grammar is actually why you should capitalize it. you're talking about a specific group of people with a shared history, culture, etc.: the descendants of slavery in the US. you should not capitalize white for the same reason: it's an unspecific group with ever-shifting boundaries.
Typically, races are capitalized when they include a proper noun: black vs. African-American, white vs. Italian-American, and so on. I mean grammar is ultimately arbitrary, so I don't care, but having a shared experience is not a grammatical reason to capitalize something.
Being well defined is also not a usual reason to capitalize something, and saying it should be capitalized because it's a proper noun is just circular logic. Why do you think it's important that there's an accepted grammatical rule that is going to explain capitalizing Black but not white? If you want to capitalize it to emphasize the shared history of Black people, then just do it. You don't need the academy to approve. Do you think bell hooks was like paging through Strunk & White until she found the loophole that would allow her to decapitalize her pen name?
grammar is actually why you should capitalize it. you're talking about a specific group of people with a shared history, culture, etc.: the descendants of slavery in the US. you should not capitalize white for the same reason: it's an unspecific group with ever-shifting boundaries.
Typically, races are capitalized when they include a proper noun: black vs. African-American, white vs. Italian-American, and so on. I mean grammar is ultimately arbitrary, so I don't care, but having a shared experience is not a grammatical reason to capitalize something.
no, I'm saying it's a proper and well-defined noun so you should capitalize it, the same way you do every other proper and well-defined noun.
Being well defined is also not a usual reason to capitalize something, and saying it should be capitalized because it's a proper noun is just circular logic. Why do you think it's important that there's an accepted grammatical rule that is going to explain capitalizing Black but not white? If you want to capitalize it to emphasize the shared history of Black people, then just do it. You don't need the academy to approve. Do you think bell hooks was like paging through Strunk & White until she found the loophole that would allow her to decapitalize her pen name?