Barack Obama - black but not Black

One of the things about being an editor is that you have to correct punctuation and spelling from material you receive from budding writers, not all of whom get it right. The most obvious example of a recent mistake is the gleefully pounced on misplaced apostrophe in the cover of a book by Donald Trump Junior.  It should, of course, be Democrats’ not Democrat’s as he is referring to more than one Dem.  He may wish there was only one but there are plenty of those pesky Democrats out there.  And a few democrats as well.  Thank God – or god, if you are an atheist. 

One theory is that the mistake was made deliberately in order to garner headlines through what is called guerrilla marketing.  For this editor it shrieks of ‘amateur’ (or ‘loser’ to use a Trumpism) but the people selling the book probably look on those like me who think that you should get these things right as humourless, elitist lefties who would never buy a book written by a Trump.  They got that bit right, at least.  Their market is elsewhere and they believe that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Then there are changes which reflect the mindset of the person doing the writing, maybe attacking the attitude of the person doing the reading – and the correcting.  The latest of these is the use of a capital B for the word ‘black’ when used to describe a person.  The N-word is obviously unacceptable and African-American – which does take capitals – does not apply to black people from outside the USA. 

To me, however, the use of a capital B for black is wrong.  It is wrong simply because black it is ungrammatical.  Black is an adjective and, as such, does not command a capital – just like the word ‘white’, which nobody is suggesting should be capitalised.  The argument of the capitalisers, as I understand it, is that being black should be on a par with being Chinese, Latin or Asian, all words that describe groups based on their country or continent of origin and are, therefore, capitalised.

Being black, however, is much less specific than being Asian, Chinese or Latin.  Although black people may have originated in Africa they are now found all over the world – just like white people, in fact.  As Lenny Henry said – and Donald Trump Senior failed to realise – there is no point in telling black people to go ‘home’ because their home is probably just a bus ride away. 

There is, admittedly, not a clear distinction here.  Many people described as Asian or Chinese with upper class denominators may never have been anywhere near China or Asia and Latin America is such a loose term as to include anyone of Hispanic origin who, again, may have spent their whole lives outside the countries their grandparents came from.  

White people who arrived in another country or continent often came as conquerors, while black people often came as slaves.  They are still struggling to achieve equality in a world where white people expect to rule.  Will capitalising a racial categorisation – going from ‘black’ to ‘Black’ – help or hinder that process?  Hinder, in my view.  In order to overcome racism we need to look on a human being’s skin colour as simply no big deal.  Capitalising it to Black makes it a big deal and, therefore, increases the difference.   This in turn could mean increasing the possibility of people of colour being regarded as inferior – without intending to do, it should be said.

Slaves were defined and categorised simply and brutally by their skin colour.  White people (like me) did not have to endure slavery.  They (we) never knew what it was like to be denied freedom and be bought and sold like cattle.  They (we) never knew what it was like to struggle against prejudice and achieve equality against the odds.

Just ask Barack Obama.  His father was from Africa, which led to all sorts of birther nonsense and ill-disguised racism from people who wanted to keep him in what they saw as his place. Obama never forgot his blackness or his African heritage.  He never disrespected or condemned the people who remained in the place his father had left but he just ignored those who thought – and sometimes said – that he should be sent back there.  

He showed that the colour of your skin does not need to define you because he rose to the top in a world that had not so long ago condemned people of colour to a life of automatic inferiority.  He demonstrated that slavery and racism are not only evil but stupid because they judge people by that skin colour.  Look at me, he said, my being black has not held me back.  He led the way out of racism by example. 

Just as racism will never be truly dead until we can watch a white person playing Othello and not bat an eyelid, so will we never overcome the evil of racism until black is simply an adjective, not a celebration, not a condemnation, just a description of appearance.  Capitalising the word will not accelerate that process, but slow it down.  This editor, for one, intends to keep black as an adjective with a lower case ‘b’.

