Guide to Writing Respectfully, Part I
Writing Respectfully on Race and Ethnicity
Hey—it’s me, your Shelf Life. It’s Monday and you weren’t expecting me till tomorrow. I left you some notes about the schedule but I apologize if I didn’t make them prominent enough. Shelf Life is publishing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week in order to bring you a three-part series on respectful writing all in one calendar week.
Two things about me:
I’m an editor.
I’m an information collector and collator.
Item 1: Editing is my sharpest skill, the way I earn my living, and the most likely way I can provide any real value. In this career I’ve collected a lot of tips and guidance for writing about people. People-first writing and editing is a relatively newish concept in the field and it’s still evolving. That’s okay because learning and improving is a lifelong exercise. Which leads to the next thing:
Item 2: When I’m interested in something I want to know absolutely everything about whatever it is. I don’t sleep, I forget to eat, I scour the web without blinking till my eyes leak, I gather every related detail—and then I put it all in one place, in a logically organized manner, with my own thoughts embedded, and that’s what you read Shelf Life for. If you want further proof, ask me about my cosmetic database.
I never write an article on a subject I don’t care about (obviously) but this series is very important to me. I hope this will be a useful resource for my writer and editor friends and colleagues but also for anyone thinking, writing, or talking about people—especially people who are different from ourselves.
Herewith, then, the first part of your Shelf Life Guide to Respectful Writing:
Writing Respectfully on Race and Ethnicity;
Writing Respectfully on Gender and Sexuality; and
Writing Respectfully With Person-First Language
Today’s article is about writing respectfully about people who have a different racial identity, ethnicity, or skin color than you do.
Words mean things. When you’re talking or writing about people, you need to use the correct ones. It’s not okay to use oppressive language to describe your fellow humans when you don’t know them well or understand the ways in which they are different from you. To help with that, here’s a Shelf Life.
Please note: Terms appear in italics while phrases appear in “quotation marks.”
Words and Their Meanings
To start at the beginning, race and ethnicity don’t mean the same thing. They’re both social constructs that are used to group people together according to shared characteristics. Skin color is sometimes—but not necessarily—an aspect of either.
The term race refers to the division of people into distinct groups based on their physical, behavioral, and cultural characteristics, which may include physical appearance (like skin color), ancestral heritage or place of origin, and cultural affiliation. Race is often understood to be heritable and inherent; immutable and unchangeable.
The term ethnicity refers to the division of people into smaller social groups based on shared cultural, historical, tribal, or language characteristics.
Hispanic, for example, is usually considered an ethnicity and not a race since it refers to a group of people with a shared linguistic heritage. Black and White are typically considered races, as they are divisions based on physical characteristics as well as ancestry.
Describing Races and Ethnicities
When using the following terms to describe a group of people, you should capitalize them: Black, Indigenous, Aboriginal, White. You do not need to capitalize the term indigenous when you are using it to mean that something or someone is native to a place but you must capitalize it when describing a group of people. For instance: “Catherine is indigenous to Maryland” but “the Indigenous people of Maryland include the Piscataway Indian Nation.”
Style manuals disagree on the capitalization issue but most are coming around. The Council of Science Editors, for example, just published an update to the 8th edition of their manual regarding race and ethnicity in October. The American Psychological Association also offers excellent guidance on bias-free language, generally, and concurs on capitalization. A number of organizations (including the Associated Press) capitalize Black but not white. Personally I understand the sociological reasons for this but endorse consistent treatment of similar terms.
Black and African American are not interchangeable. Not all Black people—nor even all Black people in the United States—are African American. African American is not a "more polite" way to say Black. Black people live all over the world and may be Black British, Afro-Caribbean, Nigerian, Jamaican, Haitian, Afro-Latinx, or any other variation other than African American.
Black people living in the United States may identify as Black or African American, but they may have many other identities as well. For example, they may be recent immigrants to the United States from Africa, in which case they know their country of origin and may prefer to be called Nigerian American or simply Nigerian rather than African American (for instance).
While White people (and in fact people of all races, ethnicities, and skin colors) live in Africa and immigrate to the United States (eg, Elon Musk), those people should not be characterized as African American. Elon Musk could be described as South African American or Rhodesian American, but not African American. A White person should never be described as African American.
