Yes, "Black" Must Be Spelled with a Capital "B"

Over at The Study of Racialism blog, they have reposted my discussion of my anger at white newspapers that refuse to capitalize the "B" in the name of the ethnic group "Blacks."

They seem to be trying to figure out what to make of my anger, although I thought I explained my reasoning pretty well. So, I'm going to give it another try: The names of ethnic groups like Italian-American, Irish-American, Latino and Hispanic are always capitalized by newspapers and by others. Everyone understands that the names of ethnic groups are capitalized, just like the names of the countries from which those ethnic groups have come.

Now, the term African-American is always capitalized as well, because African refers to a whole continent of ethnic groups and because American is always capitalized, referring as it does to everything having to do with America and all of the people who are part of this country.

Historically, the term African-American was adopted as an alternative to "Black" for purposes of describing Blacks. It stands to reason, then, that if "African-American" must be capitalized, because it is the name of an ethnic group then the name that preceeded African-American to denote our ethnic group must also be capitalized. If African-American is an ethnic group, then whatever we were called before we were called African American must also have been the name of an ethnic group. That would be "Black" and "Blacks.

The terms "Blacks" is an abbreviate for the term the "Black People", just like "Jews" is an abbreviated way of saying the "Jewish people".

When they called us the "n" word, they sometimes capitalized it and sometimes didn't. Now, they have regressed two hundred years by not spelling Black with a capital "B". When they called us "N****s," were they not referring to an ethnic group? And when they call us "black" aren't they referring to the very same group that they used to call "N****s"? Were they not referring to everyone who was part African, regardless of their actual skin color?

Some newspapers in this nation, like the New York Times and the Houston or Dallas Crapscraper, have made a conscious decision and have announced their conscious decision not to spell the word Black with a capital "B". I haven't read their reasoning, frankly. I think it's enough that for quite some time Black was spelled with a capital "B" and now they've suddenly decided that it shouldn't be.

Luke Visconti at DiversityInc.com says:

I made the decision not to follow AP style in the case of "Black" and "white" when it applies to describing people. AP style is to capitalize neither; however, terms such as African American, Negro, Caucasian, Italian American or Asian are all capitalized.

Regardless of whether there is adequate representation among the decision makers at the AP, I felt DiversityInc needed to be more accurate.

The word "Black" is used around the world to describe people who have "racial" features indicating African ancestry. Please keep in mind that the convention of race has been discarded by science--genetically, we are all one race, and the human-genome project proves we are all from Africa.

Still, newspapers cannot understand why "Black" should be capitalized. Well, I would like to make a deal with them: If they want to refer to people whose skin is actually black like the typeface of this page using a lower case "b", I can accept that, but only if they are referring to a color. If so, they must not refer to President Obama as "black" because it is as obvious as day and night that President Obama's skin is brown, not black. Likewise, they must not refer to Colin Powell as "black" because it is as obvious the disappearance of the Twin Towers that Colin Powell's skin is NOT "black", it beige.

If the newspapers that insist that "black" is merely a color will differentiate between colors when speaking of people of African heritage, then I can accept the lower case "b" in "black", and in the lower case "b" in "beige", as well as the lower case "k" in "kaki", and the lower case "t" in "tan". These are all specific colors and colors are not capitalized. As long as the colors are distinguished and described appropriately, instead of being bound into an undifferentiated mass, like an ethnic group is, then I will not be offended.

However, these newspapers might discover that this is quite a lot of work to describe people who are not white by their actual specific color, and it also confounds their analysis, because they are usually referring to Blacks as an ethnic group, with distinct political interests, culture and history, and so the "B" must be capitalized. Meanwhile, they would quickly discover that describing each "Black" person's actual skin color with specificity is hard work that would lead to considerably more anger and discord than spelling the word "Black" with a lower case "b".

However, if they are are going to pretend that "Black" is merely a color, and also that ALL Blacks have the color of a piece of coal, or a cast iron frying pan, then that is simply color-aroused ideation, bigotry and stupidity. If they cannot distinguish between colors of "Black" peope and therefore pretend, as America did did during slavery, that even one drop of African blood made a person 100% Black, then I insist that the "one-drop rule" created an ethnic and political and cultural group consisting of everyone who was one hundred percent African as well as everyone who had even one drop of African blood in them. THAT is who the newspapers are referring to when they say "black", and that certainly is an ethnic group whose name must be spelled with a capital letter.

