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Black
Also written: black, Black/African American
capitalization-ruleself-id-requiredevolving-usage
At a glance
Source-by-source
“For nouns: African American, Asian American, black, Hispanic, Latino, Native American, non-Hispanic white, white (do not use Caucasian).”
Casey 2013 lists African American and lowercase 'black' as parallel acceptable nouns alongside Asian American, Hispanic, Latino, Native American, and lowercase white. The lowercase 'black' is the dominant convention pre-2020 — Casey's posture is contemporaneous with AP's pre-June-2020 rule, and pre-dates the post-George-Floyd shift across most US journalism style guides.
2020 · entry updated 2020-06-01 VERIFIED
“NABJ believes it is important to capitalize 'Black' when referring to (and out of respect for) the Black diaspora. … NABJ also recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown.”
NABJ's June 2020 statement broke from the lowercase-white default that NGC, Sierra Club, and AP would adopt. NABJ's rule is symmetric: if a color names a race, capitalize it — Black, White, Brown. Position is grounded in respect for the Black diaspora as a shared identity, not in parity with whiteness.
“Black [note capitalization] Correct: We represent many Black workers. … African American [no hyphen] … anti-Black”
SEIU's January 2020 stylebook capitalizes Black and treats African American as one word with no hyphen. Worth noting: SEIU adopted the capitalization rule before AP, NABJ, and most major journalism style guides (which followed in June 2020). The 'anti-Black' entry confirms the capitalization extends to compound forms.
“Be sure to ask interview subjects and spokespeople how they prefer to be referred to, and note that these terms are not interchangeable, particularly for recent immigrants from African countries living in the U.S. The Sierra Club always capitalizes Black when referring to race or ethnicity.”
Sierra Club always capitalizes Black, flags that Black and African American are not interchangeable (especially for recent African immigrants), and routes the choice between them through individual self-identification. Section intro also notes Sierra Club capitalizes racial/ethnic identifiers out of respect.
“DO capitalize the names of racial, ethnic, cultural (and for Native folks, political) identifiers: Capitalize Black. Capitalize Indigenous, Native, and American Indian. Capitalize other racial and ethnic identifiers, such as Asian and Latinx. … DO NOT capitalize the word white.”
NGC's capitalization rule is asymmetric on purpose: capitalize Black (alongside Indigenous, Native, American Indian, Asian, Latinx) but do not capitalize white. The guide links to MPR's editor's note for the reasoning.
2023 · entry updated 2021-02-01 VERIFIED
“African American and Black are both generally acceptable although some individuals may have a strong preference for one term or other. Black and African American do not necessarily mean the same thing and individuals may not identify with one term or the other. It's best to ask. If that's not possible, use either term. In a series of polls between 1991 and 2019, Gallup found that half to two-thirds of African American and Black respondents did not have a preference, and in the most recent poll in 2019 those who did have a preference were evenly split between the two terms.”
DSG treats Black and African American as parallel acceptable terms, distinct in meaning, with self-identification as primary. Provides Gallup data showing roughly half of Black/African American respondents have no preference between the two; the half that do are split. The 2020 turn to capitalize Black is documented as a post-George Floyd shift across AP, NABJ, and NYT.
Context data
Gallup race-preference polling (1991–2019)
Across multiple polls, roughly half to two-thirds of Black / African American respondents reported no preference between the two terms. In the 2019 poll, the share with a preference was evenly split.
Strongest empirical case for self-identification deferral: most people don't have a strong preference, but the minority who do are evenly split — neither term can be defaulted-to without sometimes mis-identifying. Cited by DSG.
View source → AP Stylebook change (June 19, 2020)
Associated Press began capitalizing Black 'in a racial, ethnic, or cultural sense.' Did not capitalize white in the same release; revisited white separately.
Industry-wide inflection point. Most US guides converged to capital-B Black shortly after this announcement. The asymmetric capital-B / lowercase-w rule that NGC and Sierra Club adopt traces directly to AP's framing here.
View source → NABJ statement (June 2020)
NABJ adopted capitalization of Black and recommended that all color-based race descriptors be capitalized — Black, White, Brown — for symmetry.
The principal alternative to the AP rule. Adopted by some progressive outlets (notably The Washington Post in July 2020 for both Black and White) and some style guides, but not the prevailing US journalism standard. Worth surfacing because the divergence is doctrinal, not accidental.
