People of color?

October 15, 2006 11:19 PM

Why is it politically correct to refer people that are not caucasian as people of color?

Why are people that are dark-skinned called people of color? I don't understand why people are still categorized by color. Don't people see the problem with that phrase?

posted by herbiehancock00 to society & culture (38 comments total)

AFAIK, it's not really considered PC anymore.
posted by rossination at 11:36 PM on October 15, 2006

There is, of course, potential for this question to become very political! It will be interesting to see how it develops and whether any lines are drawn!

From my perspective (bear in mind I'm Australian), I can see the benefit of this terminology in some circumstances, ie.

Man A: What does Harry look like? I'm going to a party and I want to recognise him in the crowd.
Man B: Well, he's 6 foot tall, about 230 pounds, african-american (or "of colour" or even *shock* "black"), dark hair, dark eyes and he walks with a limp.

Here, the description of colour helps to identify the person, just like his height, his hair colour and even his physical problems! It's not about him being black, it's about being able to identify him. Without the colour identification, it's less likely Man A will be able to pick him at the party.

However, many times it is used like this:

News Report: New Orleans is an area with a large african-american population..... (and then various assumptions on what this means)

Here, we are assuming that because the population is black, there is a stereotype associated with that (higher crime, lower socio-economic status, whatever). I think this is what the modern african-american man takes afront to, not just the generic use of the term "of colour".

But then, this is the opinion of a middle-class white male, so maybe I'm not the target demographic for this question.....
posted by ranglin at 11:37 PM on October 15, 2006

Some good background at Wikipedia: 1, 2.
posted by rolypolyman at 11:51 PM on October 15, 2006

Given that our society still quite obviously discriminates against ethnic minorities, there are political advantages to being able to identify such discrimination as similar (and therefore a large wide-ranging problem) and social advantages to being able to talk about experiences that may be similar among people undergoing such discrimination.

Even if race doesn't exist as a biological entity, pretending race doesn't exist as a political or social construct doesn't make racism go away, and it actually makes it harder to combat or even talk about racism.
posted by occhiblu at 11:56 PM on October 15, 2006

I believe that we have Jesse Jackson to thank for that particular phrase. Over the course of the last 40 years there's been a rather strange search to find a substitute for the word "Negro" in the US as a way of referring to... well, "people of color". Problem is that a lot of the common words or phrases which could be used have at various times been used negatively. For a while "black" was the approved term. Then it was "Afro-American". Then it was "African American". Then it was realized that it would be politically useful to expand the tent and to include as many other people who were victims of whites in the political tent, so Jackson's "rainbow coalition" started using "Person of Color" instead.

It's stilted and inconvenient and has resulted in horse-laughs when it was pointed out that "Person of Color" was acceptable but "Colored Person" was a vile insult, even though that was two of the five letters in the acronym NAACP.

These days only those who are excrutiatingly sensitive bother with terms like that. I've been using the term "black" since I was in high school (late 1960's) and I've never gotten any indication from anyone in that time that they were offended because of it.

I don't understand why people are still categorized by color. Because there are people who gain advantages because of it.

Used to be that it was white racists, reactionaries, who were hypersensitive to race. These days it's leftists, who arguably are also racist, who are hypersensitive to race.

In the bad old days, the white racists wanted to use racial differences to discriminate against anyone who wasn't white. Nowadays, leftists want to use racial differences to discriminate in favor of anyone who isn't white -- which is to say, they want to discriminate against whites.

Why don't we move past it? Too many people don't want to. "Progressivism", the latest incarnation of Marxism, needs misery because Marx predicted that people who were miserable would rise up in revolution and establish the great Socialist utopia. Somehow it didn't happen, and modern Progressives are thus in the situation of trying to convince as many people as possible that they really should think they are miserable -- even if they aren't.

