Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza

Learn about the “one-drop rule”.

Coming from a biracial family, I think it’s really important to understand mixed-race people’s experiences. As the National Museum of African American History and Culture puts it, “creating one’s racial identity is a fluid and nonlinear process that varies for every person and group” (NMAAHC). But the Museum’s website correctly adds, “In a racialized society like the United States, everyone is assigned a racial identity whether they are aware of it or not.” We should question The Atlantic’s claim that mixed-race people will cause the categories of whiteness and non-whiteness to become less significant over time.

Happy Thursday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Our collective perception of race evolves over time. But racism won't evolve itself into extinction. That's going to take persistent action, not passively waiting for change. Today, Andrew reflects on the history of the "one-drop rule" and how mixed-race identities aren't the benchmark for change.

Two new things!

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Thank you for your support! This daily, free, independent newsletter is made possible by your support. Make a monthly donation to support our team.

– Nicole

TAKE ACTION

  • Understand white supremacy as an evolving but ongoing system of oppression.

  • Reject arguments that whiteness and racism will naturally fade over time.

  • Take action alongside communities of color to dismantle racism in all forms.

GET EDUCATED

By Andrew Lee (he/him)

Earlier this month, The Atlantic published “The Myth of a Majority-Minority America,” which critiqued the idea that most Americans will soon be people of color. According to the article, America will only become a majority-minority country if we count mixed-race individuals as exclusively non-white. This binary thinking draws on the legacy of the Jim Crow-era “one-drop rule,” say the authors, and is a repetition of historic fears about non-Anglo European immigration which, of course, proved to be unfounded.
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“Speculating about whether America will have a white majority by the mid-21st century makes little sense, because the social meanings of white and nonwhite are rapidly shifting,” they write. “The sharp distinction between these categories will apply to many fewer Americans” (The Atlantic).

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Coming from a biracial family, I think it’s really important to understand mixed-race people’s experiences. As the National Museum of African American History and Culture puts it, “creating one’s racial identity is a fluid and nonlinear process that varies for every person and group” (NMAAHC). But the Museum’s website correctly adds, “In a racialized society like the United States, everyone is assigned a racial identity whether they are aware of it or not.” We should question The Atlantic’s claim that mixed-race people will cause the categories of whiteness and non-whiteness to become less significant over time.
​

According to the one-drop rule, people were Black if they had any Black ancestry. This meant people whose ancestors were mostly white were still enslaved and, later, subject to Jim Crow discrimination. The legacy of the one-drop rule is why some people are Black despite being light-skinned enough to pass as white (PBS). Acknowledging that people with mixed ancestry can still be identified as white or as people of color doesn’t endorse this way of thinking, but rather acknowledges its continuing effect on contemporary views of race.

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White Americans resisted Irish and Italian mass immigration on both racial and religious grounds. Irish and Italian people were at first thought of as non-white, racially inferior peoples. Mobs burned Catholic churches and immigrant neighborhoods because Catholics were thought to practice cannibalism and other barbarities (History). Sicilians were thought to be inherently criminal because of racial defects (NY Times). Of course, both Irish and Italian Americans are now easily identified as white people. What changed wasn’t their physical characteristics but their position within the construct of whiteness.

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But this didn’t mean that the distinction between white and non-white was erased in the early twentieth century. On the contrary, the price of admission to whiteness was for Irish and Italian immigrant communities to join in the oppression of their Black neighbors. As Protestant mobs attacked Irish neighborhoods, Irish immigrants took part in attacking Black neighborhoods (Irish Times).

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The borders of racial categories are malleable, contested, and change over time. But believing that demographic changes will inevitably cause the racial hierarchy to fade away ignores centuries of evidence to the contrary. It veers dangerously close to endorsing the view that all we need to do to combat racism is wait.

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We need to understand the history and present of American racism to fight its devastating effects on communities of color. This doesn’t mean racism is inevitable or will persist forever, but we need to take action to interrogate anti-Blackness, xenophobia, and anti-Indigeneity and the beliefs, institutions, and practices that enable them instead of waiting for racism to disappear.

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Key Takeaways

  • Some experts believe increasing numbers of mixed-race Americans will cause racial distinctions to fade away.

  • This ignores the fact that racial categories are evolving social constructs while racism is an enduring social structure.