If white Americans can spell Vulcan with a capital "V", I would hope they would find it in their cheap little hearts to spell "Black" with a capital "B" as well. If not, then by God I hope they burn in Hell . . . . with their hellfires burning retroactive to the moment when they began spelling "Black" with a lower case "b".

And I will tell such people right now that if they can't spell the ethnic and political and cultural group "Black" with a capital "B", then as far as I am concerned they can and should go f . . . umigate themselves. And as for their mothers, . . . their mothers . . . should have, but did not, teach them a modicom of decency and polity. Instead, they were permitted to grow up to have profoundly color-aroused ideation and social myopia that makes them behave like stinking rancid anuses.

New "Granny Standing for Truth" Blog Raises Question of Whether Biological "Race" is White Supremacist Propaganda Concept

The following is in response to a new blog I saw, called "Granny Standing for Truth," and addresses one word I saw in the right panel: the word "race".

Granny said,

"All of my life I observed people and often wondered why hatred between the human races (sic) exists.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program:

"DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other."

In other words, the Human Genome Project has proven that, as a matter of scientific fact, that which we call "race" does not exist as a matter of biology, and so all references to "race" are references to a fallacy.

Be reassured. There is no hatred between the "races" because there are no "races." Because there are no "races" there can be no "hatred between the races."

What we DO have is hatred between people with different skin colors and this hatred has been reinforced by the belief that we were from VERY, VERY DIFFERENT RACES should have a VERY,VERY DIFFICULT TIME treating each other as equal human beings.

If you want to reduce the hatred between people of different skin colors, then start by insisting on the scientific fact that "races" did not exist before and they do not exist now, and so the most fundamental difference between people with brown and white skin really isn't fundamental at all. It's literally, and as a matter of genetic science, "skin deep." Actually, even our skin is virtually the same, except for the amount of melanin in it.

Look at the evidence: As long as the need for commonality of blood types is respected and other specifics that have nothing to do with skin color, every organ of the human body of a Black person can be transplanted into the human body of a white person, including the skin, and it won't make any difference that the donor and recipient had different skin colors. How can we be fundamentally different if all of our parts are interchangeable?

Why are all of our parts interchangeable? Because skin color doesn't make any difference medically for the most part. Blood type is 100 or 1,000 times more important than skin color.

Let me ask your readers: Would you rather have a heart transplant from someone with your blood type or someone with your skin color? If you say skin color, I'll weep over your ignorance at your funeral.

And, would you rather have a skin graft from someone with your blood type or someone with your skin color? If you say skin color, again I'll weep over your ignorance at your funeral.

Skin color doen't make much difference medically or genetically. It's de minimus. What separates the so-called "races" most is the white supremacist propaganda-based belief that "races" exist in first places.

Look at the question scientifically. What scientific question does the belief in "races" solve? NONE! In fact, the belief in "races" killed many people when whites refused to mix blood from people of different skin colors at blood banks.

"I don't want blood from a nigra!"

Then DIE on the operating table, you color-aroused idiot! Your decision to die for lack of a blood transfusion from a Black person is evidence of a life-threatening color-aroused mental illness, but is NOT a decision based on any medical necessity. It's based on prejudice and medical ignorance.

The sooner we stop using the word "race", the sooner we'll stop arguing over it. Here's an analogy: If your regularly and ubiquitously refer women as a c**ts, then when will you stop arguing over that? NEVER! The very word gaurantees that the arguments will be infinite, perpetual, angry . . . The word itself guarantees that the arguments will never end. You have defined women in a way that assures that you and they will NEVER, EVER agree about anything.

Here's another analogy. You refuse to eat chocolate cake because you believe that chocolate is inherently poisonous. Isn't it a step forward when you admit that chocolate is NOT inherently poisonous, and that you just don't find it aesthetically pleasing?

If you believe that chocolate is inherently poisonous, then it only makes sense that you will try to eradicate chocolate from your diet and from everyone else's. That may cause some perpetual fights between you and those who disagree with your version of science.