Lee Harris discussed it here. Leftists can't permit non-whites to assimilate because then there won't be any downtrodden segment of society to eventually get fed up and rise up against the Capitalists in Marxist revolution.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:58 PM on October 15, 2006

I've always found the term "people of color" very strange. If taken literally, this usage of the phrase suggests that somehow Caucasians are colorless, like a pane of glass, or something. Also, a lot of Asians have skin that is much closer in tone to that of Caucasians then to, say, Africans. Yet, both people of Asian and African descent are sometimes referred to as "people of color" when one wishes to differentiate them from people of European descent.
posted by epimorph at 11:59 PM on October 15, 2006

I second rossination

Its not politically correct to use that term any longer.
posted by crewshell at 12:12 AM on October 16, 2006

If race is a social construct as the sociologists say, then "people of color" definitely seems to lump a group of people, needlessly, into a restricted racial category.

Although I disagree with usage of the term in any academic or even political sense, I do agree with ranglin about how the phrase can be used in a practical way.

I am not a "person of color", so it is difficult to imagine if/how/why I would take offense to the phrase.
posted by ifranzen at 12:12 AM on October 16, 2006

I see it used all the time on current blogs, many of which are run by self-identified "people of color" or "women of color." I don't think it's that out of favor.
posted by occhiblu at 12:19 AM on October 16, 2006

I think SCDB's answer is woefully misguided, as far as the straw man "leftists" go. Yer genuine Marxist wants to erase ethnic and nationalist differences, often at the cost of special needs of individual groups. Workers of the world unite, and all that.

However, so-called "identity politics" definitely has a role to play here.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:30 AM on October 16, 2006

I've always used "black" for African-American. My thinking here is that the ONLY difference between whites and blacks is the color of their skin. Saying African-American implies they're less American. Saying "people of color" implies that they're members of a group that they may not self-identify with. But "black" alone has no connotations; it only denotes the color of their outermost layer of skin.

Does my reasoning make sense?
posted by jbb7 at 12:45 AM on October 16, 2006

But I don't think "people of color" is supposed to just refer to African-Americans. It includes all ethnic minorities in the U.S.; that's the point. Otherwise you'd specify African-American or Asian-American or Haitian-American or biracial or whatever other specific group. It's "all people not considered white."
posted by occhiblu at 12:49 AM on October 16, 2006

I've always thought "people of colour" referred to members of non-white ethnic minorities, not just to those of African descent; that is, it's a way of saying "non-white". As such, I think it's a reasonably useful phrase. I don't think I've ever actually used the phrase - ever - but it's never struck me as politically incorrect or offensive (though there is something odd about the fact that it's acceptable while "coloured people" isn't...), but maybe things are different when viewed from all the way over here in Australia. Oh, and if it matters, I'm "a person of colour". Or "color".

On preview what occiblu said.
posted by bunglin jones at 1:02 AM on October 16, 2006

Look on the bright side. In the UK the phrase du jour is *still* "black and ethnic minority" - which implies that black people are a special minority, not just an ethnic minority. Despite the fact that of all the minorities in the UK, there are more Asians than blacks.

But due to various factors - including that "black" (they're not black for a start, dark brown mayhaps!) people kick-started the race-awareness movement in the UK - no-one involved in the race relations industry seems particularly inclined to change that linguistic quirk.
posted by badlydubbedboy at 1:14 AM on October 16, 2006

Categorising people by colour isn't always evil or even always bad - as noted before, "people of colour" will often categorise themselves that way; and I don' think this is necessarily a bad thing. Members of the same ethnic group often share similar cultural histories and ideas along with similar skin tones. Some people really value their heritage, and where their family comes from makes up a big part of their identity. It would, of course, be wonderful if nobody was judged according to the colour of their skin but it has happened and it keeps happening and for as long as members of ethnic minorities are discriminated against because of their skin colour, then some members of those minorities will react by taking pride in the thing for which they are derided. A proud Italian-Australian is not somehow "less" than someone who is "just" Australian - he/she is proud to be an Australian whose Italian roots are recognised rather than ignored or belittled. For many people, ethnicity matters and they want it to be recognised, not glossed over or lost because it's not the most common one in a society.

(Oh, and if it matters (again) - though I am a member of a fairly small minority in a predominantly Anglo society, the sort of thinking I've described adove doesn't apply to me at all. I couldn't give a shit about my heritage. I'm no more proud to be Sinhalese than I am ashamed to not be Anglo-Saxon.)
posted by bunglin jones at 1:37 AM on October 16, 2006

As I understand it, the term 'free people of color' ('gens de couleur libres') was used in the nineteenth century to refer to Africans, or people of African descent, who lived in a slave society but were not themselves enslaved.

