, The Times announced its new policy on the editorial page: “In our Style Book, Negro is now added to the list of words to be capitalized. It is not merely a typographical change, it is an act in recognition of racial respect for those who have been generations in the ‘lower case.’ ”
The Discussion on Capitalizing the 'B' in 'Black' Continues|HuffPost
Last week The New York Times published "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/opinion/the-case-for-black-with-a-capital-b.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1">The Case for Black With a Capital B</a>," an op-ed by Professor Lori L. Tharps. As a Black American and a proponent of the capitalization, I congratulate her for opening a conversation that is long overdue, a conversation that goes to the heart of how a large group of Americans with the most difficult of histories has struggled to express itself and gain greater agency in American society.
