rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

It's like a it's like someone started to say "coloured people" and then caught themselves & lamely tried to save it

It's like a

The term "people of color" always makes me want to start using the term "colorless people."

i bet

I don't see color, ability or gender. I just see translucent bubbles floating toward me on the sidewalk.

People are much easier to pop when you look at them like that.

one of the most prominent anti-systemic racism/sj orgs in pdx is called the coalition of communities of color, and they use the term "people of color" a lot in their work... ie: "there's an 80% unemployment rate amongst people of color", etc.

initially i reacted very similarly to the posters itt when i heard the way the org used the term, but ime they are pretty damn progressive both in ethos and in the way they redefine census categories to reach more nuanced definitions of race and ethnicity (particularly wrt slavic or middle eastern or african communities, which are difficult to study using normal census categories). clearly they are supported by funds/foundations so it's difficult to say who exactly chose to use the term or who self-identifies as such, but it does seem to be embraced by all sorts of folks involved in this type of work - i'm not sure if that's necessarily a valid defense of the term, but i'm certainly more than willing to defer to others with considerably more expertise

this term has been in use since the mid-90s

I first encountered it in college, ethnic studies depts etc

Some comic from around that time - or maybe it was a Bill Hicks routine or something - featuring the wacky "So yes, I'm working with persons of color" ... "You mean.... colored people then." "NO! THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID!", etc.

It was edgy. Extreme and out there, dudes.

Daily Telegraph blogger and commentator Toby Young wrote: "In his defence, Hansen could cite the fact that America's foremost civil rights group is the NAACP which stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. If it's acceptable for the NAACP to use the word "coloured", why isn't it acceptable for him?"[28]

Hansen issued an apology the following day, saying "'I unreservedly apologise for any offence caused – this was never my intention and I deeply regret the use of the word."[29][30]

xps used way before the mid-90s, no?

oh yeah, People of Color (POC) is a widely used term. I haven't heard "People of Ethnicity" before, but I imagine its an expansion to cover white people from other countries.

good ol Fanon

Influenced by radical theorists like Frantz Fanon, racial justice activists in the U.S. began to use the term people of color in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Daily Telegraph blogger and commentator Toby Young wrote: "In his defence, Hansen could cite the fact that America's foremost civil rights group is the NAACP which stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. If it's acceptable for the NAACP to use the word "coloured", why isn't it acceptable for him?"[28]

Hansen issued an apology the following day, saying "'I unreservedly apologise for any offence caused – this was never my intention and I deeply regret the use of the word."[29][30]

Hansen correctly assuming that if Toby Young is on your side you must be behaving like a cunt.

I am aware this term is a thing btw, and it still sounds weird and hedgy to me

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

I don't have thoughts re "people/person of color" because I feel like it's none of my business to affirm or object--I'll do what I'm told. The term is widely used among progressive, anti-racist, anti-oppression movement people and groups. Which doesn't mean I think it shouldn't still be scrutinized, but afaict it's not seen as problematic by any/most.

Porting that construction over to ethnicity seems like a thuddishly poor choice though--as if no one has "ethnicity" except ppl who aren't mainstream white America, whatever that means and whoever gets to define that, which is so constructed and so much used to exclude whoever is "bad" in popular right-wing myth right now that it's meaningless.

For the American market, I mean, obv.

-as if no one has "ethnicity" except ppl who aren't mainstream white America,

It was someone in the UK using "people of ethnicity"

Oh well that's completely different then

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