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Comment by Dudhbbh3343 | Hacker News Reader

You and your link make reasonable arguments for capitalizing black, but I don't see any justification (other than to be contrary to supremacist groups) for not doing the same for white, which leaves it inconsistent with the naming of all other racial/ethnic groups.

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It's a complicated matter and I'm not the right person to make any statements about it, but on the one side, we have white sub-groups like Irish or Italian. On the other, grouping all Black sub-groups under one moniker seems overly abstract as well. That said, it works for the debate of racism etc in the US, which affects people of color, not so much the various white groups.

It's also due to the unique conditions under which the Black identity was formed - that is forced colocation, separation from history, and systemic coidentification. Anyone who traces their history back to slavery, which many Black Americans can, basically has to stop there creating one pretty large "sub-group".

There's a case to be made - and some theorists do - that black and Black are different identities in America, the second directly corresponding to that shared loss of history.

> have white sub-groups like Irish or Italian

Right, but are those sub-groups still all that relevant in the context of race in America?

It's been a long time since Irish-Americans have been treated differently than British-Americans, for example.

I would say grouping all white sub-groups together makes as much sense as grouping all black or Asian sub-groups together because generally racial dynamics today are viewed as occurring between White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American groups. Further granularity is rarely considered in informal language.

There's no unified group of white people who want to be called White as opposed to white. Though, maybe I'm wrong? Is there such a group?

There is such a group, but they usually pair "White" with some other word that implies superiority.

Ha -- I think in that case capitalization makes sense -- especially when the words are paired -- as this at least does some work to make the group identifiably separate from those who do not at all identify with them.

You're right, they kind of assume the reader knows what they are thinking. My guess is that it is because white isn't used for comradery except if you are extreme, whereas it is normal to do so for non-white groups, so they are trying to delegitimize the extreme group. Whether it is the effective course of action given the goal is an interesting question.

Leftist activists circles have grievances with white people and this is a small token of revenge. Depersonifying white people. Asians don't get internally consistent treatment because of intersectionality.

Are we really pretending it's a coincidence all the time?

This naivety is rightfully never applied to right wing bigotry.

I'm not white myself but I'm genuinely confused as to why this kind of blatant ethnic antagonization is so normalized in western elites and extremely taboo to point out.

The actual critique - which is articulated in many places - is that "white" isn't an ethnic group with an actual cultural or racial lineage. Instead, "white" was created and exists as the dual to "colored" - a shifting category encompassing many ethnicities that describes their position in a set of power structures, historically colonialism. Consider that "whiteness" has changed considerably over the usage of the term, with many ethnicities (irish, italian) shifting into it as their position in American society (the cultural superpower of the time) changed.

To consider this further, shift the power structures and see how whiteness changes. Who is considered "white" in the historic USSR and contemporary ex-bloc states is radically different than the usage in America at the same time. This is even more complicated in places like Central or South America, India, and parts of Asia. I guarantee that - if you weren't versed with local power dynamics and colorism history - you wouldn't be able to classify who on the street is generally considered "white" in Buenos Aires.

The shift in labels and categories applies to all ethnicities, not just whites, even in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

All of the definitions are contested and subject to localities, not just whiteness.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263722423_Not_black...

>is that "white" isn't an ethnic group with an actual cultural or racial lineage.

None of them are. There's more genetic diversity in sub Saharan Africa than in any other place on earth. People from Asia and people from Africa don't identify as black or asian as a consistent racial lineage.They're also a western ad hoc hodge podge just as much as whiteness is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people

None of your explanations single out white people as an especially fake identity inconsistent with asian or black.

I'm confused - it seems like every example you give here supports the theoretical conclusion above.

"Black" as used in the editorial above is a very specific usage - replacing "African American" for the critical reasons outlined. The reason this group is unique as an ethnicity w.r.t. recategorization is because the structure and violence of slavery isolated them from historic ethnicities and forcefully regrouped them under a new one. This is why in that Habecker paper, peoples with dark skin and african heritage who were not part of that system try to separate themselves from that identity - that's why it exists!

I'd also argue that "Asian" probably _shouldn't_ be capitalized, and there are some theorists who agree. Really, asian only really exists as an ethnic category because Americans historically (and even now) couldn't really be assed to learn the basic geography of Asia and grouped it all.

It's easy to be confused when you keep changing your definitions when they're not consistent!

"is that "white" isn't an ethnic group with an actual cultural or racial lineage".

"The reason this group is unique as an ethnicity w.r.t. recategorization is because the structure and violence of slavery isolated them from historic ethnicities and forcefully regrouped them under a new one."

Conflicting statements.

According to you white people don't have historic ethnicities but black people also don't because of slavery and that is why they deserve capitalization?

Black isn't an ethnic group either. There are black people from Africa, Pacific islands, Australia, South America, and India. It's a descriptor, not an immutable category that defines you, and it's uniquely used here in America.

In America, captital-B Black is usually used to refer to people who were forcefully disconnected from their ancestry by the imposition of slavery. In many theoretical frameworks, it is an entirely new ethnic group by virtue of their original ethnicity being severed and the forced co-reculturalization through slavery and the subsequent (and continuing) power structures that forcefully and implicitly group them together.

Except that it also contains recent Ugandan immigrants who moved here by choice and work as surgeons. Just like white, it's a big umbrella and rough category.

I agree that there's complexity there, but it's worth noting that it is a point of moderate contention whether those immigrants share the Black identity or just the black identity. More knowledgeable theorists than myself (and notably those actually party to these identities) have discussed this at more depth, and I recommend digging into it if you're interested.

I'm not digging into racial pseudoscience, nor do I have any interest in such. Are these the same types of people who say that being on time and respectful are "white" values? Those people are stupid and/or malicious.

This isn't psuedoscience because it's not trying to be science. It's theoretical analysis - entirely different tradition.

What if I am writing capital-B Black out of respect, though, for that unique ethnic group? Like, even if I recognize that I was part of the problem, or that is somehow still not ideal, but I am trying to make the situation a little bit better?

"White" is almost always a proxy for the british and their former empire, now represented by america's elites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestants

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