  • Demographic changes won’t end racism, only concerted individual and collective action to increase the power of dispossessed people and communities of color.

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Jumko Ogata-Aguilar Nicole Cardoza Jumko Ogata-Aguilar Nicole Cardoza

Unpack the term “Hispanic”.

The idea that there is a single category of Hispanic or Latinx people spanning every Spanish-speaking country is not the result of an organic organization between Spanish-speaking Latin Americans but rather a project of U.S. activists, government officials and media executives from the 1970’s through the 1990’s. According to G. Cristina Mora, the conscious ambiguity concerning the definition of the “Hispanic” was a fundamental part of its institutionalization.

Welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! Today, Jumko joins us to share more about the history of the phrase Hispanic and how, similar to the term Latinx, broad generalizations of diverse cultures and origins fail to truly reflect us all.

Thank you for your support! This daily, free, independent newsletter is made possible by your support. Consider making a donation to support our work. You can start a monthly subscription on Patreon or our website, or give one-time using our website, PayPal, or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza).

– Nicole

TAKE ACTION

  • The term “Hispanic” was created in order to redirect funds to larger initiatives encompassing communities of the Latin American diaspora.

  • This term, however, does nothing to refer to the diversity of experiences within these communities and impedes us from having explicit conversations about racism and race. 

  • Instead of using “Hispanic”, refer to the specific ethnicity, nationality or race you want to talk about, so as to avoid generalizations that don’t apply to “Hispanic” people as a whole.

GET EDUCATED

By Jumko Ogata-Aguilar (she/ella)

During the 2020 presidential elections, news outlets were full of predictions, analyses, and examinations of how the Latino/Hispanic sector would vote (NBC News). Many supported Donald Trump in the polls (New York Times), sparking many conversations and questions concerning the fact that a minority was apparently voting against their best interest. However, this information is hardly surprising when we consider the ambiguous nature of the term. “Hispanic” can easily refer to a person from Spain, Chile, The Philippines, or Equatorial Guinea. So where exactly did this term come from? Who exactly does it refer to?

The idea that there is a single category of Hispanic or Latinx people spanning every Spanish-speaking country is not the result of an organic organization between Spanish-speaking Latin Americans but rather a project of U.S. activists, government officials and media executives from the 1970’s through the 1990’s. According to G. Cristina Mora, the conscious ambiguity concerning the definition of the “Hispanic” was a fundamental part of its institutionalization. 

“Activists thus described Hispanics as a disadvantaged and underrepresented minority group that stretched from coast to coast, a wide framing that best allowed them to procure grants from public and private institutions,” said Mora. “Media executives, in turn, framed Hispanics as an up-and-coming national consumer market to increase advertising revenue. Last, government officials, particularly those in the Census Bureau, framed Hispanics as a group displaying certain educational, income, and fertility patterns significantly different from those of blacks and whites” (University of Chicago).

The three main diasporas that were most visible at the time due to their political presence were Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban. According to Mora, the concept of Hispanic was an attempt to unify what were, in fact, wildly different priorities. “Immigration reform, for example, became an important Mexican American policy goal but was of little interest to Puerto Ricans, who were citizens by birth, and to Cuban Americans, who gained citizenship through their refugee status. Puerto Ricans in New York focused on issues of Puerto Rican independence, but this cause fell on deaf ears in Mexican American and Cuban American communities. And while there were certainly some issues that these groups shared, such as bilingual education and discrimination, many of the joint, pan-ethnic mobilization efforts addressing these topics were either highly local or short-lived.”

Populations within each Latin American country are also not homogenous. After they obtained independence from Spain, the white ruling elites crafted discourses whose purpose was to assimilate the Indigenous and Black populations into whiteness, creating racist discourses that are still prevalent to this day (Latin American Perspectives). Some Latin American governments promoted the idea that “We are all “Mestizo,” or mixed-race, to erase erasing anti-Indigenous and anti-Black practices (Critical Sociology). Overuse of Hispanic, Latinx, and Mestizo can make conversations around racist violence within these communities much more difficult due to their basic premise: “We are all Hispanic/Mestizos.” 

Now, if we focus particularly on the three diasporas previously mentioned, we can see how even the homogenization of these populations according to their nationality impedes us from understanding the diversity of experiences the “Hispanic” label encompasses.