The distinction is in the privilege that White people from Africa typically enjoy in their ability to trace their heritage on the African continent to a specific country (and often to an origin even further back). The descendants of African people who were forcibly migrated to North America and enslaved do not have this privilege. The term African American should respectfully be reserved for them.
There is typically no hyphen in African American, even when you use it as an adjective preceding a noun. Likewise, Asian American, Native American, Irish American, and all similar terms omit the hyphen. Whether phrased nominally or adjectivally—as “I am an Irish American” or “I’m talking about Irish American people”—no hyphen. Some style manuals still recommend a hyphen, but most have moved away.
You do, however, need a hyphen when referring to other ethnic groups that originated in Africa but now exist outside of Africa and that are preceded by the specific affix "Afro": for instance, Afro-Caribbean or Afro-Latina.
Do not use the term Afro-American. This is obsolete. It has retired. There was a party.
It's okay to refer to people as White or Black. It is generally not okay to refer to other races or ethnicities with a color. If a person of color refers to themself as a specific color, that does not mean that you should correct them and it does not mean it’s okay for you to then refer to them as that color unless you belong to the same race or ethnic group.
POC is an abbreviation for the umbrella term person of color or people of color. This describes the group of people living in the United States who are not considered White. WOC, likewise, refers to a woman of color, or could refer to women of color or womxn of color.
Note: Person of color and woman of color are acceptable usages but colored person or colored woman are pejorative and should absolutely never be used.
BIPOC is an abbreviation for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. This is an inclusive term for people living in the United States who are not considered White that places additional emphasis on the historic oppression of Black and Indigenous populations. A related construction often seen in British usage is BAME, an abbreviation meaning Black, Asian, and minority ethnic.
Hispanic and Latinx (more on Latino and Latina v Latinx in a moment) are not interchangeable terms. They refer to different, though largely overlapping, groups of people.
A Hispanic person traces their ancestry to a Spanish-speaking culture, whereas a Latinx person traces their ancestry to Latin America. Therefore, a person from Spain is Hispanic, and a person from the Philippines may be Hispanic, but they are not Latinx. Conversely, a person from Brazil is Latinx but is not Hispanic.
Further, the term Chicanx (and its counterparts) is not interchangeable with either of the previous two terms. A person who identifies as Chicano has Mexican heritage, and may also identify as Hispanic and Latino. The specific term Chicano is sometimes used to describe a specific culture, whereas Chicano/a, Chicanx, and Chican@ are more often used for discussing heritage in academic and political contexts.
Keep in mind that the terms Hispanic and Latinx refer to ethnicities, not races, and do not refer to skin color. Hispanic and Latinx people may have any skin color, and not all of them are included under the umbrella term people of color. Hispanic and Latinx people may identify as White, Black, or another race; or they may prefer to identify only as Hispanic or Latinx.
Asian and Asian American people may be referred to as such or according to their specific country of origin. They may prefer Korean or Korean American, for example, to the broader Asian or Asian American. People of Asian descent should never be described as Oriental, an outdated pejorative. Likewise, the outdated and pejorative term Mongoloid should not be used to refer to anyone (historically it has been used in multiple senses, racial and otherwise). If referring to the people or language of Mongolia, use Mongol or Mongolian.
Indigenous and Aboriginal Communities
The Indigenous people of the United States are respectfully referred to as Native Americans, American Indians, and Alaska Natives (Alaskan Natives is also acceptable). The preferred terms in Canada include First Nations and Inuit. Many members of the Indigenous community of the United States have a strong preference for either Native American or American Indian, and would not wish to be identified by the term that is not their preference. Further, Indigenous people may prefer to be identified as their specific heritage, such as Piscataway Nation or Cherokee Nation, rather than a general term. You should take extra care to find out someone’s preference before writing about them. It is not correct to say that one term or the other (Native American or American Indian) is always the respectful way to go.
In any case, Indigenous people living in the United States should never be referred to as Indian American—that term refers to people of Indian descent (meaning, from the country of India) living in the United States.
Jewish Culture and Identity
Judaism describes a religion as well as a nation and a culture. The term Jewish may describe an ethnicity, a cultural background, or a set of religious beliefs and practices. Jews may be people who are born into Jewish families with Jewish ancestry, but do not practice Judaism or any religion (Jews of no religion); or Jews may be people who do not have Jewish ancestry but have converted to the religion of Judaism (Jews by religion). That is to say, people may be ethnically or culturally Jewish, they may be religiously Jewish, or they may be both.
