A fact from Real Life (novel) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 22 July 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Real Life, Brandon Taylor's debut novel, is an American campus novel about a gay, black doctoral student in a mostly white PhD program?
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Two editors lowercased "black" in this article; I disagree, and as the writer of the article I capitalized this on purpose. And this is not unusual: [1], [2], etc. This has been happening for quite a while now in newsrooms and editorial boards across the country, and I believe that in an article like this, on a novel like this, it is certainly appropriate. Drmies (talk) 00:43, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Drmies: Sure, but Wikipedia isn't required to follow external style guides. Our usage generally tends to place "black" and "white" in lowercase, see e.g. the articles on black people and white people. Absent a specific rule about this in the MOS, I suppose that it isn't impermissible to capitalize "Black" (and "White"). There's a discussion at WT:MOSCAPS regarding this, which doesn't seem to have developed consensus yet. I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of a broader RfC to settle this question. — RAVENPVFF·talk· 12:11, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
User:Ravenpuff, I know all these things, including the absence of a rule, which is why it is wise to follow the precedent of, for instance, citation style, where the format adopted by the main author is used. So I was surprised to see your edit even after I had already reverted another editor doing the same thing, and I was even more saddened to find that the hook, on the front page, had its capitalization changed without my knowledge. Anyway, I think in years to come we will find that both lower and upper case will be used, depending on the author and the topic, and we'll deal with it; that Wikipedia would be more conservative than the various newsrooms is fine with me, as long as nothing is dictated here. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 14:36, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
