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I've always believed that language matters a lot, that it holds power, that it is and must be fluid, and that, as such, it shapes so much of how we are in the world. I've been interested in the capitalization question re white (racial construct) for a while. It's messy. A thread.
One of three high profile Black scholars in favor of capitalization, Eve Ewing writes: "White people get to be only normal, neutral, or without any race at all, while the rest of us are saddled with this unpleasant business of being racialized." https://zora.medium.com/im-a-black-scholar-who-studies-race-here-s-why-i-capitalize-white-f94883aa2dd3
Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People, similarly argues: "white Americans have had the choice of being something vague, something unraced and separate from race. A capitalized 'White' challenges that freedom." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/22/why-white-should-be-capitalized/
Painter references the National Association of Black Journalists as influencing her on this. @NABJ indicated in June that they would capitalize White and Brown, in addition to Black. https://www.nabj.org/news/512370/NABJ-Statement-on-Capitalizing-Black-and-Other-Racial-Identifiers.htm
Kwame Appiah suggests white only exists as a racial designation b/c of racism and, "When we ignore the dialectical relation between the labels 'black' and 'white,' we treat a bloodstained product of history as a neutral, objective fact about the world." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/time-to-capitalize-blackand-white/613159/
And @CtrSocialPolicy claims, "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." https://cssp.org/2020/03/recognizing-race-in-language-why-we-capitalize-black-and-white/
There's a lot more formal writing in the "for" camp, so what follows will include a number of Twitter thread arguments. But, I'll start with The Radical Copyeditor @ZrAlexKapitan: https://radicalcopyeditor.com/2016/09/21/black-with-a-capital-b/
Also, Columbia Journalism Review argued for a small w in this piece from 2015 citing "the use of uppercase White...might be taken to imply that whites constitute a single ethnic group, an issue that is certainly debatable..." https://www.cjr.org/analysis/language_corner_1.php
Of course, @AP made the call not to capitalize and their argument seems to rest for now on the fact that "capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs." https://blog.ap.org/announcements/why-we-will-lowercase-white
Jenn M. Jackson simply states: "Not capitalizing the 'w' in white is a systemic disruption which decenters whiteness with respect to other groups. That should be the purpose of capitalization." https://twitter.com/JennMJacksonPhD/status/1289887251179200512
Nicholas Guyatt builds on that concern here, writing that only white supremacists insist on whiteness as a distinct cultural identity and asking "is there a white 'cultural identity' that doesn't remind us of racial oppression?" https://twitter.com/NicholasGuyatt/status/1288507059235885063
Drew Dellinger cites Joel Olson's "The Abolition of White Democracy" (2004), and writes "'White' is not a cultural identity; it's a politically constructed 'club' based on exclusion, privilege, & oppression." has argued similarly. https://twitter.com/drewdellinger/status/1274123549117054977
And @IAmLeoGlaze has offered a similar argument, citing Toure's "Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?" (2011) https://twitter.com/IAmLeoGlaze/status/1270785190831353856
Editor and education historian @JennBinis provides this helpful guide for white authors, by summarizing the arguments for and against, which includes a "who cares?": rather than focus on this, let's just always be sure to capitalize Black and Indigenous. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQOHZE48TDV73q3wgDdM6sI93UF4VO0nuEqA6pveV7prhC366gFf3Hp6kVwTxq7W-rTdXH5gO4fEtE4/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=60000&slide=id.g5e099e13bc_0_0
So after all this, where ya at?