So the phrase has several advantages: (1) it was a term that people would have used to describe themselves (rather than a term applied to them by others); (2) it was a term that could be used with pride, to denote 'free' status (rather than having derogatory connotations); (3) it emphasises colour rather than race (rather than being associated with now-discredited theories of racial difference).

As I understand it, the phrase was revived in the 1980s, in books like This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. It now had a very specific meaning in terms of the emerging fields of black studies and black history (as it says here, 'identifying as a person of color can be a way of resisting the hegemony of whiteness as a space of privilege'). However, academic fashions change, and this sort of language ('hegemony' .. *sigh*) is now starting to look a bit dated. Look at the growing literature on passing for white, and you'll see how the term 'people of color' is now starting to look more problematic.

It is perfectly true, of course, as Steven Den Beste points out above, that 'people of color' is acceptable in circles where 'colored people' would be regarded as an insult. But as long as the subject of race is controversial, the language of race is going to be unstable. I don't see why this should be surprising, unless you are naive enough to believe that language is an instrument of scientific precision.

Henry Louis Gates has some interesting observations on the connotations of 'colored' (as opposed to 'black') in his essay A Town in West Virginia (though I'm not sure what he means when he says 'the linguistic trend towards condensation is strong' -- is this a misprint for 'condescension'?).
posted by verstegan at 2:59 AM on October 16, 2006

One more piece of food for thought is that because of all the inter-racial pairing off, there are more people of mixed decent than there used to be. "Person of color" can actually be a simplification, if you're, let's see, half Mexican, but also part Russian, Ukranian, Polish and.... you get the point.
posted by nadise at 3:13 AM on October 16, 2006

In the UK the phrase du jour is *still* "black and ethnic minority"

Not quite. Even that was deemed non-diverse. The prefered phrase is black and minority ethnic (BME).
posted by ninebelow at 3:36 AM on October 16, 2006

How good it would be if "Caucasian" would drop from use! "European-American" or "white" suits me.
posted by Carol Anne at 4:50 AM on October 16, 2006

There are so many misconceptions and incorrect facts here it's amazing we can all just get along at all.

First of all, "Politically Correct" was NEVER something to strive for - it was ALWAYS a put-down for progressive people to use for those holier-than-thou people who insisted that it wasn't enough to think progressively but you had to act according to a specific code of progressive behaviour. It's an anti-Stalinist joke fer chrissakes, not something to be taken seriously or that anyone (on the left at least) ever took seriously.

It's only when the right caught up to the term and (due presumably to lack of humor) took it seriously that the whole thing became a real discussion. An Absurd discussion, but not just a joke.

Anyhow - "people of color" does NOT refer just to African Americans and cannot do so - it is specifically a broader term than that. It not in any way descended from the term "colored" or specifically tied to any one group - it is explicitly to be used to describe the common problems and issues of all groups outside of the white majority. I think verstegan is right as to the time-frame. SCDB is emphatically not right in any way regarding his analysis of "leftists".
posted by mikel at 4:57 AM on October 16, 2006

I've noticed that "people of color" definitely seems to be regaining currency as of late - I've seen more beauty products than before marketed specifically for "women of color," and I've seen a lot more individuals I know identifying themselves as "people of color" and joining groups for "people of color." It's like people suddenly realized there was something else they could call themselves - I only started seeing this everywhere a few months ago.
posted by limeonaire at 5:09 AM on October 16, 2006

I'm six years out of college now, so I guess there could have been a major change in the way racially sensitive academics talk since 2000, but "people of color" was the blanket term for non-whites in a number of classes I took. And these were classes where we argued over the nuances of "Hispanic," "Latina/o," "Chicana/o," and of "Native American," "Native people," "American Indian" and "Tribal people."

Anecdote: There was a club at my college called QPOC -- Queer People of Color -- which was open to any non-straight non-white folks interested in joining.

To answer the question: Why are people still categorized as people of color? Because it's useful.

We do clump together non-white people for a number of reasons in U.S. society, at least. We do this for demographic reasons -- it's useful to know if the dominant racial group (whites) is significantly better off than other groups (which in many ways they are). People also self-categorize to better associate with one another. At my mostly-white college, non-white/people of color formed a number of support groups.

