rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

POC works where other terms don't (non-white, minority) because the other terms center whiteness as the norm. "minority" also doesnt work from a simple mathematical standpoint because POC are the majority of the people on the planet. people of color works better than colored people because of its person-first language (compare with 'people with disabilities' and 'disabled people'). descriptive without being restrictive.

"People of ethnicity" is not a term used in the UK. The usual phrase is "BME people".

I'm with orbit about "it's not really my say," but the phrase is still centering whiteness as the norm since what it's really saying is "persons of color other than white."

- "So great to be here in Nigeria. Just look at all these people of color."

- "You know, we just call ourselves 'people' here. Perhaps it is you with the peachy pink hues that's so colorful."

- "Yes. Together we make quite the rainbow."

- "Rainbow? If you ever see a pink and brown rainbow in the sky, you'd better get a gas mask."

google results for "BME people" are all for biomedical engineering depts.

I have no idea what BME stands for <------ so says an actual British person

I gotta BME

Black / Minority Ethnic.

all these terms are primarily useful in societies/institutions/environments that are dominated by white ppl, it's never going to be a general term bc most of the world has little use for a concept of 'non-white ppl in general' however its phrased

google results for "BME people" are all for biomedical engineering depts.

ah yeah, we'd probably use it more in phrases like "BME families", "BME communities" etc.

Does BME include Irish?

Not usually.

Well I was joking but being Irish is usually a category on its own when filling out Equal Opportunity forms.

LOL UK amirite?

xpost dunno but it did sign Chyna Whyte

Sometimes Irish are listed as BME. Depends on circumstances.

Think there's probably residual admiration for Germany too pouring over from admiration for German brands too

Probably a racial component too, Germany happens to be the 'right kind if white' but IDK if it'd be articulated in that way

Idk, I can ask my cousin - she's a big fan of Germany

― 龜, Thursday, 10 July 2014 14:45 (10 minutes ago) Permalink

pplains otm. I mean I don't waste time objecting to the term because I don't think derailing conversations about race is valuable unless that's your sole aim, just seemed worth mentioning cause ppl were talking about how terrible p.o.ethnicity is, and I don't see that this phrase frames whiteness as the default any less. but I don't use it & nor does anyone I know. Lots of ppl doing important work like the term, fine, I find it awkward & mealy-mouthed. As long as nobody's saying that activists necessarily get the final say on how everyone should feel about these terms, it's not really a thing.

Lots of xps

interesting that "POC" came into wide american usage thru fanon, but i don't think he's the originator of the term -- iirc (dimly) it's a french coinage from its own colonial times -- meant as a catch-all term for the varieties of people descended from both french and africans

but tbh i'm getting this from this book: http://www.tomreiss.com/node/18 and it's only touched upon glancingly in the explicit connection. he uses "people of color" because it's the term extant in all the legal documents from the era

I'm glad we can all agree that the real problem is activists telling people how to feel a way.

"People of ethnicity" is not a term used in the UK. The usual phrase is "BME people".

An HR person in the UK used it when talking specifically about 'diversity awareness training' and it jarred. I was wondering if this was the new POC, which to me as a Brit does sound odd on its own but as IO says, it seems to have been widely accepted so who am I to object.

NME people?

I'm glad we can all agree that the real problem is activists telling people how to feel a way.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Thursday, July 10, 2014 5:57 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah don't be a d*ck

or ok I guess I phrased it badly, sorry

this is a verrrry unperfect phrase being used to describe a giant fucking mass of people, I was saying that when some of them feel a bit iffy about that phrase then it'd be uncool to argue "well these people like it so nobody gets to argue" and then acknowledged that prob nobody itt was making that argument

When I was younger a lot of older australians called migrants "ethnics", fwiw. The other quaint old phrase boomers used was "new Australians".

Wonder if it's a uk/us divide - iirc lex is not too happy w the term either

― 龜, Thursday, July 10, 2014 11:26 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

more like an activist/non-activist divide ime. i still dislike "POC" but end up using it for the sake of convenience these days. instinctively prefer "non-white" because yeah, it centres whiteness, but it also reminds us that whiteness is centred anyway, and whiteness being centred is the reason disparate non-white ethnicities have any reason to be lumped together at all.

"BME" in the uk is more the language of non-offensive officialdom than common parlance.

not really the thread for it but there are similar arguments about "people with disabilities" as mentioned earlier - social model activists would say that this construction places the disability in the individual as opposed to "disabled people" which tries to indicate that people are disabled by the social structures around them

I thought there was a Rolling "This IS Racist" thread? Anyway, that's where this belongs

From the HR dept that brought us 'people of ethnicity', a whole salespitch about how great 'diversity management' is. With no definition of that term anywhere - at face value it sounds like 'ethnic cleansing' or something. They also stated that some people are non-ethnic (despite defining 'ethnicity' elsewhere in the expected way).

diversity management: you know, infiltrating their organizations, paying for more riot patrol overtime, defunding preschool programs

i'm hispanic and i use 'people of color' regularly. my dad who is an immigrant HATES 'people of color' to him it's exactly the same as "colored people." when my brother went to college, he received a letter of welcome from the students of color organization and my dad flipped out and was so offended that they were labeling my brother as "colored." i tried to explain to him that the term "people of color" is widely used by anti-racism activists as a way to promote solidarity among nonwhite people but he didn't really get it. in the same conversation i told my mom that "queer" was reclaimed similarly by LGBT communities and she was very surprised.

