The following post was written in reply to an article regarding why we should capitalize "Black" but not "white" in regards to race. I'll link that article at the bottom.
I have to say I respectfully disagree, but please allow me to break down why.
The main argument is that racial designations imply a shared culture and history. In actual usage, however, this is far from the case. The most obvious example, "Black," is used to describe anyone with African ancestry, as well as many other populations groups, including Jamaican. There's little to no shared culture and history between Jamaica and South Africa, and there are so many extreme cultural differences between African populations that to imply they all have the same culture or even significantly shared culture is bordering on cultural erasure. A good example of this phenomenon is explored by Trevor Noah in his special "Son of Patricia," where he notes that you could send all the racists screaming the n-word to Africa and they wouldn't have any significant effect. Black people in Africa rarely share that cultural history with Black people in America in regards to that word. And there are exampled from every other racial designation, in fact that's part of why "Asian" is more and more rarely used by those studying Asian cultures, they're too dissimilar to simply lump together; it's even considered a mild insult to some Asian populations to be referred solely by that designation, and that is even more true of Native-American cultures. Racial designations rarely refer to a homogenous culture or history.
The secondary argument is essentially that by using the capitalized "White," we are somehow agreeing with White Supremacists because they prefer to capitalize the word, or simply that we are appeasing white people. This is predicated on two assumptions, each of which I'd like to address. The first is that "white" is not a racial designation all on its own, because it has only existed in contrast with "Black." The second is that by using the same symbol as a hate group, you are supporting that hate group's ideals.
"White" is a racial designation, specifically because it came into being in directly contrast with other racial designations, because those other racial designations only exist in contrast with each other and "white." That's how a set of comparing terms works: if there were no cultural concept of "race," we wouldn't need designations. If we all fit within the same designation for that cultural concept, we wouldn't need those designations. Just like we didn't need a term to describe "Newtonian physics" in contrast with "quantum physics" until we understood that quantum physics had to be intellectually separated from Newtonian physics. Without such a term, it returns simply to the default.
Race is a cultural construct, and as such has a few functions that would help us figure out what is a race under that construct. Primarily, it is one of the many cultural constructs that arose due to humanity's inherent tribal nature; our desire to have a simple version of "us" and "them." However, that doesn't fully define the idea. Racial characteristics in recent generations, say the last two hundred years, have become increasingly broad. "White" refers now to the population group that could reasonably be referred to as "Pan-European," meaning descendants of the majority of medieval Europe. We've developed terms for the descendants of the Middle East, nations and cultures previously referred to as "oriental," descendants of those with an appearance very similar to that of most of the indigenous populations of central and southern Africa, and quite a few others. All of these are designated largely by a shared aesthetic, rather than a shared cultural history, as I've noted above.
However, in the United States specifically, they are used to denote groupings of the subcultures that formed due to these racial concepts. Any time you refer to "Black culture", you are using this function of race. However, any time you refer to "White America," you are also doing the same thing. In this case, "white" and "Black" exhibit much the same functions. They refer to aesthetic differences between populations, some historical and cultural differences, and specify a grouping of subcultures surrounding their use.
The difference comes in what "white" has historically been used for. Unlike almost any other racial designation, "white" has changed to match the race shared by the social majority, regardless of what social minorities also share that race. Not too long ago it didn't include Eastern Europeans or the Irish. This, in my opinion, is actually the strongest argument for treating the term differently compared to "Black," because this is the one major difference in history and function between it an any other racial designation, aside from the repeated attempts to remove it from the lexicon as we've done with "Black," trying to replace it over the years to be less oppressive.
Going back to a point I made up above: treating "white" differently from all other racial designations doesn't take away it's power, it increases it, because it becomes the racial default. This isn't a new concept, nor is it one I came up with, but rather was first noted by John McWhorter, a linguist who specializes in race-related language:
"To not name ‘White’ as a race is, in fact, an anti-Black act which frames Whiteness as both neutral and the standard … We believe that it is important to call attention to White as a race as a way to understand and give voice to how Whiteness functions in our social and political institutions and our communities. Moreover, the detachment of ‘White’ as a proper noun allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability from White people’s and White institutions’ involvement in racism."
