Abolish language that predicates whiteness as the default

We’ve seen and are tired of how Black characters are often described in “mainstream” publishing. When writers, storytellers, or brands use words like “coffee,” “chocolate,” “cocoa,” and “caramel” in describing Black characters or selling their products meant for Black people, what they are essentially doing is affixing description on whatever thing exists outside of whiteness.

On the surface, this seems harmless, any storyteller knows that description is a powerful tool to move a story forward yet these descriptions are symptomatic of a bigger problem.

It’s very important that we question the reason as to why a character’s skin tone has to be described in the first place. Do you feel the same compulsion to describing skin when the character is white? Do you resort to food comparisons when you do? And if not, why?

The reason is simple, it is a contorted view of society and humanity that centers whiteness, making it the default and correspondingly not necessary to describe. In this sense, this description of Black characters becomes a way of othering them and further distancing them from the believed norm that is white.

Author, George Yancy describes whiteness as the transcendental norm which means that whiteness goes unmarked and is predicated upon its distance from and negation of Blackness.

Unlike with white supremacy, whiteness as the transcendental norm doesn’t view whiteness as above or superior, it views whiteness as only.

And so when we use descriptions like coffee, caramel, or chocolate, we are additionally establishing whiteness as the transcendental norm, reinforcing that it doesn’t need to be marked or identified or described because it is usual, and strengthening the power dynamic that itself instituted colonialism.

Nonetheless, these descriptions besides othering Black characters also fetishizes them. Repeatedly describing the skin color of an entire race using food items plays right into the narrative of Black bodies as “exotic,” “sexually desirable,” and, “edible.”

It postulates that the Black character and the Black body as a whole exist simply as a commodity, a meal, or consumable. In examining the history of these words, we equally see their close links to slavery and colonialism and they become even more problematic.

The production of chocolate, for instance, was heavily driven by imported slaves from Africa who worked on American cocoa plantations. Coffee too has a history of slave labor which eventually was crucial to its growth and popularity.

As a team of majority storytellers, we recognize the place of description in our storytelling but we are equally quick to see how this description can infer or predicate whiteness as the standard.

We must daily do away with terms that center whiteness, catering to it’s need to be the default and in like manner others everything else.

This post is published as part of our Abolishing Oppressive Language Series. To read more from these series, click here. For comments and feedback, email: language@minorityafrica.org.