Editing for Race and Ethnicity: The Difference, Why It Matters, How to Approach It
Because we editors must enforce correct and consistent usage in our texts, we must master the conventions of the fields in which we edit. For generalized academic editors like myself, the list of conventions is long and shifting — keeping track of what’s expected in a given field is difficult.
Studies discussing race and ethnicity are subject to writing conventions that aren’t always obvious, and given the fraught history of racial and ethnic violence and discrimination the world over, racial and ethnic terms are sensitive. Academics aspire to present their material in unobjectionable and value-neutral terms; furthermore, academic writers face considerable pressure to apply terms correctly. Failing to do so can signal an author’s ignorance of crucial distinctions and practices in their field. So, authors working in these fields are likely to appreciate editors who can identify and correct or advise on the relevant issues.
For all you academic editors out there, juggling conventions with each new edit, I’ve dug into APA (7th edition), Chicago (17th), and CSE (8th) to draw out some general considerations for writings about race and ethnicity.
Race: What is it? I mean, What is it, really?
Race is commonly conflated with skin colour, but such understandings of the notion lack depth.
The history of race-based (i.e., “racialized”) language is medium-length, fascinating, and troubling, and one thing it makes clear is this: Racialized terms have an identifiable trajectory through time, and they are not evident everywhere in history. We’ve all always had a word for the concept “difference”; the concept “race” has not enjoyed this universal expression.
The notion of race was (and is) reified through racial language — since we editors are in some sense gatekeepers of language, it was reared in our collective home, so to speak.
It emerges from the theory that people can be meaningfully classified on the basis of certain (i.e., racial) features of their bodies and bloodlines. Notably, the physiological characteristics that are supposed to indicate race (e.g., skin colour) vary widely within racially classified groups of people, however, and the supposed distinctions indicated by racial difference have quite often been assigned and retrospectively justified for political ends (e.g., South African apartheid).
The very notion of race, in short, is imprecise and is problematic. Unsurprisingly, then, racialized language is imprecise and is rooted in ill-founded, often arbitrary, assumptions.
One assumes that it is for this reason that APA, Chicago, and CSE all acknowledge the ambiguous nature of the concept and discuss race in the context of ethnicity. When The Chicago Manual of Style refers to the word “black,” for example, it does so as an indicator of ethnicity, not race.
Ethnicity: It’s more concrete than race, really
Simply stated, ethnicity (unlike race) is defined by shared cultural practices and beliefs, not the assignment of meaning to bodies and bloodlines.
Different groups of people act in different ways; when those differences manifest in trends in the behaviours and attitudes of geographically concentrated populations, they eventually become ethnic differences. Because sets of practices and beliefs have developed in geographically discrete locations, ethnic terms are sometimes geographic (and national) terms. Thus, while “Métis” is an ethnic term, so is “Italian,” and so is “Italian American.”
The language of ethnicity remains sensitive because ethnic discrimination is alive in the world, so we must be alert to our authors’ uses of ethnic terms — but the concept of ethnicity was not itself developed for discriminatory ends, so it tends to be preferable over that of race.
Three rules to keep your authors sharp in discussions of ethnicity and race
Rule 1: Specific over general
Where specific information is available and appropriate, specific information is preferred.
Broadly, “ethnicity” is a preferable word to “race” if the author isn’t specifically discussing race (i.e., a socio-historical concept that roughly assumes bodies and bloodlines, in and of themselves, can be used to distinguish socially relevant features such as disposition, etc.).
Generalized ethnic language (e.g., “black,” “Hispanic American”) can often be replaced by more precise language (e.g., “African Canadian,” “Cuban American”). Queries to prompt your author to consider more-specific alternatives will be welcome.
Geographic or national terms that express ethnicity are often preferable to purely ethnic terms, but consider the scope of the discussion — depending on the topic, for example, it may be necessary to speak of Arabian culture in general (e.g., rather than Saudi Arabian culture specifically).
Rule 2: Self-description over imposition
Chicago defers to Merriam–Webster for accepted usage, but it and the other two sources recognize self-description as decisive in the choice of ethnic terms. If an American Indian uses the word “Indian” in self-description, it doesn’t really matter how you, Merriam–Webster, or the author feel about the use of that term. Respect the participant’s or culture’s authority over their self-description (but do query your author if you’re at all uncertain about a given choice; caution is good).
You can use the potential for self-reference as a way to broach the use of pejorative terms without seeming accusatory: “Does the participant self-describe using this term? If not, I caution that your readers may understand it to be pejorative, distracting them from the rest of your discussion. I suggest you consider ‘___’ instead.”
Rule 3: Explicit over unexpressed
In most cases, the rationale by which the author selects racial or ethnic terms should be briefly spelled out. This discussion need not occupy an entire section, but a paragraph or two in a document’s introduction section can address a reader’s questions or concerns.
You can emphasize (at least) two key benefits to an author: (i) Such an explanation helps the reader better understand the content of the document, and (ii) it helps the reader focus more squarely on that content, not being distracted by a hunch that the chosen certain ethnic term is worse than an alternative the reader might have in mind.
More-precise conventions for editing race and ethnicity to come in my next post, so stay tuned.
