Note: This is very much a work in progress! It merely states my present thinking. Comments and suggestions are, of course, welcomed.
General rules I currently try to follow (click on links for further discussion):
- Bring up race, ethnic origin, immigration status, etc, only when it matters to the story and can be known for sure. You can, however, always give someone’s nationality, if known, as part of a general description: Pakistani scientist.
- Allow people to self-identify. Use their names for themselves: Cablinasian, biracial, colourless American, etc. If there is a more commonly known English name for their ethnic group, use it on first mention in parentheses: Romani (Gypsies).
- Always capitalize the names of races and ethnic groups: Black, White, Gypsy, etc.
- Five-race model: For the US I generally follow the five “race” model: White, Latino, Black, Asian, Native. Natives can be called Indians if it is clear you do not mean India. For Asians, Latinos and Natives, unless you are talking about them as a whole, it is best to give an ethnic group where known: Navajo, Dominican American, Taiwanese American, etc.
- Do not make fun of other cultures – their language, dialect, accent, food, dress, hair, music, dance, holidays, religion, given names, etc. Different is just different, not laughable, screwed up, “exotic”, “ghetto”, criminal or threatening. Neither demonize other cultures nor idealize your own.
- Avoid racial slurs: nigger, whitey, white trash, Paki, Jap, kaffir, etc. Use them in quoted speech only if it matters to the story.
- Know and avoid stereotypes and tropes. For example:
- Black: Broken Africa, Black Brute (aka “thug”), Sapphire, Mammy, Matriarch, Jezebel, Coon, Welfare Queen, Tragic Mulatto, Noble But Boring Middle-Class Blacks, Black Savage Rule, Africa is a Country, All Jamaicans are Rastafarians, etc.
- Asian: Model Minority, Perpetual Foreigner, China Doll, Dragon Lady, etc.
- Native: Noble Savage, Brutal Savage, etc.
- Muslim: terrorist, fanatic, etc.
- Hollywood tropes: White Saviour, Darkies, Ethnic Sidekick, the Good Ethnic, Ethnics Die First, Ethnic Girls Are Easy, Magical Negro, Failing the Bechdel Test for Race, etc.
Some people fit these stereotypes and tropes, of course, but they are only safe to use if, like August Wilson, you show the full range of humanity that every race or ethnic group has. Otherwise you are confirming the stereotype.
Know the danger signs of ethnic stereotyping. Know what mukokuseki is. People in out-groups have love lives, moral complexity, personal opinions and all the rest. They are individuals, Real People, not carboard cut-outs, boogeymen, a dozen stereotypes or part of a hive mind.
- Avoid Eurocentric, colonial and racially awkward words: modern, backward, tribal, savage, exotic, minorities, mulatto, inscrutable, slanted eyes, good hair, illegals, hut, medicine man, contribution, Mexican bandit, Islamic terrorist, Black crime, Third World, Oriental, Asiatic, Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, etc.
- Be careful with viewpoint words: we, our, here, ethnic, accent, freedom, foreign, native, settler, frontier, discover, etc. Unless your race, ethnic group or nation has a hive mind, write about it in the third person.
- Name the unnamed centre: Western science, the White press, US accent, etc – but keep in mind #1. If you are going to call something “Muslim”, “Islamic” or “Black”, for example, then you should also call their counterparts “Christian”, “Western” or “White”.
– Abagond, 2014.
See also:
- style guide
- Whitespeak
- “Stereotypes have some truth to them”
- the single story
- The BET Fallacy
- Western writing
- Tips on writing about
- The Long But Incomplete List of Racially Awkward Video, Film & Television:
- Precious
- The Blind Side
- The Help
- Django Unchained
- The Wire
- Monster’s Ball
- Freedom Writers
- Dances with Wolves
- Spielberg’s Lincoln
- The Butler
- Kony 2012
- The Vampire Diaries, Merlin, Misfits, etc
- Conan the Destroyer
- American History X
- The Last Airbender
- Imitation of Life
- The Princess and the Frog
- Black Orpheus
- Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs
- Breaking Bad
- The Colbert Report
- Don Lemon
- Daria – based on the first two seasons.
