Editing for Race and Ethnicity II: Capitals, Hyphens, Word Choices

I open with a non-sequitur, I’m afraid, but one that I’d like not to omit because it’s so instructive for editor–author relations:

Discussions of bias-free language . . . have a way of descending quickly into politics. But there is a way to avoid the political quagmire: if we focus solely on maintaining credibility with a wide readership, the argument for eliminating bias from our writing becomes much simpler. (Chicago Manual of Style 17th, 5.251)

If we keep the authors’ audiences in the foreground, the concerns we raise with problematic language in a text will be more readily received by our authors. Splendid.

A word on the usefully vague

In my previous post on this topic, I summarized some general insights from APA (7th), Chicago (17th), and CSE (8th) regarding discussion of race and ethnicity, deriving three rules editors can follow to keep their authors sharp: (1) specific over general, (2) self-description over imposition, and (3) explicit over unexpressed.

Those rules are usefully vague, accommodating changes in racial and ethnic language over time and permitting exceptions as appropriate (e.g., where person x self-describes with y general term, prefer Rule 2 over Rule 1). In 30 years, when some of the racial and ethnic language that now seems most appropriate then seems problematic, the vagueness of these rules will have preserved their utility. It will remain wise to consider a person’s specific circumstances in a description of that person, heed their preferences, and explain the logic of the language.

Marvel at the usefully vague, editors, for you witness it too rarely, I’m certain.

A word on the contentiously specific

The advice I offer in this post lacks the hazy virtue of the previous post. So enters a caveat: The conventions I outline simplify the work of an editor by providing specific answers to practical questions.

The kind of question I’m responding to isn’t, “By what conventions ought we articulate race and ethnicity?” That’s a sweeping question of social and moral significance; frankly, I’m poorly positioned to answer it with any measure of specificity. More modestly, I’m looking here at practical questions in the life of an editor: “Should I capitalize this word?” “Under what conditions should I remove a hyphen?” “What are some word choices to avoid?”

Since I’m a mere (and alabaster-white) editor, not a linguist, sociologist, critical theorist, or philosopher of race or ethnicity, I can’t pretend to speak with authority or opine with gravity on this subject. Rather, I’m about to defer to authority and omit my opinions. Reasonable and better-informed people than I can intelligently debate the merit of APA’s prescriptions on ethnic language, for example; in my ignorance, I simply follow style-guide prescriptions, lacking a clearly preferable alternative course of action in my profession. When the style guides change, my edits will change.

So, on the one hand, let me affirm that critique of style guides is crucial, pressing them to refine and revise their prescriptions. It’s just not what I’m up to in this post — because on the other hand, when you’re staring at a wall of text, tallying the tasks before you and deciding where to start, you have text-specific problems in need of immediate solutions.

Capitalization: What to do?

Advice on capitalization and hyphenation varies. For an editor, the key is to know what the acceptable variations are and, if possible, which of them applies in a given text. If the author’s been inconsistent and no way forward is apparent, at least you’ll be able to query the author from an informed position.

What’s consistent in capitalization advice is to treat racial and ethnic descriptors as proper nouns most of the time.

• APA infers that “black” and “white” are references to colours not races or ethnicities, implying an ill-founded conflation of person with colour. As such, APA prescribes capital letters for these and other racial and ethnic terms: “Whites,” “Black people,” “Indigenous Peoples of Canada,” “Aboriginal peoples,” “Hispanic,” “Semitic,” and so forth. Note that “people” takes a capital letter only when used in reference to specific groups.

• Chicago treats lowercase “black” and “white” as standard, not mirroring the inference made in APA. It does, though, suggest that an author or publisher’s preference should win the day on this point, so capitalization is acceptable. Implicitly, a participant’s preference for capitals or not in self-description also weighs heavily. For other ethnic terms, capitalization is preferred: “French Canadian poutine,” “potatoes, cheese, and gravy, Québecois-style,” and so on.

• CSE, by contrast, seems to imply that to capitalize “white” and “black” would be to treat as scientifically precise what is instead not-so-usefully vague, typifying these terms as “representing scientifically ill-defined groups of wide distribution” (Section 8.5). It advocates more-precise alternatives for ethnic terms, which it does recommend authors capitalize.

Hyphenation: What to do?

What’s consistent in hyphenation advice is that the hyphen is typically omitted from ethic terms.

• APA advises that the hyphen be omitted in racial and ethnic identifiers: for example, “European Australians.” APA’s insistence on capitalization visually clarifies what the hyphen would have expressed anyway, in most cases. This is true even in the pre-noun position, where a hyphen would normally be placed: “European Australian snorkelers are a pruney lot.”

• Chicago, like APA, omits the hyphen. Although it notes this omission has been the subject of some controversy, the manual suggests that the hyphen doesn’t aid in readerly comprehension. Again, authorial preference (or participant preference, one assumes) is a decisive consideration, so the hyphen can be acceptable.

• CSE sometimes uses the hyphen, following something like the usual logic that pre-noun compound adjectives take hyphenation: hence, “African-American students” but “students who are African American.” The wrinkle is that the hyphen doesn’t apply if the ethnic term is “an integral part of a 2-word term.” I find this description a bit opaque, but CSE offers an example that helps clarify: “North American species.”

Usage to avoid

Here are some racial or ethnic word choices that are often considered inappropriate. Consider the context of your author’s usage, of course, but let these terms trigger at least a query:

• “Afro-American”: Simply put, in contemporary usage this term is considered by many to be pejorative.

• “Caucasian”: As the APA succinctly states, “The use of the term ‘Caucasian’ as an alternative to ‘White’ or ‘European’ is discouraged because it originated as a way of classifying White people as a race to be favorably compared with other races” (p. 144).

• “Whites” and “blacks”: People-centred language (e.g., “black people” instead of “blacks”) avoids the implication that a person is reducible to their race or ethnicity. While APA applies “Blacks” and “Whites” without mentioning how this choice could be more problematic than “Black people” and “White people,” Chicago posits that a description of a person does well to avoid reducing that person to one of their characteristics. Hence, it seems safe to say the careful editor at least queries “Whites” and “Blacks,” regardless of style guide.

• “Tribe”: Most Indigenous peoples no longer live tribal lives; this word choice therefore suggests their identity is fixed in a past time. “People” or “nation” is preferable, and certainly if “tribe” is used, the logic of the usage should be made explicit.