Last week I reviewed a book published by an American academic press—it hardly matters the title or author, for in the respect to which I wish to draw your attention they are almost all the same these days. With few exceptions, they capitalize the word black when it refers to a person, while keeping white (or brown) in the lower case.
This is no doubt a fashion, but it does not seem a purely spontaneous one. If there is no central enforcement, there might as well be one. The presses have been invaded by the termites of wokeness so thoroughly that there is no need of central direction.
It is unlikely in any case that the authors put up much of a fight, if any, against the imposition; most of them probably don’t even see it as an imposition. I suspect, however, that any author who did want to resist the fashion would soon be faced by a stiff fight, which he would probably lose. His desire to be published would overcome his scruples on a matter of principle.
To me, however, the fashion has all the hallmarks of a profound but unacknowledged racism. It is as if those who insist upon this usage—the monstrous regiment of subeditors—are determined to prove just how sympathetic they are to black people, past, present, and to come. As Queen Gertrude would have put it, methinks the subeditors do protest too much.
It reveals that the subeditors of the presses, and possibly many of the authors, do not believe that blacks are just another group of human beings like any other group, but special: special in their need to be condescended to, or special in their inability to make their own way, and therefore in need of special protection, like giant pandas or the Tasmanian devil. In other words, there is a subconscious, but not very deeply subconscious, belief in their inferiority, for which nothing but such protection by, and condescension of, good, kind, and generous people (and bureaucracies) can compensate.
Now the history of group ascension in the United States (and elsewhere) suggests that the groups are capable of improving their lot, if rising in the social scale counts as improvement. Nations, too, can rise (and fall) in the pecking order, not by the benevolent aid of others, and even in the face of hostility.
It is true, of course, that blacks in America have faced many generations of ill treatment, but such prejudice as now exists against them is not legal but the kind of informal social prejudice that is common throughout history. They also benefit from prejudice in their favor, which may in the long run be more harmful to them than prejudice against.
Surely no one, whatever he thinks of the situation of blacks in America today, can seriously suppose that the capitalization of the word black to categorize them will improve their situation in any tangible, or even intangible, way. (My view is that, if it has any effect at all, it will have the reverse effect, by constantly drawing attention to their different moral or intellectual status from whites.)