- Pepsi Max: Love Hurts
- PBS NewsHour
- David Carradine – on “Kung Fu”
- Flavor of Love
- A Hidden America: Children of the Plains
- Beware of Lee Daniels, Tyler Perry, Steven Spielberg, Zoe Saldana.
- Semi-Awkward
- Shaft
- Amistad
- Claudine
- 12 Years a Slave
- Red Tails
- Law & Order: UK
- Beware of screenwriter John Ridley.
- Non-Awkward
- American Violet
- Love & Basketball
- Crooklyn
- Lady Sings the Blues – sanitized, though
- The Time That Remains
- Fruitvale Station – arguably it tries too hard to humanize Oscar Grant, which should not be necessary – but clearly is in the culture that killed him.
- I’ll Fly Away
- Bamboozled
- Skin
- Something New
- Hotel Rwanda
- A Lesson Before Dying
- The Secret Life of Bees
- Shit White Girls Say … to Black Girls
- “Where are you really from?”
- Twilight Zone: Eye of the Beholder
- The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
- Don Cornelius – “Soul Train”
- Aisha Muharrar: Black Best Friend
- Lorraine Hansberry: The Drinking Gourd – never aired
- The Feast of All Saints – except maybe the voodoo parts
- Probably good if Spike Lee, Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Alfre Woodard or Shonda Rhimes took part.
It may be a work in progress but already seems pretty substantial and comprehensive.
A couple of questions if I may, abagond: is there a convention established elsewhere regarding the capitalisation of races/ethnic groups, or is it one you’ve decided on independently?
What’s the thinking behind that one?
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I would add that one shouldn’t idealize other civilizations either. That has a long tradition in the West both on the right and the left. It might be less harmful but it shows that one doesn’t see the foreign society as a fully developed, complex entity.
Also one should avoid attributing individual psychological traits to groups. That is farly obvious with negative traits like laziness, but also applies to positive traits.
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Kartoffel
I agree.
@ George
Wrong. Keep an open mind. People will and do say dumb things, but if you are trying not to prejudge and you are trying to engage then it will not matter.
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George Ryder
You take offense to everything. Which is part of your problem. I guess that is your common sense at work. You are wrong because people each have their own brand of what they consider common sense. To a racist his behavior is common sense. How they view stats is common sense. So it is fair to say it is wrong to use common sense when people view it and utilize it quite differently from one person to the next. As to golden rule, no rule is golden.
“ok Sharina, you are the expert on all things…smh”—I don’t see myself as an expert on all things, but I know how to spot a dumb azz making a dumb azz comment.
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George Ryder
I am not quick to judge but I do know sarcasm when I read it. Plus I, like many, gave you the benefit of the doubt for a long time since you first started commenting here. Your benefit of the doubt is over.
“’ll take your word for it.”—You don’t have to take my word for it. All one must do is read your comments. Something you fail to accomplish before pressing submit.
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@ Abagond
Might I ask what prompted this post?
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@ Abagond: Thanks, good points all. I do question whether “races” should be set off with upper case, at least all the time. It seems to me it depends on one’s view. I known people who identify as “Black” and people who identify as “black,” and the latter might be called a Pan Africanist, but believes that “black” is fundamentally adjectival. On the other hand, I acknowledge that I am endowed with “racial advantage” because I’m white, but as my people have a distinct history and I can trace basically when they bought into US white supremacy, I prefer to upper case my ethnicity, “Italian American,” and lower case my “racial” identity, which is neither a point of pride nor particular identification for me personally. What do you think of the white race “traitors” who want to break down the concept of the “white race,” essentially deconstructing it? I’d like to hear what you have to say about that. I’m thinking these folks would not like the uppercase “White.” What do you think? Regards.
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George
That is your opinion not mine. I personally feel no type of way about you. Good or bad.
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@abagond:
In light of Lou’s comment above I’d like to qualify my questions in the first comment on this thread. I have no objection to the capitalisation. I’m just curious as I don’t recall seeing it anywhere else, and you consider it worthy of inclusion in your guide.
Thanks.
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@ Buddhuu @ Lou
On matters of English usage I generally follow the Oxford dictionary and The Economist. Both use “blacks”, not “Blacks”, and so did I.
I did not start capitalizing it till about last April. In that I was affected mainly by Daniel K. Richter’s “Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America” (2001):
Further, he does not apply colour terms to people in his history till the 1700s when they themselves started thinking in those terms.
