I’m not a lowercase, and that will never be the case

Note: This is a personal essay I wrote for my opinion writing class. This is for me.

Before I went to bed, like always, I decided to check my emails one last time. When I refreshed my inbox, I saw that my professor had finally emailed back my first reporting assignment. Eager, because this was one of my first graded assignments of grad school, I opened it quickly.

“Also, anything in yellow needs to be fixed. (Probably AP.)” was part of the feedback that my professor gave me. I had done a Q&A with a well-known Black activist in Boston, and everything about the interview was centered in and on Blackness.

I scrolled down the Word document, innocently thinking it was probably some silly errors I made. Minus the three silly mistakes I did make, as I scrolled down the paper, I saw that the capital “B” in Black was highlighted every. single. time. Once I had reached the end of the document, I voiced out a “no way,” and sat in the dark of my room on a Sunday night with my mouth gaping open.

It was happening to me.

As a Black writer, I have always capitalized the “B” in Black when referring to race, for as long as I can remember. I went to bed upset. But before that, I took to social media to vent, called my mom frustrated and tried to drink some hot tea to ease the pit that had formed in my stomach.

The next morning, I woke up to an influx of texts, DMs and phone calls from friends, people I hadn’t talked to in years and even social media lurkers who I’ve never spoken to before. Most told me that my professor was wrong, that AP style was wrong and that I should not lowercase the “B” in my rewrite. Others sent links to articles that featured arguments on the matter by other Black writers. I had seen these before, but I appreciated the support and people taking the time to look into this. It felt good, but not because I needed the personal validation — because I didn’t, and I don’t.

I went to class the next night, determined to make my case and regain the dignity I felt I had lost. I was prepared and rose to the challenge when my professor mentioned returning our papers and her expectations for our rewrites.

Ultimately though, when I made my case, it wound up not working in my favor and once again left me devastated. There was a small back-and-forth about the matter, but what stung the most was when my professor asked my peers to take out their laptops and go to local news sites and see if they capitalize “b.” One girl even shouted out, “The Bay State Banner (a local African American newspaper) doesn’t.” And, my professor took that as validation.

Additionally, it made it seem as if it were a choice to capitalize the “b” and not understanding the fact that it is not a writing “rule” is a much larger problem. Every time I hear “I get it, but…” you’re telling me that you’re OK with this standard because it does not directly affect you, your livelihood, or the respectability of your race.

Writing and how we write is and can be very racist. It routes back to education and who was initially granted access to it. But that is for another day or time to unpack it all.

As soon as I got out of class, I called my mom angrily. I went home and decided that this wasn’t the program for me, and I wanted to leave. I was already feeling uncomfortable being one of the few visible Black femmes in my program, but that made me really uncomfortable. Whether the professor intended it in the way it came off or not — which I know she didn’t — , her ignorance was reflective of complicitness, and it did not make me feel OK. I became hyper-aware of my surroundings and my Blackness, even more so than I already am as a Black person.

To say that, as I type this that I don’t often feel uncomfortable when I step into my classes to this day would be an absolute lie. My program makes me uncomfortable, but that is why I’m sticking to it. In a lot of ways, entities contribute to a system that limits Black people or tries to model them in a way that makes non-Black people comfortable while deducing Blackness but capitalizing off of it. I have to push through.

The experience honestly put a sour taste in my mouth and kicked me into a real reality. I’m high functioning, strong-minded and completely capable. But, there’s something about being asked to put a cap on your Blackness that is unsettling and very uncomfortable. I already knew that going to a predominately white institution, or PWI, in a seemingly segregated but somehow “progressive” city would be challenging, but I wasn’t expecting it to be two months into my first semester of graduate school.

I understand the importance of AP style for uniformity purposes. Still, there should be limits to ruling how one’s culture, identity and race should be reflected in work, especially when writing on race. AP style deems African American as the correct usage and that “black,” when referring to race, should be lowercase.

There is rhetoric as well as numerous articles already written by Black writers about how inaccurate this is — like this 2014 op-ed piece featured in The New York Times that usually makes its rounds when this debate comes up. The writer, Lori L. Tharps, hit the hammer to the nail by saying the following:

When speaking of a culture, ethnicity or group of people, the name should be capitalized. Black with a capital B refers to people of the African diaspora. Lowercase Black is simply a color.

She then followed up with this argument, which has been my biggest gripe about the rules of AP Style — in that they do not make sense:

Both Oxford and Webster’s dictionaries state that when referring to African-Americans, Black can be and often is capitalized, but the New York Times and Associated Press stylebooks continue to insist on Black with a lowercase b. Ironically, The Associated Press also decrees that the proper names of “nationalities, peoples, races, tribes” should be capitalized. What are Black people, then?

We should not have to follow white standards to make white people comfortable. When speaking on Black relations in America, it is frankly inaccurate to refer to a group or a person as African American, unless they explicitly state it. While we are a part of the African diaspora, it is essential to note that Blacks do not only come from Africa. Black people that were enslaved came from many countries.

I remember a quote from the documentary “The Color of Fear,” which essentially explores race relations in America. In it, Victor Lewis, a Black man, says to David Christensen, a white man, “There is no American ethnicity. You give up who you are to become American.”

In that same regard, by lowercasing the “b,” I am giving up an important part of me. Me. My Black is me.

This essay isn’t about my professor’s fault. We were able to have a dialogue about it and move on, and I submitted a rewrite updating my other errors and leaving the “B” capitalized. I wound up getting an “A” on the assignment. I can’t cast any ill-will towards her for not knowing, because she is a part of a system that is generally complicit in matters of how race should be reflected in writing, without necessarily knowing. I already am the “lower case” in my program, and I refuse to let any predominantly white institution capitalize on that fact, especially without my say so.

Slowly, we are starting to see more news organizations incorporate the capitalization of the “B” in Black when referring to race. Opting out of AP style’s recommendation to keep it lowercase.

One of my professors recently shared with my opinion writing class that Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory recently sent out a memo to staff members about the decision to update the Globe’s stylebook. This update reflects the capitalization of the “B” in Black, when referring to race:

Effective immediately, we’re updating the Globe stylebook to put the word Black in uppercase when it is used to describe a person’s race. After consulting with leaders in the Black community, we’re making this change to recognize that the word has evolved from a description of a person’s skin color to signify a race and culture, and as such, deserves uppercase treatment in the same way that other races — Latino being one example — are capitalized. Unless otherwise requested by a person we’re writing about, we’ll use Black, which is considered to be more inclusive, rather than African-American.

This is impressive, given Boston’s reputation as a racist major city; and if the city’s leading newspaper can make this change, I don’t see why more can’t follow suit. Especially the Associated Press.

I’m Black with a capital “B.” My capitalization can be seen as a rebellion, but to me, this is my standard and should be the standard for everyone else. AP style puts a cap on my Blackness, and I am 100% not here for it.