So black is now Black. Following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too many others, editors everywhere have decreed that the formerly common adjective referring to African Americans will now be a proper adjective.
I'm not offended by black with a small "b," by "Negro" or even "colored." In my books, I use whatever words would have been used in the historical periods I'm referencing. It drives me crazy when a professional historian, writing about the 19th century, refers to the "Black community," even though most of the people the historian's talking about would have been offended by the usage.
I'm annoyed when people presume to tell me which words that describe myself I am required to capitalize. I made a contribution to the debate, adopting in my fiction and in nonfiction where my editors permit the term "darker nation," inspired by similar usages by Zora Neale Hurston and W. E. B. DuBois.
Still, I have concerns: Capitalizing Black as an adjective runs the risk that Black will tumble once more into use as a noun. This was fought 20 or 30 years ago, the effort to get people to stop saying "I saw three blacks"--which sounds vaguely racist--as opposed to "I saw three black men."
And once "Black" is upper-case, it's easier to claim that there's one correct way to be "Black" and that those who think "wrong" thoughts aren't really Black in the full upper-case sense.
But let's be optimists. The capitalization of Black resolves none of our great social justice issues. Nevertheless, it's a hint that just maybe people are listening.