View source → Audience notes
- Recent African immigrants and their families
- Black and African American are not interchangeable here. People who immigrated from African countries (or whose families did, recently) may identify by national origin (Nigerian-American, Ethiopian-American, Somali, etc.) or as Black but not as African American, since 'African American' is sometimes read as specifically denoting descent from enslaved people in the United States. Defer to self-ID; do not flatten.
- Afro-Latino / Afro-Caribbean
- May identify as Black, as Latino/a/x, as both, or by national heritage (Dominican, Cuban, Haitian, etc.). 'African American' often does not fit. Treat race and ethnicity as separate axes when both are relevant.
- Journalism / news copy
- If race is relevant to the story and no individual preference is stated, NABJ advises using Black as an accurate racial descriptor. NABJ also advises using Black as an adjective ('Black voters') rather than a noun ('Blacks'), with the noun form acceptable only in headlines for length reasons.
- Pre-2020 archival or republished content
- Lowercase 'black' was the dominant US convention until the AP / NABJ / NYT changes in June 2020. Quoting or excerpting older material may preserve the lowercase; new editorial framing around it should still use capital-B Black.
Synthesis
The Black/African American cluster is one of the clearest cases in the corpus where the terminology itself is settled and the live decisions are about capitalization and defaulting.
Capitalization has converged on capital-B Black across every active US style guide reviewed here. The shift moved together in mid-2020 — AP (June 19), NABJ (June), NYT, Washington Post — and the post-2020 progressive style guides in this commons (Sierra Club 2021, NGC 2021, DSG entry updated Feb 2021) all reflect the new consensus. The only guide in the in-scope corpus that lowercases ‘black’ is Casey (2013), and Casey is doing the right thing for its date: it matches AP’s pre-June-2020 rule. Treat that as a chronology marker, not a divergence.
On capitalizing white, the corpus diverges along ideological lines. Sierra Club and NGC follow AP’s asymmetric rule: capital-B Black, lowercase white. Sierra Club’s reasoning is explicit — capitalizing ‘white’ risks legitimizing white supremacy as a coherent racial identity in the way far-right movements want it framed. NABJ takes the opposite position with parallel reasoning — if color names a race, capitalize it consistently; the rule is about descriptive integrity, not about granting symbolic equivalence. Both positions are coherent; both have constituencies. Pick one with intent and document the reasoning in house style. See [[white]] for the full debate.
Black and African American are not synonyms. Five of six guides here name this distinction explicitly. The cleanest framing: Black is a racial descriptor; African American is a racial-plus-national-origin descriptor (US-rooted, often associated specifically with descent from enslaved people in the US). Recent African immigrants, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latino people, and many Black Americans who don’t identify with the African-American label are erased when the terms are treated as interchangeable. The Gallup data (1991–2019) is the load-bearing empirical anchor: most respondents have no preference, but the meaningful minority that does is split — neither term can be defaulted-to without sometimes getting it wrong. Self-identification is primary; “ask if possible” is the operational rule across every guide.
Hyphenation: every guide that addresses it (SEIU explicitly, AP/NABJ/DSG by usage) writes ‘African American’ without a hyphen. The hyphenated form (‘African-American’) is a stylistic legacy that AP retired in 2019.
Cross-references
- African American — Overlapping but not synonymous. Guidance is captured jointly on this page; see also the dedicated entry for the AAVE / vernacular and national-origin nuances.
- white — The companion capitalization question. The asymmetric (Sierra Club / NGC / AP) and symmetric (NABJ / Washington Post) rules diverge here, not on Black.
- BIPOC — Umbrella term. Sierra Club, NGC, and Race Forward all caution against using BIPOC where a more specific descriptor would work (Black, Indigenous, etc.).
- people of color — The older umbrella term that BIPOC partly replaced.
- Afro-Latino / Afro-Latinx — A distinct identity that the Black/African American framing alone can’t capture.
History note
Lowercase ‘black’ was the dominant US journalism convention from the post-civil-rights era through the 1990s and 2000s, with ‘African American’ rising in parallel after Jesse Jackson popularized it in the 1980s. The capital-B Black usage existed in Black-led publications (The Chicago Defender, Essence, Ebony) for decades before mainstream adoption. The June 2020 AP / NABJ / NYT changes — in the weeks after George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis — moved the mainstream US standard from lowercase to capital-B. The asymmetric ‘capitalize Black, lowercase white’ rule that prevails in most current style guides traces to AP’s framing in that 2020 announcement.
Related terms