Edwin Lerner

 

PEOPLE WITH A PENIS

JK Rowling

Gerain Greer
Both are in trouble over their views on trans rights 

How do you define who is and who is not a woman?  The problem arises because people can now transition from male to female or female to male, either through surgery or simply through self-definition.  This has left those who want to create and protect what I call penis free zones in conflict with those who assert that a person can simply change their gender by self-definition, ie by saying that they are now a woman rather than a man, the gender they were born into.  There is even a term for people (like me) who are happy with their birth gender.  We are ‘cis’ men or women.

You would not be human if you did not smile a little at the thought of right-on feminists like Germaine Greer and the journalist Suzanne Moore finding themselves turned from radicals into reactionaries because they want to maintain women-only zones and cast doubt on the validity of gender self-definition.  Even J K Rowling has found herself in hot water because she holds a more traditional view of gender.

Non-cis people who transition are twice as likely to move from the male to the female gender.  This may be a reflection of male anxiety in a feminist era.  (If you cannot match them, join them.)  It could also be a result of the greater practical difficulty of a woman becoming a man.  Put bluntly, it is easier to remove a penis than graft one on to the human body, so the surgical procedure needed for someone to transition from being a woman to a man costs twice as much as the alternative.

If you do not fancy – or cannot afford –surgery but want to change gender, you have the option of simply declaring that you are now either a woman or a man, whatever it says on your birth certificate.  In certain countries (but not yet Britain) this is legally binding and a man can simply declare him/herself to be a woman. This then allows  a trans woman to enter what was previously an exclusively cis-woman space.  The problem is that this allows people with penises to go into places they were previously excluded from like the Hampstead Ladies Pond where women could swim, sunbathe and lie around semi-clothed or naked without being subject to the male gaze.  

I see no good reason why people should not be allowed to congregate in areas which are shared with those of their own gender if those spaces are for used social rather than political or financial purposes.  In other words, it was right that Mrs Thatcher was entitled to go to the Hampstead Ladies Pond – she was after all the local MP – but wrong that she could only go to the Connaught Club in Pall Mall if accompanied by her husband.  It was the club of the Conservative Party and she was its leader so it was absurd to exclude her.  (Most Pall Mall clubs realised this and have now dropped their male-only membership policies.)  People like to gather with those of their own gender and women, in particular, need to feel safe when they do so.  They do not unless they are convinced they are in a genuine penis-free zone.  

Germaine Greer thinks that a woman who used to be a man has not become one simply through a process of self-definition – or even with the aid of surgery.  The trans person insists they have and the two sides end up shouting at each other, which gets nobody anywhere.  The problem is being framed in terms of who people are, which will always be a matter of individual interpretation.  Surely it is better to define it in terms of what they are allowed to do - or forbidden from doing.

Some people might call this transphobic but everyone is subject to legal restrictions on their rights if those rights should clash with the safety or security of others.  I can have sexual relations with anyone I choose to provided I have that other person’s consent. If that is often not forthcoming, I have to do without.

How should the rights of people who may want to transition be restricted? I would say in three ways – in sport, in surgery for young people and in sexually safe areas.

No woman has yet run a four minute mile, a sub ten second hundred metres or a two hour marathon, all records that have been broken by men who are simply stronger, faster and fitter than women.  For this reason athletics competitions are divided by gender with men and women’s events.  It is wrong that men should be able to call themselves female and take all the prizes in sports from cis-women. It amounts to bullying and greed of the most unattractively masculine type and should be banned.

Surgery for children is not currently a major issue in transgenderism but it is absurd to perform life-altering operations which could impact on their fertility in later years.  If they want to transition when young they can do so.  If they want to go under the knife they will have to wait until they become adults and are free to decide for themselves. 

Penis-free zones are a trickier area.  I do not think it matters where people go to pee but the penis is used for sexual purposes as well as urination and it is not unreasonable for cis-women to exclude it form certain areas which they want to remain female only.  You only need one idiot to remove that safety barrier and this happened in Toronto where a man gained access to a woman’s shelter in by self-defining as a woman and, while there, raped at least two people.  That was inviting the fox into the hen-house and should never have been allowed to happen.    

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com