BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 12:59 PM

So are the words "squaw" and "papoose."

"Chink Peak" out here has been re-named "Chinese Peak" even though the Chinese guy who used to own it and who is buried on it called it "Chink Peak" (there's a pavilion in a local park named for him). The land ended up in the hands of USFS and they changed the name.

As a chap said to once, "Please don't call be a 'Native American.' Anyone born here is that. Call me an Indian or better, a Potawatomi. Better yet, call me Don, because that's my name."

Has anyone ever heard if there's been a flap over Conrad's novel, "The Nigger of the Narcissus"?

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Ed T
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 12:45 PM

I "never"use this term, nor any term or word when refering to groups of people that I understand would have a negative connotation. And, yes, I frequently call people to task when they use similar words or terms.

In my community, the term would be considered offensive, and it is rarely heard.


Amazingly, it was not until a few years ago that I camevto know that the word Eskimo is considered offensive to some of the nortnern peoples. I was very embarassed when I used it, and was advised of this-I thanked the person for letting me know. (I really don't know how that one escaped me).

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 12:41 PM

I was in a university chapter of the NAACP in Kansas in 1964-65 and watched/listened to the 'colored'/black/Negro...etc. members argue intensely among themselves about what they ought to be called.

I stayed out of it.

The debate included complaints that "African American" was too long and didn't really cover all 'people of that general color', and that 'Black' wasn't really accurate, and that 'Negro' was loaded and and too easy to mispronounce...etc. What they called each other was... 'interesting'.

The appropriateness of any term is dependent on who is using it in what context and with what intent.... but too many want to pin down one term or another as THE one, and can't be bothered to analyze context.

I agree that People of Color is awkward and stilted for most situations, but I have seen times when it exactly covered the situation.

I 'tend' to favor Black & White for informal use when only the two ethnic groups are involved, but African American for formal occasions... and sometimes I just avoid using a term...

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 12:26 PM

Wogs, perhaps, as I've heard in British Isles?

I agree with Charmion. I've never see anyone without color -- they'd be invisible.

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Lighter
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 12:24 PM

Nonliterate societies very often call themselves "The People" and everybody else "the others."

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 12:10 PM

Interestingly, in Yoruba, the word "oyinbo" includes all non-Africans and the word (which has escaped me for the moment) for "people" also means all non-oyinbo. But of course there is not the same history of oppression there.

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 11:20 AM

A person of colo(u)r, for real.

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Lighter
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 11:13 AM

Because there are more colors than black, "people of color" began in the US quite a few years ago *specifically* as a self-chosen designation to make a contrast with "white people." It covers brown, red, and yellow people too (all of which are the terms preferred by the designated groups, though I suspect "yellow" will soon be supplanted by "East Asian."

Why would one think that "people of color" implies that standard "people" are white? It counterbalances "white people," not "people."

What bugs me is that while "people of color" is a recommended usage, "colored people," which you'd think is exactly equivalent and which was the polite and accepted form in my youth, is now rejected as "racist."

Then consider the convoluted history of "Negro" (which is not synonymous with "person of color").

We still have the highly regarded "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" and the "United Negro College Fund."

Use these terms in other contexts, however, and brace yourself.

Perhaps someone has surveyed what terms the average American of color considers acceptable or insulting. The spokesmen (oops! "spokespersons") we generally seem to hear from are self-promoting media types.

Nobody said things make sense. Did they?

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Charmion
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 06:51 AM

I have a colour (sic) -- sort of a pale pinkish tan. It's nothing to be proud of, in my opinion, or to disparage, except with respect to one's susceptibility to carcinoma.

But i'm being disingenuous. My bad.

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 03:33 AM

I might have expressed it differently, Mrrzy, but I am pretty much with you on this. "People of Color" is a fairly irrelevant discernment.
"People of Reason" seems much more important.

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 02:36 AM

The trouble is, all these euphemisms for racial differences fall into disrepute after a while, as being either too explicit or too euphemistic -- as here. "Black" used to be regarded as too crude, so it had to become "colored" [US spelling], as in the NAACP. But then that was thought of as too prissy by the colored/black community themselves, and "black" became the acceptable usage to them, as in the "Black Power" movement, and at present pertains as the generally accepted term of use. Among some, even that became unacceptably evasive, so you got the truculent reaction of naming a black group defiantly calling themselves "Niggaz With Attitude", which predictably distressed some and inspired and stimulated others.

And so the cycle continues: today's acceptable is tomorrow's just-won't-do, as being too extreme one way or the other. I don't see any permanent acceptability of any term in any direction, I fear. All part, either of the "rich tapestry of life", or of the concept of "original sin", depending which way you look at it.

Innit...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 02:11 AM

When one is speaking of differing conditions that affect different races, one might legitimately say something on the order of "People of color in that town experience a different reality than those..."

Hmmmmm. I've changed my mind. I can't think of an occasion when 'people of color' is appropriate.

Thanks, Mrrz.

Subject: BS: The term People of Color - Let's Nix
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Aug 14 - 01:03 AM

Maybe it's just in the US where there is a different kind of racism than anywhere else I've lived, including (barely) post-Colonial West Africa, but the term "People of Color" is beginning to really, really bother me... The calm assumption that white = normal and anything else = something different bugs me. Can we start using People of Paleness to mean anybody who isn't completely sub-Saharan, black African? After all, that's what all the races are, is various degrees of not-as-black-as-original.

This is partly in response to being accused of Not Supporting The Cause at an anti-racist-cops rally for being unwilling to assume all cops are racist, and saying that any assumption that all individual cops in my city are as racist as some cops in Ferguson, is as bigoted as the assumption by some cops in Ferguson that all "people of color" are criminals.

Apparently it's OK for PoC to tar all people who choose to wear blue with the racist brush, but not OK for the cops to tar all PoC with the criminal brush... if you're a PoC and don't wear blue.

I dislike bigotry. I prefer assuming that you don't know what an individual will be like, rather than assuming that they will be like *your* stereotype of what you think *their* group is, when you feel they have a group to which you feel you don't belong.

I am accused of desiring reason in an unreasonable world, but I really only would prefer it from those capable of reason. *Sigh*. I don't try to pray away a hurricane but I will argue with people who say I am "against them" because I don't support *everything* they say.