"People of color" is a lot easier to say than African American, Latino/a, Asian, Tribal people, Hispanics, Indian subcontinenters, non-American Africans, Arabs, Pacific Islanders, Alaskans and all other non-whites.

For a real-world example of a non-race-based group: The organization that used to be the Gay Resource Center at my college was catering the the GLBT crowd when I was an undergrad -- that's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered.

Six years later, I looked up the campus newspaper and saw a new term: GLBTQQIA -- for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and ally.

OK, great.

Sometimes blanket terms feel a lot more inclusive than separating out every possible subcategory -- which becomes an exercise in futility.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 6:56 AM on October 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

From my experience "people of color" is seen as more favorable than referring to non-whites as "minorities" as there can be negative connotations with that term.

As I understand it, the term 'free people of color' ('gens de couleur libres') was used in the nineteenth century to refer to Africans, or people of African descent, who lived in a slave society but were not themselves enslaved.

This is more specific to a very distinct population in Louisiana and more specifically, New Orleans, and not really indicative of the larger african/slave/free population during that time. You wouldn't find any significant groups of these people, namely Creoles, in New York, for example.
posted by SoulOnIce at 7:00 AM on October 16, 2006

First of all, "Politically Correct" was NEVER something to strive for - it was ALWAYS a put-down for progressive people to use for those holier-than-thou people who insisted that it wasn't enough to think progressively but you had to act according to a specific code of progressive behaviour.

Thank You! I have never, ever heard anyone describe themselves as PC, except with extreme irony. Really strange seeing was was a liberal in-joke in the late-80s become a boogyman in the 90s. But then, everything liberal was made into a boogyman.

I'm currently living in the South, and it seems like everyone, black and white, uses "black" and "white" in daily conversation, but uses "PoC" or "A-A" in formal speech, like when speaking to city council or writing a letter to the editor.
posted by bendybendy at 7:39 AM on October 16, 2006

I've always had problems with the nature of the definitions themselves. "White" is an exclusive definition (i.e the absence of "colour") whereas "of colour" is an inclusive definition -the presence of even a little "colour".

Take the child of of a couple, one of whom is "pure" caucasian, the other "pure" African. The mix of racial features would surely classify the child as "of colour".

The very definitions exhibit a prejudice.
posted by Neiltupper at 8:11 AM on October 16, 2006

Six years later, I looked up the campus newspaper and saw a new term: GLBTQQIA -- for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and ally.

OK, great.

If you lived in the Bay Area you would use LGBT or maybe LGBTI -- putting "G" first is considered a reflection of the incorrect belief that the most important part of the community is gay men. Of course, the preferred order here could be challenged by the people of the "last" letters. (Even though sometimes this stuff is silly, I still prefer the usage of putting "L" first.)

Blanket terms can be cool -- I like "queer," but it has a problem in that lots of people (maybe older?) don't self-identify as queer.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 8:43 AM on October 16, 2006

I went to a university that has a reputation for being very inclusive and PC (Brown University). Among the many a-capella groups was a co-ed group called "Shades of Brown", which was essentially open to any non-white person (although I bet if a white person wanted to be in it, the group would not have discriminated again them.) Indeed, the members of the group had skin that was various shades of brown, including the paler end of the spectrum (usually South or East Asians.) According to their website they are "multi-ethnic".
posted by nekton at 8:55 AM on October 16, 2006

I've always had problems with the nature of the definitions themselves. "White" is an exclusive definition (i.e the absence of "colour") whereas "of colour" is an inclusive definition -the presence of even a little "colour".

Yes. And that's part of the point of using "people of color" instead of "non-white." Repeating part of what has gone before, "people of color" is used to refer to all people who aren't white under the idea that all racial minorities have some common struggle (even though each smaller group may have problems that aren't shared). It means essentially the same thing as "non-white," but is preferred becasue the latter seems to imply that white is the default or preferred setting.
posted by dame at 9:05 AM on October 16, 2006

"White" itself is very flexible and has pretty much nothing to do with skin tone. 60 years ago Italians and Greeks weren't white - not to mention Jews. Now they are, mostly. 50 years before that, Irish weren't "white" either - now that would be considered ridiculous.