I agree with that. To me “blacks” and “whites” (lower case) sees race as a fact of nature, like “cats” and “dogs”, while “Blacks” and “Whites” (upper case) sees them as a fact of history, like “Germans” and “Jews”. It sees race as a social construction, in other words.
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@ Sharina
Nothing in particular prompted this. I was doing a sequel to this post:
Over time that grew into this post and the one on New York English.
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@ Lou
I am all for deconstructing it. In my experience it is the more anti-racist Whites who are more likely to capitalize it.
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@ abagond
I see your point. But I may spin it another way, esp. in light of your response to Buddhuu above. Rather than seeing the lower case “b” and “w” as stating race as a fact of nature vis a vis cats/dogs, might it not signify a functional description of appearance? I’m drawing on Malcolm X’s distinction of how “white” people typically mean “I’m boss” when they say they’re “white” (i.e., most whites are default racists, whether they admit it or not), whereas a nonracist “white” only uses this self-description to describe the nature of his/her skin color, as Malcolm said, the way one might refer to the color of a suit. That’s what I was trying to get to in referring to “w” as adjectival. So, I had assumed the opposite of your conclusion–that using the upper case “W” would tend to authenticate the “White race” as a biological reality, although it is a perverse social construct. However, perhaps your survey of antiracist whites preferring the uppercase “W” requires me to revise my thinking. Thanks.
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Thanks for the reply, abagond. That makes sense.
I see what Lou means. People in favour of deconstruction may be fine with it once they have the context of Richter’s thinking; otherwise, for some, it could well seem like the wrong kind of emphasis, lending strength to the concepts.
It certainly bears some thinking over.
I write for a living – both freelance and as an employee. I mostly defer to The Guardian style guide or Fowler’s Modern English Usage. It’s always amazed me how little consensus there is within journalism about very common things – capitalisation of job titles, for example.
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Capitalisation is an odd thing. It certainly can carry a lot of weight. When addressing people online I even try to ensure that I style their names as they do themselves as regards capitals – hence lowercase “abagond” but uppercase “Lou”.
The power of the shift key is under-appreciated, IMO.
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Myself I don’t capitalize either “black” or “white” when referring to a person’s “race,” but use quotation marks. Race after all is socially constructed and when using these terms many take them to be skin color references as in the “one-drop” rule. Language here is imprecise and imprecision hinders meaning. After all “words don’t mean, people mean.”
“Black” seems to be a stand-in for African-American (in North America, but there can be Afro-Latin, Afro-European, etc.) and “white” is a stand-in for European.
If a “white” child adopted at birth and raised by “black” parents in an Afrocentric way, in an African American cultural setting would s/he be “black” or “white.?”
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One of the funniest and most astute essays I’ve ever read on Africa.
http://www.granta.com/Archive/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1
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I agree with everything in your article Abagond. One point I question however is do you think settlers are offended by the word ‘settler’? In which situation would you not use the word ‘settler’?
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[…] General rules I currently try to follow (click on links for further discussion): […]
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[…] Source: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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This article sheds light on why many are nervous to talk about race.
They are scared they may say something offensive.
Avoiding the topic of race, culture and ethnicity does not help move the country toward racial justice, dignity and respect.
And avoiding the topic of oppression keeps the oppression firmly in place.
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[…] General rules I currently try to follow (click on links for further discussion): […]
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@Glenn,
This word is very easy to understand, but I don’t think that it is the settlers who are offended.
Think if someone comes and takes your land to use or live on. Do you call them settlers? Probably you would call them trespassers, squatters or even invaders.
The British went to North America. they also went to the other continents. In Asia they went to Hong Kong, Malaysia / Singapore, India, Burma, etc. Are they called settlers there? Why call them settlers in North America, but not Asia?
But is it OK to use settlers in Australia and New Zealand? How about South Africa? Guyana? Where is it used and where is it not?
You should not used settlers for a place that is already settled. It reflects a viewpoint about what is there already and what is not.
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“You should not used settlers for a place that is already settled. It reflects a viewpoint about what is there already and what is not.”
Good point Jefe. I never thought about it like that.