To further this concept, I'd like to go back to the work John Oliver's team did regarding medical bias. If you watch that episode of "Last Week Tonight," the concept that women are treated as "men with pesky emotions" and Black people as "white people with problems" comes up repeatedly. That's the problem of treating "white" as the default, we ignore the reality of other people entirely, instead basically trying to turn them into "white plus" rather than individuals. This is what I fear if we do not acknowledge the reality of "white" as a racial designation, we feel free to continue to use it as the default, which isn't accurate.
Finally, I'd like to address the understated argument for doing this, one made clear by the NYT's and the Columbia Journalism Review's reasoning: writers and editors don't want their character questioned. They don't want to be on the receiving end of someone saying that they support White Supremacy, so they want to avoid anything that appears like they might, regardless of the reality of the action. This argument holds a lot of weight for a lot of people, but let me explain why I believe it shouldn't.
First of all, you can't stop them from questioning you. If you are white, side with a white person, criticize any person of color regardless of the content of that criticism, or fail to meet any of hundreds of standards, many of them mutually exclusive, you will be referred to as a white supremacist or apologist. A great example of this in recent news is Terry Crews. Mr. Crews has been an activist for progressive movements for quite some time, perhaps making his biggest move by refusing to be silent about the treatment of actors and actresses in Hollywood in order to keep one of his most lucrative contracts during the "Me, Too" movement. He has been an outspoken voice for equality, but he is not perfectly tactful, and often brings focus to a problem at what many consider to be the wrong time. Recently he came under fire for cautioning against the fight against police brutality possibly turning into a fight against white people in general. This was poorly timed, and in my opinion, poorly worded, but I believe he was trying to do what he believed was right, and he has never supported any form of White Supremacy. That being said, he's being called a white supremacist and apologist as a result.
Second, hate groups will use whatever symbol they can get their hands on to make themselves feel more powerful. Before Pepe the Frog, it would take literal decades or a solid war to give a symbol enough history to be irredeemable, like the swastika or the confederate flag. In recent years, due to fear of criticism, many media outlets have decided to stay so incredibly far away from any symbol that any hate group used, most of the hateful use coming from 4chan. The "Okay" sign, Pepe the Frog, Kermit the Frog (for a while), and a number of other symbols have been successfully co-opted by hate groups, simply by using them a great deal, and once their use of them became known at all, all other usage became criticized as supporting those hate groups, not because it was, but because people feared it would be seen that way. I personally believe we should do as we did with "Yankee Doodle," what the African American community did with variants of the n-word, and what the LGBTQ+ community did with "queer," and refuse to let the hate groups define a symbol by giving them all the usage as soon as they touch it. If this is about American writing, let us acknowledge American cultural history and take back what is being used to hurt us.
So, since you can't stop them from questioning you, and you can't stop them from using whatever symbols and terms they want to, I don't see the fear of being equated to hate groups being a particularly strong argument.
There is one more implied argument found in this article that I feel we need to address: "white" doesn't *deserve* capitalization. You can see this in the more tame wording of the quotes earlier in the article, but I think the most telling comes from about halfway down:
"'White' is not capitalized as it is not an ethnicity but a garbage category of skin privilege that is really a designation of status and power, the only purpose of which is to elevate so-called white people over and at the expense of peoples not regarded as white."
This is not a statement driven by fact, history, or usage. This is a statement driven by anger, well deserved anger, but anger nonetheless. The claim is essentially this: white people have nothing to be proud of for being white, because being white has never cost them anything, so since there is no pride, there is no race. Pride doesn't actually come into play with race. "Black," and its predecessor "Negro," were not originally proud terms. They were derogatory. They now hold more pride, which is a definite improvement, but that was not necessary in their usage. They are and were designations in regards to the cultural concept of race, which is largely aesthetic. And "white" was not used to elevate white people, they were already at the top of an unfair, unjust, unbalanced system. It was just there to note who looked like the people at the top.
Of course, you're free to disagree with me, and I won't be dictating how anyone capitalizes the term anytime soon. In fact, you may have noticed that outside of multi-word terms, out of deference to the author of the original article, I have avoided capitalizing the word "white" throughout this. In my mind, it is not that difficult when engaging someone on their own turf to meet them on their own terms, at least as far as this goes. Same thing with pronouns or preferred names, really. So capitalize as you will, but I hope you found my explanation as to why I disagree with you enlightening.
Thanks for reading. God Bless you if you'll let Him, and have an otherwise great day.
-Draknus
The original article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reasons-lowercasing-word-white-your-writing-letter-author-babbitt/
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