We can now understand “Hispanic” Republican politicians that seemingly legislate against the interest of the community at large. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are both white men of Cuban ancestry whose political posture rests on the fact that their families supposedly fled their country of origin because of the Cuban revolution. They legislate in favor of white, rich conservatives such as themselves (whether “Hispanic” or not).

The terms “Hispanic” and “Latinx” have become racialized categories in the US. Therefore many conversations in the public eye equate being “Hispanic” or “Latinx” to being someone who is non-white. This has not only allowed white women to indulge in self-exotization due to the way they are perceived in the U.S. vs. their countries of origin (ie. Shakira, Sofía Vergara, Kali Uchis) but has also created controversial conversations on the internet, such as the description of Anya Taylor-Joy as a woman of color (Tribune).

In order to adopt an anti-racist stance when referring to Latin American people, these labels must be understood in their historical context and left aside for more specific terms that refer to the community that we want to refer to explicitly. Hispanic and Latinx are not a race, ethnicity, or nationality. There is an immense spectrum of realities within the “Hispanic” term, therefore, we must explicitly name the communities we want to recognize lest they be made invisible by these homogenizing narratives once more.


Key Takeaways

  • Some outsiders think about immigrant communities as political tokens or only consider them in relation to the food, music, or other products they produce.

  • Corporations might support immigrants or other oppressed communities rhetorically while harming them in practice.

  • Solidarity must be a constant practice.

RELATED ISSUES

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Tiffany Onyejiaka Nicole Cardoza Tiffany Onyejiaka Nicole Cardoza

Unpack “Black-on-Black crime”.

Aristotle said, “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime” (Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality). But in the wake of violence in impoverished Black communities, we often only hear the same refrain: “Why is no one doing anything about this?” The idea that nobody in Black communities works to stop community violence is racist, classist, and false.

It's Friday! Welcome back, and thanks so much for being a part of our community. I really like the perspective that Tiffany offers in today's piece; not only is the notion of "Black-on-Black crime" weaponized to minimize racial violence, it often fails to recognize the incredible work of local community organizers. As you read, consider: what has shaped your notion of the topics listed below? What do you need to learn or unlearn in your own community?

Thank you for your support! This daily, free, independent newsletter is made possible by your support. If you can, consider making a donation to support our team. You can start a monthly subscription on Patreon or our website, or give one-time using our website, PayPal, or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza).

Have a great day!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

GET EDUCATED

By Tiffany Onyejiaka (she/her)

Aristotle said, “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime” (Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality). But in the wake of violence in impoverished Black communities, we often only hear the same refrain: “Why is no one doing anything about this?”

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The idea that nobody in Black communities works to stop community violence is racist, classist, and false.

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In 1979, Ebony magazine made the first reference to “Black-on-Black crime,” saying, “Although the black community is not responsible for the external conditions that systematically create breeding grounds for crime, the community has the responsibility of doing what it can to attack the problem from within” (ABC News). These conditions were created by American white supremacy, as the government’s own 1968 Kerner Commission acknowledged when it wrote, “White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it” (Smithsonian).

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Commentators don’t bring up Black intra-community violence to change these conditions created by American racial capitalism (Truthout). And we never hear about white-on-white violence. The specter of “Black-on-Black crime” is not a sincere reckoning with the causes and effects of poverty and interpersonal violence in Black communities. It’s a racist dog whistle. More often than not, “Black-on-Black crime” is weaponized to deflect attention from anti-Black police violence.

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After a tragic weekend with over 100 shootings in Chicago (Block Club Chicago), Fox News host Geraldo Rivera tweeted, “It was most violent single day in 6 decades, per Chicago Sun Times. Will #BlackLivesMatters speak out? Will anyone kneel for them?” (Twitter). The killings are mentioned not to mourn the dead, but only to attack Black Lives Matter. If Rivera cared about those killed, he wouldn’t discuss them only to oppose a movement for racial justice.

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Historically, Black folks have been deemed lazy, unresourceful, and submissive (Smithsonian). To ask “why is nobody doing anything about this?” presumes that Black folks condone violence against their families, friends, and neighbors.