i also use 'non-white' fairly often too.

i understand why someone would find 'people of color' just as meaningless as 'people of ethnicity' but i find the latter to be very clunky. but yet all of these terms locate whiteness as the norm/center, and i don't know if you can get away from that in a world where whiteness is exactly that.

i don't know if you can get away from that in a world where whiteness is exactly that.

eh not that whiteness is the norm but that it is the "perceived norm", maybe "center" is really the better word

yeah definitely. i don't really get the issue, whiteness affects all "non-whiteness" in specific, massive infrastructural ways, and a term like "poc" is sort of necessary to address that. like a lot of things i think a lot of resistance to it is because it strikes people as new and tacky. especially if they mentally link it to tumblr. never underestimate perceived tackiness.

otoh a lot of people cling to "POC" when they're really just talking about one race. i've seen a lot of people use it when they're really only talking about black people, i guess bc people treat it as the "sensitive" term to use rather than a term with a specific purpose, and in that way it can be used to unintentionally whitewash things by failing to address specific issues that don't apply to all POC.

i don't get "people of ethnicity" doesn't everyone have ethnicity? i think i am a people of ethnicity. that seems built off of a misuse of the word. usually regarding cuisine. university "department of ethnicity"s make sense to me cause i've always interpreted that as being the sort of study of ethnicities in relation to each other, and it's difficult for an entire dept to study minority ethnicities without confronting majority ones.

Ethnicity makes all sort of sense in the Asian American context, "Asian" not being a 'race' in the same way that being 'white' or 'black' is, although people will often try to use it in that way

I imagine it is the same with the descriptor Latin@

oh god "department of ethnicity" what is wrong with me

I remember reading something (I think written by the woman who was so enamored of her cowboy boyfriend who treated her like shit?) about how Latino is an artificial construct designed by Europeans to erase the identities of indigenous Americans that was fascinating. Let me see if I can find it...

I imagine it is the same with the descriptor Latin@

― 龜, Wednesday, July 23, 2014 7:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in my experience it much less about "ethnicity" w/ hispanics/latinos than nationality. most of us are mestizos anyway, we don't really belong to an "ethnic group" but we have origins in different nations. obviously there are very large indigenous populations esp. from mexico, peru, bolivia that you could categorize as "ethnic groups" and calling many of those purely indigenous peoples "hispanic" or "latino" makes zero fucking sense. but your average mestizo from the DR, guatemala, chile, argentina, etc. is going to identify primarily by their nation of origin, if they are american-born and second or third-generation. e.g. i am "peruvian" but i don't really think there are ethnic peruvians unless you are talking about indigenous groups, and with those you can name a specific group.

"is going to identify primarily by their nation of origin, *EVEN if they are american-born and second or third-generation."

xxp I was reminded of that tidbit yesterday when a La Raza spokesperson said on an MSNBC show that Latinos are in/from every racial group, including I think she said "indigenous" and it seemed a reasonable and obvious point. But back when I read that abusive cowboy writer's thing, it was a new idea to me that the Native (American) population didn't, like, STOP at the US-Mexico border and become a different group.

xp like a mestizo from the andes in peru is going to identify as "peruvian" while a mestizo from the andes in bolivia will identify as "bolivian" even though ethnically they are probably very similar. if they are emigrate to the US they are called "latino" but they will still identify as their nationality.

I mean when people are like, "Where did all the Indians go?" and they're talking about the "vanished" tribes of the Southwest, the answer is surely "South, following the rain and liveable habitats and trade routes and ending up in Central and South America, you idiot." But all my life the "disappearance" of the Pueblo population groups was literally presented in actually books as a MYSTERY. PERHAPS THEY WENT THROUGH THE KIVA HOLE BACK TO THE SPIRIT WORLD, like.

lol, otm. it's the same as the maya. in school we learned that the maya "mysteriously disappeared" but if you go to southern mexico and guatemala there are plenty of fucking maya there. yes there were severe population declines during the collapse of peak maya civilization and again during spanish conquest and subsequent diseases. but they are still there.

in my experience it much less about "ethnicity" w/ hispanics/latinos than nationality. most of us are mestizos anyway, we don't really belong to an "ethnic group" but we have origins in different nations. obviously there are very large indigenous populations esp. from mexico, peru, bolivia that you could categorize as "ethnic groups" and calling many of those purely indigenous peoples "hispanic" or "latino" makes zero fucking sense. but your average mestizo from the DR, guatemala, chile, argentina, etc. is going to identify primarily by their nation of origin, if they are american-born and second or third-generation. e.g. i am "peruvian" but i don't really think there are ethnic peruvians unless you are talking about indigenous groups, and with those you can name a specific group.

― marcos, Thursday, July 24, 2014 10:55 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

Right - I was letting my own experience get in the way, since countries in Asia tend more to be mono-ethnic; 'nationality' is more accurate

i don't get "people of ethnicity" doesn't everyone have ethnicity?

doesn't everybody have a colouring

we've all seen Tilda Swinton

Seen through, you mean

Skin is an efficient scatterer of light unfortunately. Medical imaging would be much easier if absorption were the only issue.

Is this etsy Boston Terrier Day of the Dead Sugar Skull necklace questionable cultural appropriation???

https://img0.etsystatic.com/022/1/5470591/il_570xN.482972762_j4gt.jpg

I only had to read as far as the word "Boston" to know it was racist

ok, but this doesn't have anything to do with Boston