Colour, culture and conscious caps off

Whether the terms black and white, when used in terms of race, refer to a person's skin colour or an element of their culture is a topic of debate. However, we all know that no person's skin colour is truly black or white, nor does the lightness or darkness of our skin tell us much about the culture with which we identify.

However, Black Lives Matter has led to many important discussions—one of which refers to the question of whether or not we should capitalise ‘black’, and whether ‘white’ should also be treated in the same manner. Many media outlets such as the New York Times and the Associated Press have made the move to capitalise ‘black’ out of a recognition of ‘a shared culture’. They have also opted to leave ‘white’ as lowercase, stating that white refers to people with light-coloured skin, especially of European descent and, unlike black, is a physical description of people from many cultures rather than a reflection of shared cultures and experiences.