Nicholas Whittaker Nicholas Whittaker is a doctoral student in the Philosophy Department at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Case Sensitive | Why We Shouldn't Capitalize "Black"

Nicholas Whittaker

Every so often, an apparently seismic shift in American race talk occurs — “Negro” to “black” in the 1960s, “black” to “African American” in the 1980s, and back to “black” more recently. The summer of 2020 marked the latest linguistic revolution, as a swath of major news outlets opted, as a rule, to capitalize the “B” in “black” — a change swiftly embraced in everyday use. The linguistic revolution took place...