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When individuals and the media perpetuate the notion that Black people in low-income neighborhoods are indifferent to interpersonal violence, they also erase the work of community organizers across the country. If Rivera cared about Black intra-community violence, he would have taken a few minutes to research how Chicago activists banded together to address community violence (Block Club Chicago). He would have cited Black women-led groups like Chicago’s Mothers Against Senseless Killings (MASK) and Philadelphia’s Mothers in Charge (MIC). He would have talked about campaigns like Baltimore’s Safe Streets, where community members de-escalate violent events and prevent violence at the source (Safe Streets).

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Every day, people in inner cities work to eradicate violence in their communities. Groups like Operation Save Our City in Philly (Facebook), GoodKids MadCity in Chicago (GKMC), Take Back Our Streets in Oakland (Facebook), and Stand Up To Violence in the Bronx (Facebook) are all grassroots initiatives made up of people working to fight violence in their own communities. They receive minimal recognition and little acclaim. The majority of Americans simply don’t know they exist.

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These grassroots anti-violence organizations are led by members of low-income communities themselves. One reason they receive little attention is classism. To a middle-class audience, their campaigns may seem less “professional” or “respectable” than those run by nonprofits or college groups. Even in the realm of racial justice, Black organizations that have representation from middle- or upper-class backgrounds often garner more attention. But those most directly affected by social problems often have the best knowledge about how to set them right, even if they have access to minimal resources and power.

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The loss of independent news outlets is another barrier to learning about these community efforts. Independent outlets such as Block Club Chicago report on local organizing much more than national, mainstream publications. Supporting local, independent news led by writers of color can give exposure to the wonderful community organizations trying to help their neighborhoods thrive.
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After highly-publicized Black intra-community violence, “Why is nobody doing anything about this?” is the wrong question.
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We might consider some others:

“How can we support community organizations working on community violence?”

“How do we support activists beyond those we see on CNN or social media?”

“Why do organizations doing the most work on the ground get the least donations?”

“How can I help make sure all of the communities around me have the resources and safety their members need to thrive?”

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We can’t do that until we unpack the idea of “Black-on-Black violence.”

Key Takeaways

  • In every city across America, Black people (often without needed resources) find ways to combat community violence in different ways.

  • Classism and elitism still occur in activist spaces. Community-based organizations and activists without degrees or professional connections can be at risk of getting overlooked.

  • It’s important to read local and independent news and media to learn about community-based efforts that mainstream media misses.

RELATED ISSUES

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Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza

Understand whiteness.

But race is a social construct, and social constructs have social histories. Our modern understanding of race was created at a specific historical juncture in colonial Virginia. Prior to that, it did not exist.

It's Friday! Welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of "Between the World and Me," says that "race is the child of racism, not the father." Put simply, racism created the social construct of race that perpetuates racial bias and discrimination to this date. Andrew shares a bit more about the history of race in the U.S. and more resources to learn about the formation of whiteness.
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​Thank you to everyone that supports our independent publishing! If you can, consider giving $7/month on Patreon. Or you can give one-time on our website or PayPal. You can also support us by joining our curated digital community. I'm grateful for your support!
​
Nicole


TAKE ACTION

  • Learn about the social and historical construction of whiteness.

  • Educate yourself about the benefits of whiteness, provided by the National Musuem of African American History and Culture.

  • Take steps to disrupt and abolish race and whiteness.

  • Consider: How does being white grant certain privileges? How might white people experience oppression through other social identities, e.g., class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ability, etc.?

GET EDUCATED

By Andrew Lee (he/him)

There’s a general conception of racism that goes something like this: just as some people are naturally short or tall, we are all born into one race or another. Racism is unfair discrimination, but the racial categories themselves are natural and universal. Just as we might imagine someone in Shakespeare’s England or the 16th century Mali Empire being short or tall, we would imagine that person fitting into one of the modern U.S. census’s racial categories.

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But race is a social construct, and social constructs have social histories. Our modern understanding of race was created at a specific historical juncture in colonial Virginia. Prior to that, it did not exist.
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This doesn’t mean that everyone previously looked the same. If those subjects of the Mali Empire and Elizabethan England met, they would have recognized differences in skin pigmentation or eye color or any number of other things.
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Similarly, I notice people’s heights. But I do not have a mental map that divides people into either The Talls or The Shorts. I do not think of The Talls and The Shorts as two different sorts of human beings. I do not immediately make a subconscious decision on whether someone I am talking to sight unseen is either A Tall or A Short person. And our society isn’t designed to universally provide one of these groups of people more power, privilege and opportunity than the other. This is an absurd example, but we all make instant judgments of this sort concerning race. Not necessarily because we are racist, but because race is a fundamental feature of social life in ways the fictitious Tall/Short division is not.

