In the first half of the twentieth century, race was widely considered a scientific concept. Terms like “Caucasian” and “Negro” were capitalized to emphasize their significance. Today science recognizes that no objective division of humanity into genetic races is possible. One group shades into another, and differences within groups are greater than those between them. The view of people as members of races has done only harm, setting people against each other.

I prefer strictly descriptive terms when possible, such as “light-skinned” or “dark-skinned.” At the same time, I recognize that dark-skinned people very often get badly treated. It just lets me avoid giving unwarranted significance to these categories. A person with straight, blonde hair and light skin is as human as one with black, curly hair and dark skin. Their experiences are likely to be very different, but their humanity is the same.

Lately I’ve seen an unfortunate return to the capitalization of racial terms, such as “White” and “Black.” The advocates of “race identity,” a strange, unacknowledged partnership of white supremacists and “wokes,” are pushing for it. To them, your skin color is who you are. Instead of seeing a human being, they see a “White,” a “Black,” or a … “Yellow”? I haven’t seen the last one yet, but it’s the next logical step. (Nobody actually has black or yellow skin, and only albinos have white skin, but these terms are “identities,” not descriptions.

A Web search reveals that the pseudo-scientific division of humans into Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Negroids, and sometimes Australoids is still in disturbingly wide use.

The defenders of race identity are a strange bunch. A person on Twitter energetically defended the notion of scientific race to me by claiming its rejection would lead to open borders. (And his point is…?) Another person warned me that if I rejected “race identity,” rumors would mysteriously spread that I was a racist. I guess I’d better join a white (sorry, White) supremacist group to prove I’m not one.

But I started this post to address a point of writing, and I should get back to it. Capitalizing “racial” terms gives them a significance they don’t warrant. You capitalize nationalities and religions, not physical characteristics. You don’t write that people are “Blonde,” “Left-Handed,” or “Short” (not even in Randy Newman lyrics).

Many say that “racial” groups are significant not because they have any objective meaning but because people treat them as significant. They have a point. Race is a myth, but racism isn’t. If you’re perceived as black in the United States, you’ll run into problems that people perceived as white don’t often experience, especially at the hands of the police. But that’s a reason to reject the characterization, not to confirm it with capital-letter classifications. We need to regard humans as human, regardless of incidental physical characteristics.

Dealing with “racial” terms is tricky, and writers can find themselves walking a minefield. Some recent changes in the AP style guide reflect the complexity of the issues. It advises not using “black” and “white” (which it doesn’t capitalize) as singular nouns. I hadn’t thought of that before, but calling a person “a white” or “a black” is another case of regarding people as race identities. Where the terms are unavoidable (and they often are), it’s better to say “black people” than “blacks,” and “a black” somehow sounds worse than either.

Capitalizing terms of physical description plays into the hands of the race-identity advocates. It pushes us to regard people who look different as “the other,” and that’s the essence of racism. Your race and mine is human. We don’t need any other.