On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 8:49 PM, Ron Belgrave <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

 

As regards the terminology, I tend to agree with Marika (except for the “people of colour” bit).

 

In my view, “Black” (with the uppercase) should be used in reference to people, culture etc. (in racial terms) and “black” (with the lower case) should be used in reference to objects (in terms of hue).

 

We (and our children) have all seen, time and time again, over many years, repeated phrases like “Asian, black and Chinese...” (or versions thereof) where everyone else is in uppercase and we are in lower case. A small matter you might say but this recurrent chipping away at our (and our children’s) self-esteem has a major accumulated impact on our psyche together with all the other micro (and macro) aggressions. No wonder our youth feel so alienated and at sea resulting in the range of behaviours that are well known.

 

Continual attacks on the mind have a degenerative impact on mental health and nomenclature is one aspect that we should pay more attention to.

 

Martin Luther King recalled his father, as a grown man, being called “boy” and how that made the anger build up inside them – he later often insisted on writing Negro (the “Black” of his day”) with a capital N.

 

Some might argue that we should not use Black anyway and ought to say African instead. Point taken but Black is so widely used by us already and many people (for a variety of reasons) prefer to use a geographical term such as Caribbean to refer to themselves in specific circumstances but to use Black when speaking in general terms.

 

And, as regards “people of colour”, like BAME that is a legitimate and wide ranging term that includes others (like Asians) who are not Black.

 

Regards,

 

 

Ron

 

 

From: Jose Lingna Nafafe
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2018 5:48 PM
To: [log in to unmask]AC.UK
Subject: Re: FW: MA Black Humanities at the University of Bristol - leaflet

 

Hi Marika,

 

I hope all is well. I hope you remember me. We met in Birmingham in 2007 at an International conference “Brookers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Precolonial Western Africa”, organised by a good friend of mine, Dr. Toby Green and myself. Subsequently a volume has come out of that conference, in which you contributed an excellent chapter. Then, we met again in 2013 at another conference organised at Newman University by Dr. Kehinde Andrews and Dr. Lisa Palmer. It is good to receive your email after such as long time. Thank you for getting in touch and for your understanding in this matter.

 

As far as the leaflet is concerned, the text was written following Guardian/BBC editorial guidelines, but we are working to rectify it now to more accurately reflect the critical positions of the programme and the Black Humanities Research Centre that it arises from.

 

I am sure that you would agree with me that Black (with uppercase ‘b’) is used to refer to a person - as a noun - most often used collectively as in ‘Blacks’. As an adjective it should be ‘black’. Therefore, ‘black literature’ is perfectly correct, as is black people. 

 

I hope this helps.

 

I hope you would be able to contribute to the programme in the future.

 

See you soon.

 

Best,

 

Jose

--------------------------

Dr. José Lingna Nafafé

Lecturer in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies

Programme Director of the MA in Black Humanities

School of Modern Languages

Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies

17 Woodland Road

Bristol BS8 1TE

Tel: +44 (0) 117 928 7433

Email: jose.lingnanafafe@bristol.ac.uk

www.bristol.ac.uk/Hispanic

 

 

 

 

 

On 12 May 2018 at 08:45, MSherwood <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

As you forwarded the info, I thought I should send this to you….

 

From: MSherwood [mailto:[log in to unmask]coop]
Sent: 12 May 2018 08:45
To: '[log in to unmask]uk'; '[log in to unmask]uk'
Subject: FW: MA Black Humanities at the University of Bristol - leaflet

 

Good morning!

 

Just learned about this. I am appalled – what is ‘black literature’? printed on black paper?  Discussion on colours, including black?

 

If you are referring to ‘people of colour’, then the word to use is Black.

 

Marika Sherwood