Not so strange, I think, as here a generic term oft used is "people of color," meaning, usually, "I am darker than the people with [most of] the big bucks and when sh*t rolls downhill, I'll be your nearest ally."

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Misc thoughts while cleaning:

It's complicated. Every few generations the PC terminology changes, and yet the older people still alive at any one point are still proud of the earlier referent and would prefer to keep using it. (It's not just the privileged group that gets confused.). There is a very apt statement from Whoopi Goldberg on this point.

Another line of thought-- I KNOW Obama is tired of always [having to be portrayed as] being The Black Man. His heritage is so much more multi-layered than that. I see a little eye roll of "Oh, OK, if I must, I will bear that image yet again....." It is not accurate and not inclusive enough to call him an AA man, tho he is one. Tiger Woods, ditto. I bet Hoda Kotbe's head spins, often, too. LOve to have lunch with THAT one. She's so twinklingly cool.


Friends of color tell me that my read of these little hints of feeling are usually pretty accurate.

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There is definitely this urge to simplify-- I think it's an essentially human urge to get ON with contact and also to avoid not only "appearing to give offense" but actually "giving offense." We all like to try so hard to get it all "right." When we get a message that we've messed up, of course we get defensive-- another human-bean-type trait not limited to cultural heritage. :~)

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Perhaps the thing we all MOST have in common is that we are only human and, at the same time, so quite-gloriously human.

~S~