BLACK WITH A CAPITAL "B" AND OTHER LANGUAGE NECESSITIES FOR TALKING ABOUT RAC/E/ISM
(b)lack = a color. (B)lack = an identity. This isn’t new.
In 1878, Ferdinand Lee Barnett wrote, “Spell it With a Capital”.
In 1898, W.E.B. DuBois wrote, “I believe 8 million Americans deserve a capital letter”.
“Oppressive language does more than represent violence, it is violence; it does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”
// Toni Morrison
Language can be both an oppressor and a liberator.
If you are newly turning your attention to the oppression and social injustices that racialized people have been experiencing for years, know that with this new learning, comes great responsibility.
This is an unlearning and a dismantling, before it is a learning. Right now corporations + people around the globe are scrambling to create statements about their commitment to diversifying their companies. Remember that words have power and meaning.
Remember, in this process - that this is not about you, highlighting your new awakening for the world to see. We are talking about Black and Brown people, with lives and hearts and emotions and families. We are talking about people who have been historically ignored, pushed aside, left out of important conversations, and never given a seat at the table.
We are talking about people who are overlooked for senior management positions, who are denied safe housing, who are less likely to receive quality care in hospitals, and whose children are followed down the street for wearing the same hooded athletic sweatshirts that your children wear.
Yes, please say something - speak openly and honestly about the privilege that you’ve lived within - but, please, in working to “diversify”, do your research and your reading. Become proficient in language that empowers and honours, rather than creates more violence on already broken hearts.
Think about language in a way that centres those who most oppressed. We are talking about transferring power back into the hands of people it was stolen from. Language matters. Words matter.