I’ll write it however everyone wants, but I sort of thought it was some idea from the New York Times and not necessarily what the black community wants per se.
I’ll write it however everyone wants, but I sort of thought it was some idea from the New York Times and not necessarily what the black community wants per se.
It’s a political choice that some folks in the Black liberation movement choose in order to emphasise Blackness. Not all Black people do it. I don’t think anyone would tell you off for choosing to capitalise it or not. Both are quite common.
I just want to be correct, but it still seems like a white person who writes for the NY Times idea and not universal for all black people, and that seems… cringey.
I got myself into a tizzy last year as I was editing a document and it was on a person who uses they/them pronouns, and I wasn’t sure if I should use “themself” or “themselves” as themself isn’t a word, but plural also doesn’t sound right. Then I realized a person who uses they/them probably cared less about this than I do.
A lot of lit from the Black liberation movement uses “Black”. I’d say that the majority of people I’ve seen capitalise Black have been Black themselves. That isn’t to say it represents a majority of Black people, but also I don’t think “what do the majority of this group think” is the best metric for determining what’s right—e.g. a significant amount of women are figureheads of the anti-abortion movement, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right or not misogynistic.
Different people who use they/them will have different preferences. If you don’t know the person’s preference, I doubt they’d care about which you go with, and if they did, they can reach out to you after the fact and ask you to change it or to use a different option going forward in the future.
It was a clinical note so I had to choose, but I’m picky haha.