However, if you can realize that you simply don't like the taste of chocolate, then you are no longer mentally ill (delusional) and you are merely someone with a personal but largely insignificant preference. You need not persecute everyone who likes chocolate or sells chocolate, because you realize that your preference is merely your preference. The word "race" to describe different skin colors posits a reality that is universal, not personal and individual and idiosyncratic.

The news media tells us 100 times per day that we are from different races, and thereby reassures us that there is a universal reason based in science why are incompatible. As long as you believe chocolate is inherently poisonous (which is like believing that "race" exists) and you believe your preference is based on universal science rather than peculiar individual preference, then your behavior will follow your delusional beliefs.

What would happen in a control test if a teacher told half of the students of a class that they were fundamentally different from the rest of the class and that it would therefore be impossible for them to get along with those "others"? Predicably that class would experience more strife than would a control test class that was not given any such warning.

The word "race" is like the suggestive warning from the teacher that the expectation is, based on experience and science, that people will not get along. Surprise, surprise! It works! People who are told that they are from different races have more difficulty approaching one another, are more suspicious of one another, and end up fighting with one another. If people cannot undertand that the word "race" itself separates people unnecessarily, then they haven't even begun to confront the real reason they can't get along: they are the victims of hundreds of years of white supremacist "race" propaganda.

George Washington University Admits Conscious Preference for White Man in Ads

Does this Ad Imply that the GWU Political Management Program
is Only or Mostly for White Men?

First published at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

Dear GWU Admissions Department:

I am a Black man, a lawyer, have been involved in politics all of my life, and I read Politico.com. I have noticed that your advertisement for your Online Masters Degree in Political Management invariably features the same lone white man, presumably as an example of the student for whom you think your program is intended, interesting and appropriate.

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the President of the United States is a Black man, we have a female secretary of state and a female leading the US House of Representatives. The age of the lone white man as the symbol of political power is over.

So, what's the harm in showing a lone white man in your advertisement over a period of months? You give the impression to women (51% of the US population), and Blacks and Latinos (a combined 25% of the US population) that you are not interested in our business.

You also freeze us out of the income we might receive as models in your advertisements.

And, perhaps worst of all, you perpetuate the white male supremacy paradigm and the myth of the white male super hero in which white men are thought to be the only demographic group capable of providing leadership and strength. Because the world is changing rapidly, your advertisement shows that you are not keeping up.

Please note that this is a criticism of this particular advertisement and not of your diversity accomplishment in general, of which I am not aware. Please consider making this advertisement more representative of all of the people available and determined to lead America in the 21st Century.

Sincerely,

Atty. Francis L. Holland

* * * * * *


From: Evelyn Liougas

Email: eliougas@email.embanet.com

Subject: In response to your email - GW advertisement
To: "francislholland@yahoo.com"
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 11:53 AM

Dear Mr. Holland,

I received your email communication (included below). My name is Evelyn Liougas and I am the Associate Director of Marketing for the online GW Political Management program. We appreciate receiving your email and are always interested in hearing from our audience.

I wanted to respond and provide some background on the ad and our choice of imagery. The man in the banner ad is in fact a graduate of the program and not a stock photo (although it may look like one). We have only a few images of graduates (3 specifically), and try to alternate among them. The others are a white and black woman - see attached. Each ad is placed in a controlled test and then measured in terms of response. We have tested all three images and based on the results have found that the white male image seems to resonate the strongest with the audience. As a result, we have tended to use this ad more often than the others. However, we do use all three ads on a rotating basis.

By no means is this ad intended to exclude anyone but is simply a marketing strategy to illicit the best possible response and is certainly not suggesting that only a white male could succeed in this program or in a leadership role.

On a separate but related note, I also handle the marketing for GW's Public Relations program and the image on that banner ad is that of a black man (see attached). This banner performs best among all the others and is used most frequently.

I hope this helps clarify our use of imagery and dispels any misconceptions you may have had about why we have used this image in our advertising.

Should you wish to discuss this further, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,


Evelyn Liougas
Associate Director, Marketing
Tel: 647.722.6641, ext. 3242
Fax: 1.866.594.7523
Email: eliougas@email.embanet.com

* * * * *

From: Francis L. Holland [mailto:francislholland@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 2:36 PM
To: Evelyn Liougas, Email: eliougas@email.embanet.com
Subject: Re: In response to your email - GW advertisement

Dear Ms. Liougas:

I don't recollect seeing the photos of the white woman and Black woman and these photos did not come through with your email. Please send them to me again.