At that time however the language was a great deal more flexible when race was overtly a cultural thing - until the American Museum folks and others came along and royally screwed things up by trying to convince people that there were biological markers of race, that it was something to take seriously as a biological construct in nature, not simply a bunch of social conventions. The "English race" the "Scottish race" and the "Japanese race" were all perfectly legitimate usages back in the day, whereas that usage has become tainted and impossible now.
posted by mikel at 9:15 AM on October 16, 2006

How good it would be if "Caucasian" would drop from use! "European-American" or "white" suits me.

Agreed. Or Anglo, best of all (at least here in California; not so good in Europe). Also I wish we could drop the inaccurate, misleading and historically loaded word "race" when what's being discussed is an ethnic group (as we're all members of the human race).
posted by Rash at 9:21 AM on October 16, 2006

How good it would be if "Caucasian" would drop from use! "European-American" or "white" suits me.

Agreed. Or Anglo, best of all (at least here in California; not so good in Europe). Also I wish we could drop the inaccurate, misleading and historically loaded word "race" when what's being discussed is an ethnic group (as we're all members of the human race).

I second that emotion, except for the Anglo part. We're not all of English descent, either. To be clear, I don't find the terms "Caucasian" or "Anglo" to be offensive, they're just inaccurate.
posted by donajo at 11:16 AM on October 16, 2006

One problem with the word "minority" is that it might be a transient condition.

As of right now, "minorities" are a majority in the state of California, for instance. Whites are now less than 50%. Which means that everyone in California is now a "minority". (Whites still represent a plurality, but there's no antonym for "plurality".)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:56 PM on October 16, 2006

I know I'm late to the party, but the number of people saying that it is useful to clump non-white people together has really stumped me. Maybe it's useful to clump immigrants together, but so many immigrants are white, and are purposely excluded from "people of colour." They are just as different culturally from white Canadians/American/Aussies/Brits/whatever, but we don't feel the need to clump them with the other immigrants because they look similar to us. "People of colour" is not a useful attempt to clump together similar people, I imagine that someone from South Africa may be more similar to a Canadian than to someone from small-town China, so why would they be included in the same group?
posted by arcticwoman at 10:14 AM on October 17, 2006

In the U.S., at least, the idea that "people of color"="immigrants" does not compute. The problems of racism are nowhere near as bad as they once were, and they exist to different degrees in different communities, but there are challenges in this country that people who are not white are generally more likely to face than people who are white. It is useful to be able to identify those challenges in order to combat them. It's also useful for people of color to work together to face their challenges -- and form supportive communities -- even though they are likely come from numerous ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 11:02 AM on October 17, 2006

It's also useful for people of color to work together to face their challenges -- and form supportive communities

I think it's also a useful reminder to white people that their ideas, policies, attitudes, issues, solutions, etc. may not be universal. I tend to see this a lot in feminist discussions, maybe partly because there's a (reasonable) belief that American feminists are focused on the problems of mainstream, upper-middle-class, straight, white women and therefore not necessarily taking into account the differing experiences of women outside those categories. So while it's not great to assume that "women of color" are a monolithic block of like-thinking individuals, being able to say, "Hey, this proposal or theory doesn't fit with the typical experiences, beliefs, or goals of women of color" can be helpful in combatting that tendency and making sure viewpoints from traditionally under-represented groups don't keep getting drowned out or outvoted.
posted by occhiblu at 12:59 PM on October 17, 2006

Maybe it's just the blogs that occhiblu reads, but I honestly cannot remember the last time I heard anyone use the phrase "people/person of color." I had thought that the phrase went away quite a while ago.

I was thinking that folks were using such phrases because they were afraid of saying "black people." Nowadays people seem to be more direct and to the point.
posted by drstein at 2:54 PM on October 17, 2006

If it helps, I almost always see it as "POC" or "WOC." Which may be why it's more miss-able.
posted by occhiblu at 7:33 PM on October 17, 2006

I just saw this blog post, The Rift That's Totally White, which I thought did a good job of demonstrating how "people of color" is used as a different category than "black" or "African-American" as well why the category can be psychologically and politically useful.
posted by occhiblu at 1:05 PM on October 18, 2006