Africans enslaved in America effectively had their original cultures denied and destroyed. That's why it's appropriate to capitalize Black but not white when referring to American subcultures. (Whiteness isn't genetic. E.g. in South Africa under apartheid Chinese people were legally black but Japanese people were legally white.)
That doesn't make sense. There is no one "White" culture, so when you capitalize the word in the context of United States of America it refers to the KKK et. al., not to mainstream American culture, which developed in waves of lots of different cultures (not all of which are European-derived.) E.g. the Irish. Treated like shit when they first got here, now we have St. Patrick's Day parades. And so we have Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and so on. They kept their cultures.
Now when we talk about African-Americans you gotta remember that Africa is a huge continent, not a single nation or culture. The people who were kidnapped, beaten, chained, subjected to the horrors of the Middle Passage, then treated like subhumans for hundreds of years, they came from many different cultures, they were forcibly prevented from carrying those with them, and so they have formed a new culture, native to the soil of this continent. That's why it's appropriate to capitalize the word "Black" when referring to Black American culture: it's a proper noun.
When you speak of "white people" in America, you're generally referring to the whole American mainstream culture, which is neither genetically nor culturally Caucasian exclusively. The word "White" capitalized as a proper noun refers to a specific complex of "White supremacist" culture.
In sum:
Black - African American
white - Mainstream American (includes everybody: The fictional character Steven Quincy Urkel could be called "white" in this sense.)
>That doesn't make sense. There is no one "White" culture,
There is no one "Black" culture either.
>so when you capitalize the word in the context of United States of America it refers to the KKK et. al., not to mainstream American culture
And yet if you capitalize Black it doesn't mean black supremacists?
Why do you hold different standards to white and black?
>which developed in waves of lots of different cultures (not all of which are European-derived.) E.g. the Irish. Treated like shit when they first got here, now we have St. Patrick's Day parades.
St. Patrick's Day is not specifically an Irish holiday. It is a Christian holiday which is popular amongst Irish.
>And so we have Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and so on. They kept their cultures.
There are many blacks who kept their cultures as well. Not all blacks were slaves. Many voluntarily migrated to the US.
>Now when we talk about African-Americans you gotta remember that Africa is a huge continent, not a single nation or culture.
You are contradicting yourself. You said "There is no one "White" culture, so when you capitalize the word in the context of United States of America it refers to the KKK" and yet you also admit there is no single "Black" culture.
>The people who were kidnapped, beaten, chained, subjected to the horrors of the Middle Passage, then treated like subhumans for hundreds of years, they came from many different cultures, they were forcibly prevented from carrying those with them, and so they have formed a new culture, native to the soil of this continent.
Not all blacks living in the US were slaves.
>That's why it's appropriate to capitalize the word "Black" when referring to Black American culture: it's a proper noun.
But there is no single black culture. You yourself said that white should not be capitalized because there isn't a single culture.
>When you speak of "white people" in America, you're generally referring to the whole American mainstream culture, which is neither genetically nor culturally Caucasian exclusively.
When I say white people I mean white people. I don't mean anything else. I don't mean culture. If I meant culture I would say culture.
I have never seen anybody saying anything different than I said. Please provide examples of mainstream people using the the phrase differently.
>The word "White" capitalized as a proper noun refers to a specific complex of "White supremacist" culture.
I feel like I was really clear. We don't agree, obviously, but I don't want to argue about it with you any more, so I'm going to go ahead and let you have the last word.
