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