Last week Vj Jenkins wrote a piece for the Black Student Alliance’s new bi-weekly column “What’s the Word” on the capitalization of “Black” in reference to African-Americans in formal writing. I agree with his overarching claim, that “Black” in reference to people should be capitalized. However, his style of argumentation limits a claim that has the power to nuance and subvert the all too common practice of socially privileged groups constructing “other” through language. Conversation on how language or more specifically terminology construct the lived experiences of marginalized peoples is often simplified to do’s and don’ts. Jenkins’ argument hinges upon a deeper understanding of language, one where physical construction embodies social mechanisms and where power has the ability to make subject and object. If we understand nouns as a conduit of subjectivity, the distinction between “Black” and “black” becomes vital for a people in a continual process of deconstruction (of past misrepresentations) and reconstruction (of flexible identities but shared history). “Black” in reference to people should be capitalized because it brings to mind an image, a “common” people, a common history which in capitalizing “B” makes it a noun, structured with certain properties. The nounification of “black” calls to attention the construction of “the Black experience in America.”
I disagree with Jenkins’ logic that the capitalization of “B” takes away the negative notions that come with Merriam-Webster’s definition “black.” Merriam-Webster does not create the negative connotations that come with the definition of “black,” society does. Language, also coming from society, is subjected to that society’s biases and values. By society I mean a collective of people interacting in an exchange of ideas, norms, culture, etc. A society built by a white supremacist patriarchy creates dictionaries that characterize people subjected to centuries of oppression as, in other definitions of “black” from Merriam-Webster, “thoroughly sinister or evil; very sad, gloomy or calamitous; characterized by hostility or angry discontent.” Capitalizing “Black” in reference to black people does not remove the built-in racism of the system. What it can do, though, is point to the construction of “blackness in America.” Big “B” “Black,” noun, tangible has a history fashioned by those other than the ones bearing its name. “Black” vs. “black” is not the difference flower vs. hydrangea. It is not that one word symbolizes a multitude and the other a type. The connotation invoked in “Black man” vs. “black man” does not change, for the aggregate mental imagery remains sinister, evil, hostile, angry, and discontented. We have been constructed as such and this imagery will remain for in this present moment the history is still recent.
Last year, the “black community” was often cited in popular media and even in my own conversations. The black community did this, they think this, and their feelings were hurt by this, etc. The questions I was asking myself were, “Who the hell is the black community? Who speaks for the ‘black community’? Do I know anyone in the ‘black community’? Am I in the ‘black community’?” By the end of the year, I realized the “black community” was a lie. It is composed of a bunch of people who disagreed on so many issues that under no other coloration would they have been called a community.
“We” did not build the shared experience of blackness (yes, we have created a culture unique and important but as an assumption of human nature), the white supremacist patriarchy did — the same way they built womanhood, queerness, disability and all other constructions of “other.” They subjected us to these labels and the moment we realize this construction is the moment we can begin our own constructions of self and truly liberate ourselves from their narratives of our selves. I am not black by my own identification; I am so by my existence in this system. If you were to ask me who I was in a society with a less violent past, a violence subjected to women, Native American, blacks, Japanese, etc., I would probably say I’m a person who has recently taken up crafting and is painfully aware of “the future.” But in this society, I am first a black woman, educated, middle-class, able bodied, heterosexual, etc. I am constructed before I can construct myself. One of the ways we construct our experiences is through language. “Black” vs. “black” is an opportunity to construct differently. Politically, it functions to point out a history that still affects most of us every day, a history that still colors our world. A politics of representation is useful in a moment where not “all people” experience the hand of oppressive systems equally.
The last point I’d like to make is in reference to capitalizing “white.” To this I say go ahead. Why not, create whiteness to be something besides the default and silent, assumed “good.” By asserting that there is a common “White” experience in America through the nounification of the word, we create a people who have had the power to create other through an unspoken assumption as default human. Whiteness asks us to define ourselves in opposition to it. Historically, it has told us we are sinister, evil, hostile, angry, discontented and black. It could be a noun as well; the noun of the colonizer, the oppressor, the violence. In a politics of representation the symbols matter. “Black” vs. “black” noun constructions matter. By assuming white as the default,we give them a power to place meaning on all other lived experiences. Whiteness, too is a lived experience.What would a world look like if the “white community” had to respond and answer questions for a constructed “whole”? In creating “them,” we can watch as they try to reclaim their own narratives as we have been forced do throughout history. We can push this further to extend to all constructed people, indigenous, disabled, queer, women, etc. As the white community creates us, we too have the power to create them.
Jacqueline Akunda is a third-year in the College.
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