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@ Glenn
1. I agree with Jefe. If Japan had won the Second World War and took over California, I doubt very much that Anglos would call Japanese land thieves “settlers” or “pioneers” or see those who fought against Japanese rule as “bandits”, “terrorists” or “savages” – even though they have used everyone of those terms when they had the upper hand.
2. On the subject of this post, The Economist’s “Style Guide” sees it as a balancing act between not causing offence while not giving in to mealy-mouthed euphemisms. I do not see it that way. I see it as a balancing act between avoiding the racism and Eurocentrism built into Modern English so as to think clearly while trying not to sink into ideologically pure but clear-as-mud jargon. I want to speak in ordinary English but ordinary English is largely the creation of Whites – kind of like Orwell’s Newspeak but built for Western imperialism and racism rather than Ingsoc.
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@ Glenn
A better term than “settlers” is the one the Ancient Greeks would have used: colonists. Anglo Americans, if the shoe were on the other foot, would probably use “invaders”.
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@ abagond
On the second paragraph. That is a great assessment of the view of white/mainstream view on language. I think it comes from the misconception that “political corecctness” was introduced to avoid offense and that they now have to navigate between doing that and still speaking the truth (basically what you just said).
I think a political or academic discussion should never be about avoiding offense but finding out the truth (or better, a less false interpretation). And the rules you proposed don’t exist because saying these things is offensive, but because they are lies.
This misconception has lead to the whole “political corectness” culture. People say the old wrong things while avoiding the banned vocabulary, without changing the thought behind one bit. The same thought process is behind disclaimers like “I’m not a racist, but” or it’s variants. And when called out one should rather try to understand why one is criticized than apologize.
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This is an ambitious project and I appreciate that you took the time to do this. Regarding the use of the word ‘Gypsy’: it’s problematic and is not one I would use when referring to the Romani people, unless in the context of a non-Romani person’s thoughts or remarks towards them.
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Kartoffel
@ abagond
This misconception has lead to the whole “political corectness” culture. People say the old wrong things while avoiding the banned vocabulary
————————————————————————————————-
“The “N” word” is a tool white people came up with that lets them make you think of ni**ers without actually using the word ni**er
Should we get mad when they say it?
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@Ikeke35: Thanks for that link that was i suppose sarcasm. I thought it was funny and as you say astute. It reminds me of the post Abagond did how not to write about Native Americans of something in that vein. That post was very clever and funny. It made a tedious train commute home from work bearable.
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The link Ikeke35 posted is apropos to this thread topic. It is pretty darn funny.
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[…] This article sheds light on why many are nervous to talk about race. They are scared they may say something offensive. Learning from this post can provide a lot of help to not be offensive. Avoiding the topic of race, culture and ethnicity does not help move the country toward racial justice, dignity and respect. Avoiding the topic of oppression keeps the oppression firmly in place. […]
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[…] General rules I currently try to follow (click on links for further discussion): […]
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@abagond
“West asia” is how you are supposed “the middle east” now?
I guess you have revised your stance on ‘hispanic is not a race’?
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@ v8driver
1. That is why I put “race” in quotes. Latinos in the US are like a race in some ways, in other ways not.
2. I would avoid Middle East, Far East, New World, sub-Saharan Africa and so on. They are all Eurocentric. It is better to just to name a continent or a part thereof.
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@abagond ok
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One problem with the change from the “Middle East” to “West Asia” is that “Middle East” also includes North Africa. I suppose one could say “the Middle East and North Africa”, but it sounds al little impractical.
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Ive seen old maps made by white people where the entire continent of Africa is called ETHIOPIA
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@Kartoffel
The original meaning of Middle East (and its earlier term “Near East”) did not include North Africa, but the area east of the Suez Canal between Europe and India. The extension to include North Africa was a latter 20th century practice.
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/the-term-middle-east/)
I have no problem with calling Europe “West Eurasia” and use “Southwest Eurasia” to include what is commonly referred to as the middle east.
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@ Kartoffel
In that case I would use “the Arab world” or whatever it was that I meant.
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[…] Note: This is very much a work in progress! It merely states my present thinking. Comments and suggestions are, of course, welcomed. General rules I currently try to follow (click on links for furt… […]
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The correct term for those who are not of NW Euro descent is “nonwhites”, “minorities”, or “minority races”
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