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In colonial Virginia, landowners brought workers from England, Ireland, and countries across Africa to cultivate tobacco. These enslaved or forced laborers were poorly treated, and none had many rights, but African and European laborers were treated largely the same. African laborers able to acquire their freedom could exercise voting rights in the colonial legislature, accumulate wealth, and hire European laborers. People of African and European ancestry intermingled and intermarried without penalty and there is no evidence that they thought of themselves as members of two great camps of Black and white people (Understanding Race).

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But after African and European servants joined forces in 1676’s Bacon’s Rebellion, the colonial legislature began passing laws to make such solidarity impossible in the future. The rights of African people were reduced until African descent was synonymous with slavery. On the other hand, a new category appeared: white. For the first time, people who might have been referred to as Christian, or English, or Scottish, or Swedish were all lumped together under this new name. Even the poorest white person now had greater rights than any enslaved African.

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“What colony leaders were doing was establishing unequal groups and imposing different social meanings on them,” said Audrey Smedley. “As they were creating the institutional and behavioral aspects of slavery, the colonists were simultaneously structuring the ideological components of race” (Understanding Race).

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Much later, when mass Irish immigration began in the 19th century, Irish people were not yet considered properly white. Racial stereotypes about Irish people abounded in popular media. For Anglo-Americans, the Irish were thought of as being much closer to Black people than to whites. Black people were even referred to as “smoked Irish.”

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Irish Americans today are a nationality firmly within the universe of whiteness. What changed wasn’t any physical characteristic of Irish people but rather their political position within American white supremacy. Irish Americans largely rejected calls by nationalist leaders like Daniel O’Connell to join forces with Black people, instead of opposing abolition and acting “unabashedly American in the way they dealt with the slavery controversy” (Irish Times).

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“Essentially what happened was the Irish became white,” said scholar Noel Ignatiev. “To the extent to which they could prove themselves worthy of being white Americans–that is, by joining in gleefully in the subjugation of Black people–they showed that they belonged… Having fair skin made the Irish eligible to be white, but it didn’t guarantee their admission. They had to earn it” (Z Magazine).

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Whiteness is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean we can just wish it away. Police officers and Lutheranism and Thursdays are also social constructs, but we can’t snap our fingers and make any of them disappear, either. Your non-belief in police officers won’t help you when you get pulled over; if you choose to ignore Thursdays you’ll always have the wrong day of the week. To say something is a social construct implies it has not always existed and could exist otherwise or not at all. Nonetheless, there are practices, policies, and institutions that make social constructs real, powerful, and potentially deadly while they exist.

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Ignatiev’s suggestion was to instead work collectively towards the abolition of whiteness, meaning the destruction of those privileges associated with being part of the “club” of whiteness. “The white race is like a private club based on one huge assumption: that all those who look white are, whatever their complaints or reservations, fundamentally loyal to the race. We want to dissolve the club, to explode it” (LA Times).

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It is not just that some white people or institutions are racist but rather that the category of whiteness in the United States has always had racial oppression as its function. To “explode the club of whiteness” does not require self-pity and hand-wringing by self-proclaimed white allies. If the fundamental assumption of whiteness is that all white people–neighbors, bosses and employees, police officers and civilians, family members or strangers on the street–have some basic loyalty to each other, a more powerful response would be to break the color line, practicing disloyalty to whiteness in favor of loyalty to humanity.

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Understand, unpack, and abolish whiteness.

Key Takeaways

  • We often think of racism as unjust discrimination between objective racial categories.

  • In fact, categories like “white” didn’t always exist. Whiteness was created as a legal category in colonial Virginia to prevent lower-class solidarity.

  • Racial categories have always been part of a racial hierarchy.

  • To interrupt racism, we need to disrupt whiteness, including white intra-racial solidarity at the expense of people of color.

RELATED ISSUES

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Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

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Charlie Lahud-Zahner Nicole Cardoza Charlie Lahud-Zahner Nicole Cardoza

Learn the key terminology.