I would be very interested to review the statistics about the number of days each of the ads was up; the number of people who responded to the ads; and the demographics of those who responded to each of the ads.

Having posted my letter to you at my blog, I believe it is only fair and educational that I try to post information from GWU concerning the background of the policy to prefentially use the advertisement that features a white man.

Is Politico.com the only publication where these ads have been placed, with the white man, the white woman and the Black woman, or have they been placed in other publications as well? Have you also tried placing advertisements that include students of various skin color and genders?

Francis

* * * * *

From: "Evelyn Liougas"

To: "Francis L. Holland"

Message contains attachments

DSC_0082.jpg (3299KB), GW_GSPM_PR_300x250.jpg (42KB)

Hi Francis,

Have you only seen the ads on Politico? We have used the banner you saw for a while on that site since, as I said, it has performed best. I have attached the pictures.

We do not share response rates, and other stats with external users so I am not privy to relaying that information.

Other places where we have placed the ad, which you may have seen, include Human Events, CNN/Politics, World Magazine to name a few.

Feel free to post my response on your blog, and contact me should you have additional questions or comments.

Have a great day,

Evelyn

Study Shows Customers Rate White Men's Performance Higher, Regardless

A study discussed in the New York Times yesterday showed that customers and patients rate white men's performance as waiters and doctors better, even when women and members of minority groups perform in exactly the same way.

A new study suggests that people give higher customer satisfaction ratings to white men than to women and members of minorities, even when their performance is the same.

( . . . )

“The findings suggest that the customer is always wrong,” said David R. Hekman, the lead author and an assistant professor of management at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “Everyone — white, black, men, women — think the white man is more valuable. Someone needs to call customers out on their biases.” New York Times

We've often heard it said that women and minorities have to work twice as hard to do as well as white men, and this study seems to offer some empirical support for that proposition. It reminds me of a discussion I had with a representative of George Washington University over an advertisement they place in Politico.com, with a lone white man as their example of what it means to be a political science specialist. When I asked her why the ad featured a lone white man instead of a polychromatic and bi-gendered group, she said that the number of responses they get to the ad is greater when that lone white man is there.

Of course this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more advertisements present the lone white man as a symbol of leadership, the more the public will perceive the lone white man as a symbol of leadership.

References to "Race" Still Ubiquitous in "Post-Racial" America

Is the United States a "post-racial" society? How can we be a "post-racial" society if some or all variations of the words "race" and "racial" and "racist" and "racism" still appear in virtually every story about people with brown skin?

We certainly cannot be "post-racial" if we're still using the word "race" ubiquitously, right? By analogy, we suspect that we may be a post horse and buggy society because the phrase "horse and buggy" has pretty much disappeared from our publications and our daily conversations. But words that are ubiquitous refer to concepts that still occupy our thoughts.

For example, there was a time when "gas lamps" were very common in America and so the phrase "gas lamp" was also very common. Today, it would be hard to find that phrase in a newspaper or blog published now, except with reference to antiquity. There are about 344,000 all-time total hits for the phrase "gas lamp" at Google.

However, if you use the search for terms "Race" "black" and "white" together at Google, (which pretty much excludes articles using the word "race" to refer to a car or bicycle competition), then you will find over 55 Million hits at Google for the word race.

If you narrow your search to just the last year, it won't make much difference. Just for the last twelve months, you still find 23 million hits for the search terms "race" and "black" and "white", even when you exclude articles that have the terms "car" and "bicycle. "

From this, I conclude that we are mostly a post "gas lamp" society but we are still a very much "race"-obsessed society.

This is even more remarkable when you consider that gas lamps did exist and were used in many homes and businesses while "race," as we now know, does not exist as a matter of biology or genetic science and never did.

When a fallacy like "race" gets 55 million hits at google, that's quite an achievement for the propagandists who created the term in the first place.

