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Here’s the problem with all the capitalization rules: they attempt to formalize a racial taxonomy which is itself constructed to disguise a caste system. Racial groups aren’t symmetrically derived from some neutral criteria, they’re arbitrary social groups https://twitter.com/karenattiah/status/1288464078671949825?s=21
When you start capitalizing racial groups for no other reason than that they’re racial groups, you’re implicitly contributing to the assumption that “race” is a coherent and intrinsic system that categorizes all human beings - that people have a “correct” race. That’s bad!
I just don’t think there’s any argument for capitalizing “white” other than trying to build a symmetric racial system. Please don’t do that
And there’s linguistic cosequences, just because of how proper nouns work in English. For example:
If I say “a white neighborhood,” it sounds like a place that is largely white.
But if I say “a White neighborhood,” there’s a strange connotation of formal ownership. Really bad!
If I say “a white neighborhood,” it sounds like a place that is largely white.
But if I say “a White neighborhood,” there’s a strange connotation of formal ownership. Really bad!