If you’re active in social justice work (or have just been on the internet in the last 20 years), you’ve probably seen some of the terms, acronyms, and phrases used to describe ethnic and racial minorities in the US. You’ve probably used them too. Language has never been known to sit still, and so as our culture changes, the words change with it. More often than not, people are trying to hurry up and find the new “right” inoffensive words and move on without taking the time to learn the significance behind each term or, more importantly, learning when to use it (Vox). 

Happy Sunday and welcome back. Thanks for being such an engaged, committed group of readers. Today, Charlie walks us through the terminology and definitions you read frequently in anti-racism work; terms that we use often in our newsletters! We're expanding key concepts we've discussed here into a glossary over the next few weeks, and these will be included. As you read, remember: definitions and how people relate to them are two different things. There is never just one answer or one perception, and how we each choose to identify ourselves is the correct answer, regardless of what the masses say. We must read, listen, and do our best to treat each other with kindness and respect.


This is the Anti-Racism Daily, a daily newsletter with tangible ways to dismantle racism and white supremacy. You can support our work by making a one-time contribution on ourwebsiteorPayPal, or giving monthly onPatreon. You can also Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). To subscribe, go toantiracismdaily.com.

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

  • Avoid using groupings like BIPOC if referring to specific ethnic or racial groups: If you mean Black, say Black.

  • Read this Vox comic by illustrator/writer Richard Blas for a visual explanation of the debates behind Latino/x/e. 

GET EDUCATED

By Charlie Lahud-Zahner (he/him)

If you’re active in social justice work (or have just been on the internet in the last 20 years), you’ve probably seen some of the terms, acronyms, and phrases used to describe ethnic and racial minorities in the US. You’ve probably used them too. Language has never been known to sit still, and so as our culture changes, the words change with it. More often than not, people are trying to hurry up and find the new “right” inoffensive words and move on without taking the time to learn the significance behind each term or, more importantly, learning when to use it (Vox). 

Recently, discussions about naming and the effectiveness of POC and BIPOC have been evolving (NPR). So, with this in mind, now is as good a time as ever to explore and learn the histories, meanings, and debates of the cultural vernacular. 


POC 

Today POC (person of color) can be a useful term because, unlike “non-white,” it defines Brown, Black, Indigenous, and Asian people as what they are, not what they aren’t (NPR). The term POC was initially developed by people of color themselves: Loretta Ross traces the term “women of color” to the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston when the phrase was used as a symbol of solidarity between different minority groups at the conference (Western States Center). 

But some linguists and activists today worry that the original meaning has lost its teeth, now that POC is the fallback catchall word used by white people trying to be “not racist” (Vox). Many have also criticized how generally the term is used, as “person of color” fails to account that a Black woman’s experienced reality may be wholly different from that of an Asian or Latina woman (LA Times). 

Some Americans remain confused by the differences between “of color” and “colored” and make the mistake of using them interchangeably (Chicago Tribune). The definition of “colored” has changed over time (NPR), but the predominant connotation of the word is a racial pejorative used toward Black Americans in the mid-20th century (PBS). 

BIPOC

First mentioned on Twitter in 2013, the term BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) highlights the words “Black” and “Indigenous” in an attempt to acknowledge differences between Black and Indigenous people versus other people of color.  Recognizing Indigenous identities as distinct reminds us that Indigenous Americans are not ethnic minorities or immigrants, they are this land’s original inhabitants (AICL). However, the term BIPOC still runs the risk of Black erasure, particularly in discussions of police violence (NY Times). Black Americans, especially Black men, are more likely to be killed by police than any other racial group, and more than twice as likely as white Americans (Washington Post). Hispanic children may be three times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison, but Black children are nine times as likely; Black women make up only 13% of the female US population, yet account for 30% of all females incarcerated (The Sentencing Project).To refer to Breonna Taylor and George Floyd as BIPOC glosses over the reality that the adversity Black Americans face is unique from any other racial group. Don’t use BIPOC if you mean Black or if you mean Indigenous; use BIPOC if you mean to include every identity in the acronym. 

