Should we capitalise when talking about race?

'Race' is a social construct, not a biological truth. Therefore it matters how we write about it. Whilst there are many academic and theoretical considerations to make, we appreciate how discussions about 'race', including how we are or are not racialised in British society can be emotive and informed by our individual experiences. Due to this, the Editors at besea.n will not downcase capitalisations of ‘White’ to ‘white’ when copy-editing written submissions to the website, as we trust our authors to make their own informed decision when completing their work. This policy is a response to the growing number of publishers and publications which are now capitalising all words that are used to refer to (racialised) groups of people as well as having other meanings in common usage (e.g. colours). We present the below editorial on the topic as a resource for prospective authors, written by Emma Yuan.

Image: Andrew Neel

Since 2020, multiple style guides for journalists, publishers, and authors have been updated to better reflect the way in which we interpret the meaning of the category of 'race' and to help readers interrogate its (social) origins. This includes putting the term 'race' in quotation marks, and capitalising White, Black, and other words which are used to refer to racialised identities or ethnicities but which have other meanings in common usage. 

'Race', rather than being a self-evident biological truth, is and always has been a social construct. Where 'race' was once used to describe kinship and family relations, the advent of modern science and thought from the 17th century onwards led to 'race' being reconstructed as a means of categorising people into racialised categories based on their appearances and lineages, as well as their languages and cultures. That is not to say, however, that 'race' as a construct has not been real, operating to divide, oppress and quantify people, and justify some of the major movements in modern history including colonialism, capitalism and nationalism. 

Indeed, it is because these categories have been used to form and enforce hierarchies that we must continuously interrogate and deconstruct these notions of 'race', including by troubling the way in which we write about them. Many have advocated for capitalising the w in White/white in the same way we would encourage writers to capitalise the b in Black, to show that whiteness as an identity is constructed in the same crucible of capitalist imperialism as Blackness, or indeed any other racialised identity thrust upon individuals and groups. Indeed, as Kwame Anthony Appiah points out,

‘We routinely name and capitalize entities (the Middle Ages, January, the Pacific Ocean, Copenhagen) that reflect human interests or actions. On the other hand, we tend not to capitalize 'natural kinds'—that is, categories that track with inherent features of the world, independent of our interests or doings. Einstein, the physicist, is capitalized; einsteinium, the element, is not.’ 

Arguably as a result of whiteness being perceived as a default and norm - (a non-racialised racial category, if you will) - quite often White/white people are not cognisant of their 'race' at all and only recognise this as a characteristic they have in contradistinction with Black Indigenous People of Colour. Therefore, it follows that the capitalisation of White may force society at large to confront the hidden truth that like all racial classifiers, whiteness is an invention of the racist and imperialist imagination. 

Equally, there are those who feel the capitalisation of White/white could be interpreted to elevate whiteness over non-whiteness or even to give credence to 'race' theory through the implication that like Black identity, there is such a thing as white ethnic identity - a type of identification that is frequently associated with white supremacy. Additionally, writer, academic and broadcaster Emma Dabiri has been critical of using the tools created by white supremacy, including “racial” taxonomies and language, outlining her position in her book What White People Can Do Next:

‘Racial categories were invented to enshrine the idea of white supremacy. They are the product of Eurocentricism and colonialism. To act in ways that reinforce their fixedness rather than undermine them is to continue to operate in the terrain mapped out by white supremacy. So, I reject the capitalization of ‘black’. When, out of a lack of anything more suitable, we are driven to use terms that should be contested - terms that are, in the words of Stuart Hall “under erasure” - we should be seeking to destabilize them. It’s the reason that throughout this book I frequently place inverted commas around “black” and “white”, intentionally disrupting the comfort with which we rely on that terminology.’

Perhaps Dabiri is at her most perceptive on this topic when she highlights that although there are ‘few satisfactory alternatives’ to the language and grammar of the oppressor, it is when ‘any argument… insists that someone must use a term that exists to reinforce the ‘truth’ status of a system that is chaotic, nonsensical and violent’ (emphasis Dabiri’s) that we lock the very people we claim to uplift in a ‘fugitive’ state.

Here we have touched upon some academic and political perspectives that come into play when deciding how to stylise words that we use to talk about 'race'. However, as already alluded to, authors may choose to use capitalisations depending on their personal experiences, their identities, the proximity to which they have lived and been harmed by white supremacy, as well the target audience of their writing. Language continues to adapt in our socio-cultural and political landscape and we welcome the opportunity to be part of conversations that are shaping these changes.  We encourage our authors to be empowered to express themselves through this platform and trust them to stylise their writing in a way which feels genuine and with full consideration for our fellow ESEA siblings and other siblings of colour. 

Sources:

See the Diversity Style Guide, which summarises changes to style guides across the industry: https://www.diversitystyleguide.com/glossary 

Ta-Nehisi Coates, 'What we mean when we say race is a social construct', in The Atlantic 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we-mean-when-we-say-race-is-a-social-construct/275872/

Emma Dabiri, What White People Can Do Next: From allyship to coalition (Penguin: 2021)

Robert JC Young, Colonial Desire (Routledge: 1995)

 'Talking about race' from the National Museum of African American History and Culture https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race

Mike Laws, Why we capitalize ‘Black’ (and not ‘white’). Columbia Journalism Review 2020. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php

Note: Geraldine Heng argues a longer history of 'race' as we know it in The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press: 2018)