The Concept of "Race" is not Your Friend

This discussion is reponsive to an article posted at Facebook, which says:

"Attitudes, particularly racial prejudice, which serves a number of psychological and material functions, often have a basic core that is resistant to change"

Part of that "basic core that is resistant to change" is the belief that "race" exists at all. The Human Genome Project has concluded that there is no basis in human genetic studies for the belief in "races", and yet we continue to use the word ubiquitously, as steadfast in our resistance to changing our language as we once were to integrating the US Armed Forces and mixing "black blood" with "white's blood" in blood banks.

The science will eventually overcome the color aroused ideation because even human beings are not so obtuse as to continue to insist that "race" exists when every scientific discovery proves that it doesn't. What exists is skin color, and everything else, as a matter of biology, is has less value than air in a tube of toothpaste.

"What are the key psychological factors that shape racial attitudes, and how ingrained are those attitudes?"

The continued use of the term "racial" is an example of an ingrained pattern that perpetuates color-based falsehoods.

Using the term "overt racism" is an example of "overt racism". I can only be discriminated against on the basis of my "race" if race exists in the first place. When I say I am the victim of "racism" I am asserting that I am of a different race and that is why people are discriminating against me. In fact, I am perpetuating the the ideation that forms the basis of the discrimination. Just because OTHERS believe I that races exist and mine is different doesn't mean it's true.

They are not discriminating against me because of my race. They are discriminating against me on the basis of my color and because they believe that my color is a sign of a different race. Whenever I use the word "race" I aid and abet the underpinnings of their color-based ideology.

In summary, the words "race" and "racism" and "racial" and "racist" are not our friends. They serve only to perpetuate the belief that race exists in the first place and to reinforce the belief that people with a differerent skin color are a fundamentally different and alien subspecies. I can't see how conceding that we are part of a fundamentally different and alien subspecies will help us to reduce discrimination based on skin color.

Conceding that "races" exist is a concession that people are fundamentally biologically different based on skin color, and that is a belief that is at the heart of our problem, whether we are Black or white.

"Black man did It" Hoax Sparks Outrage in Alleged Kidnapping of Blonde White Woman and Her Daughter

One has to wonder how many Black men are in prison simply because white (and Black) people have a color-aroused ideational tendency to perceive a Black man as a criminal, and more easily so than they perceive white men this way. And then, engaging in color-aroused behavior, police officers, prosecutors, judges and juries' ideation, emotion and behavior expresses a color aroused severity to which white men are not subjected.

There's an excellent article at MSNBC of June 1, 2009, exposing this question, and I quote from it here liberally:

PHILADELPHIA - It's an old lie, claiming that The Black Man Did It.

But it was trotted out again last week when a white mother from suburban Philadelphia said two black men snatched her and her 9-year-old daughter from their SUV and abducted them in the trunk of a black Cadillac.

Blacks across the country were outraged after Bonnie Sweeten was found in a luxury hotel at Disney World. Authorities quickly unraveled the hoax, but not before an Amber Alert, frantic searches and national news coverage that played into images of marauding black men.

( . . . )

Racial boundaries are slowly dissolving in America, with President Barack Obama the most obvious example. Yet Sweeten's story, plus the killing of a black New York City cop by a white officer days later, was a reminder that old ideas remain burned into many minds both black and white. [Racial boundaries will not completely dissolve until the media and the public acknowledge that "race" does not exist in the first place, and it never did.]

( . . . )

The Black Man Did It lie last made news as recently as October, when a John McCain volunteer claimed a 6-foot-4 black man carved a B into her cheek (For Barack, evidently). Charles Stuart told it in 1989 after he killed his wife in Boston. Susan Smith told it when she drowned her sons in 1994 in South Carolina. Unknown numbers of black men were hanged for it back when lynching was a common practice.

And those are the ones we heard about. Law professor Katheryn Russell-Brown documents 67 racial hoaxes in the period between 1987 and 1996 in her book "The Color of Crime." MSNBC

If white and even many Black people are primed (color aroused) to believe that men with non-white, and brown skin as criminals (oolor-aroused ideation), then how many Black men are in sent to jail (color aroused criminal injustice behavior) simply because the hoaxes to which they were subject were not discovered before their cases went to the (frequently all-white, color aroused) juries? And how many Black men are in jail longer because when Blacks and whites are convicted for the same crimes, whites are more likely to be perceived as susceptible to change and progress, simply because they are white?

The outrageous number of Black people in prison in the United States is directly related to answers to the above questions.