 

Latinx and Hispanic

The differences between Latinx and Hispanic can be really technical (NAS). But, for simplicity’s sake, the primary thing to know is that Hispanic more or less refers to descendants of Spanish speaking populations, while Latinx folk more or less refers to descendants of people from Latin America (ThoughtCo). However, for some individuals, identifying either as Latinx or Hispanic can be a matter of preference (Pew Research).  Many have deferred to the term Latinx, as it distances itself from the colonial history of Spain in Latin America (Dictionary.com). (Side note: Neither Hispanic nor Latinx are racial categories – Latinx/Hispanic people can belong to any race.)



Latino, Latinx, Latine

Because Spanish is a gendered language, plural nouns that refer to groups including at least one male use the -o suffix. But critics have pointed to the -o in Latino and the rule of deferring to male pronouns as examples of embedded sexism in the Spanish language (Latina.com). Instead, they proposed the term Latinx, a way to acknowledge genders beyond the binary with the handy gender-neutral -x ending. 

Opponents of this new word (which has been popularly used since around 2015 (Mother Jones) and was added to Webster’s Dictionary in 2018) claim that the term is an example of “linguistic imperialism” (The Phoenix): an instance of English speakers in the United States imposing norms on Latin America. Now, Latine is the latest alternative introduced to the modern lexicon. Much like Latinx, Latine is a gender-neutral alternative, but has been adopted by some because the ending -e, unlike -x, occurs more naturally after a consonant in Spanish. The word is also a lot easier to say (mitú). 
 

Chicano/x

In the early 20th century, it was not uncommon for Mexican-Americans to want to be categorized as white to gain civil rights and respectability (NCBI). This choice was (and still is) less about skin color and other racial characteristics but economic status and perception of social inequalities (Pew Research). For this reason, the Chicano Movement in the 1960s was distinctive; it celebrated a Mexican-American identity rooted in social activism and celebrated Indigenous and African heritage as opposed to white European descendants (History.com). 
 

With all this being said, identity can get complicated. Despite sharing genetic material, the last name, and a similar melanin count, my dad and I identify differently. He considers himself more Hispanic than Latino(let alone Latinx/e) and would emphasize his regional identity (Veracruz) above his racial/ethnic identity. Alternatively, I prefer Latinx/e to Hispanic to try and commit to gender-neutral language and as a way to show a preference for Mexico’s Indigenous identity. I feel comfortable with BIPOC as a term of community, but if you asked Ricardo Lahud-Zahner about that word, he’d say, “What?” 


Our differences exemplify how what we call ourselves is both a sensitive and powerful topic. So when trying to decide what to write or say, use the terms the person uses to self-identify. When in doubt, err on the side of specificity (APA). It might seem like a small thing, but just like learning gender pronouns (or even someone’s name), it’s worth it for us to understand these terms--and to learn what someone wants to be called.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • POC stands for “Person of Color.” BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color.

  • When used indiscriminately, acronyms like BIPOC and POC can ignore differences between Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. 

  • There is not always a default “right” word when referring to ethnic/racial groups. Take the time to use the most appropriate term for the situation. Defer how a person self-identifies, and be specific. 

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Nicole Cardoza Nicole Cardoza

Capitalize B in Black and I in Indigenous.

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Hi all,

Today's newsletter looks at how language wields power, and how quickly our language is changing based on the movement of the past few weeks. I particularly liked writing this one because, as someone that's always defined herself as Black, I didn't know the grammatical and historical context of the terms below. I love that reclaiming something as simple as a capital letter can carry so much pride, belonging, and historical significance. 

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- Nicole

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Capitalize the B in Black when using in reference to a person or group of people

Understand the cultural difference between "African American" and "Black" and use correctly. If you must, use "Black" if referring to a Black person and you are unclear of their background.

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Capitalizing to signify respect.

Last Friday (on Juneteenth) the Associated Press announced that it was updating its style guide to capitalize the "B" in "Black" and "I" in "Indigenous", a decision that came after several news outlets changed their own standards in the past few weeks to signify respect and understanding in the wake of the protests.