Jews may be White, Black, or any other race; they may live in any country in the world; they may speak any language; and they may practice any religion.
Antisemitism (also styled anti-Semitism) is hostility to, bias against, or discrimination against Jewish people. Antisemitism should be categorized as a form of racism, not a form of religious intolerance. Religious antisemitism, theological antisemitism, and anti-Judaism are the correct terms to describe religious intolerance toward Jews and Judaism.
The Caste System in India
When writing with and about people from India, you may encounter individuals who do not wish to use their name, prefer to use a pseudonym, or wish to use initials in place of their forename, surname, or both. This may be because, in some Indian cultures, a person’s forename or surname indicates the caste to which they were assigned at birth. A person may prefer not to disclose their caste assignment for personal or professional reasons—importantly, they may wish for their work to be considered independently of their caste assignment.
As writers and editors, we see it as our duty to disclose as much information as possible in the interest of informational transparency. That’s usually a great thing. For that reason, many publications will not allow an author or collaborator to work under a pseudonym or to work under only their initials. This is a specific situation for which those rules should be broken or bent in order to preserve an individual’s privacy.
Respectful Expression in Gendered Languages
Languages that ascribe gender to words, such as Spanish and French, can make it difficult to write inclusively about people who are not men or women. A nonbinary person of Latin American descent cannot accurately be described as Latino or Latina. And what about when you wish to reference a group of Latin American people of all genders?
Latino/Latina or Latino/a—this is exclusionary and should not be used unless you are referring to a group that only contains men and women.
Latin@ (pronounced latin-OW)—this is shorthand that means “Latino and Latina” and is therefore still exclusionary of the genderqueer community.
Latinx (pronounced latin-ECKS, la-TEEN-ecks, or la-TINKS; pl. Latinxs)—this is a gender-neutral term that includes all people of Latin American descent, regardless of gender. Presently this is the most common usage in the United States.
Latine (pronounced la-TEEN-ey; pl. Latines)—another gender-neutral term that includes all people of Latin American descent, regardless of gender. This is less commonly used than Latinx in the United States, but is preferred in Latin America.
Latin* (pronounced latin)—this has been proposed as an umbrella term covering all of the above (Latino, Latina, Latin@, Latinx, Latine, and Latin American). It has not yet found widespread usage.
Pejoratives and Slurs
You already know that the word world is full of disrespectful terms for groups of people and you know you shouldn’t use them. You don’t need me to make that ugly list. Many of these terms have been eradicated by respectful writers but even within my socially conscientious professional and social circles, there are some problematic words and terms that continue to pop up. In the event that you don’t already know that these words aren’t okay, I am including the worst offenders.
The “G” word that refers to the Romani people of Europe and their culture (also styled Rromani or Roma). This is a slur. There is no polite way to use this word. It is not an acceptable word for a lifestyle or an aesthetic. If you are not ethnically Romani, you should not be using this word in speech or writing. If you mean nomadic, you need to say nomadic. If you mean the ethnic group, say Romani. If you are referring to your personal style, bohemian would be acceptable. The lowercase “g” word that derives from the same root (the one that means to be cheated or swindled) should also be removed from your vocabulary permanently.
The “E” word historically used to describe the Indigenous people of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. There is controversy over this term; some, but by no means all, Inuit people consider it problematic. The degree to which it’s considered problematic ranges from “mildly offensive” to “definitely a slur.” If this word cannot be used to describe you, I would strongly suggest you don’t use it. If you’re writing about a real person who is native to Alaska or the Aleutian Islands you should ask that person how they identify and then respect their answer.
Related: The act of rubbing the tip of your nose with another person’s is called kunik by Inuit people and sometimes also called a “nose kiss” by others. If, for some reason, you want to refer to this action—please do it without falling back on a pejorative term. Also just don’t do kunik right now, there’s a pandemic.
A final thought on race and ethnicity: A person’s genuine expression of self-identification overrides any rule in this and any other style manual. When people tell you how they identify you should use their language and terminology preferences when referring to them. Most if not all style manuals have agreed that Afro-American is over, but if a Black person asks you to refer to them, personally, as Afro-American—then it is certainly not for any manual to say that you should not.
Thanks for tuning in to today’s first installment of the Shelf Life Guide to Respectful Writing. I hope to see you again on Wednesday for guidance on respectful writing with regard to gender and sexuality.
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