Although the difference between a capitalized letter may seem harmless, it carries weight. Our language carries power, and, according to Lori Tharps, an associate professor of journalism at Temple University, "influences how we validate, or invalidate, identity". And with Black there's history with how we have been perceived in the press. W.E.B DuBois fought in the 1890s for the term "negro," which was commonly used at the time, to be written as "Negro," considering all other racial and ethnic identifiers were already being written in uppercase. As the word negro phased out in the mid-1960s and was replaced with "black," the conversation restarted to continue to add respect to the term that identifies a community of people systemically marginalized because of the color of their skin. You can read more about the historical significance here >

Both terms Black and Indigenous represent distinct communities with shared cultures and experiences that differ from dominant culture, or whiteness. According to Sapiens, capitalizing Indigenous helps to "articulate the common challenges they faced as communities impacted by colonialism, settler governments, displacement, and exploitation." Similarly, capitalizing Black signifies "an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa" (via Axois). As a contrast to these definitions, the lowercase "black" is a color, not a person. And the lowercase "indigenous" signifies that anyone is from any place.

"When a copyeditor deletes the capital ‘B,’ they are in effect deleting the history and contributions of my people.”

– Lori Tharps, Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple University

So we're capitalizing Black now. What about "white"?

The AP is actively reviewing their guidelines on this, but currently has "white" used as lowercase in their style guide. But standards on this vary in different publications, and in personal opinions, for a multitude of reasons. To fully understand it, we have to first acknowledge that race itself is a social construct, formed and shaped over history. Race was a way to yield power and privileges over others, and preserve identities from being "tainted" by others. I'm simplifying, and recommend this article by Ta-nehisi Coates for details.

The need to add respect and understanding to the Black community is also in response to whiteness. I mentioned above that acknowledging Black and Indigenous as a community helps to "articulate the common challenges," and these challenges are an effect of being marginalized and exploited by dominant culture (more on that here). Some use this point to argue against white being capitalized, because white people already have enough power and don't need further acknowledgement. In these cases, some writers also note that white supremacists often capitalize white to demonstrate that they should remain in power. I paraphrased a detailed perspective you can read here >

On the other hand, other journalisms note that without identifying whiteness as its own race that, in itself, includes practices of racism and oppression, we won't move forward with it. Not identifying white as its own race also perpetuates the idea that it's the normal and status quo. The Center for the Study of Social Policy announced that it would follow the American Psychological Association’s style rules and capitalize white, citing the following:

"We believe that it is important to call attention to White as a race as a way to understand and give voice to how Whiteness functions in our social and political institutions and our communities. Moreover, the detachment of ‘White’ as a proper noun allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability from White people’s and White institutions’ involvement in racism". You can read their full statement here >

Another argument on this is purely grammatical: if Black is capitalized, white should be too. They both are used as proper nouns and represent groups of people, and it looks unbalanced without.

I used the AP style guide for the sake of writing this email, as did most of the articles linked, so you can see it in action for yourself.

Why not African-American?
The term is still commonly used, but doesn't reflect the breadth of the Black population. African American refers to an American Black person of African descent. But there are Black people that more closely identify their roots to the Caribbean, for example, so Caribbean American may be preferred, and this person can also identify as Black. There are also Black people all around the world that may not have roots here; as of 2016, about 10% of Black people in the United States are foreign born. 

For some Black people there's also a cultural difference. I am an African American woman, but personally feel more connected to the broad definition of Black; my African heritage is unknown to me, and I've also got Portuguese blood in my ancestry. Black, to me, feels more representative of the full complexity of my identity.

Also, the hyphen between African-American and all other race / ethnicity mashups was removed by the AP Style guide in 2019, noting that the hyphen dates to the 19th century as a way to distinguish immigrants as “other” and has been a common microaggression for more than a century.

I personally didn't know anything about the hyphens until researching this piece, and will reflect in my future emails.

ps – remember our conversation on diversifying news and media? Note that the AP and Poynter, another prominent voice in journalistic standards, announced this news without citing any Black or Indigenous journalists. As this conversation grows, there's another conversation on ensuring Black and Indigenous journalists are in the newsrooms to help guide this narrative.

Black America is constituted overwhelmingly by the descendants of people who were not only brought to the country against their will but were later inducted into an ambivalent form of citizenship without their input. The Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship to all those born here, supposedly resolved the question of the status of ex-slaves, though those four million individuals were not consulted in its ratification. The unspoken yield of this history is the possibility that the words “African” and “American” should not be joined by a hyphen but separated by an ellipsis.


– Jelani Cobb for the New Yorker

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Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

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