"person/people of colo[u]r"

[ed miliband]

what are the roots of this term? i mostly associate it with activist-y americans, but i recently saw it used in some (activist-y) british student communique.

tell me about it.

[ed miliband]

calling someone "coloured" isn't really considered very politically correct in britain, for a bit of context.

[¿Que?]

The logic is that the term "people of color" puts the person before the adjective as in a person is more than their race or ethnicity. As to where it came from, I have no idea, but my guess would be somewhere around the 60's or 70's universities.

Also, don't know if you've read this already. Might start you off
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color

[Jimmie Higgins]

I hate the term personally. It sounds condescending and it also just sounds like "colored people".:thumbdown:

but oh well, I hate battles over terminology more.

[ed miliband]

I hate the term personally. It sounds condescending and it also just sounds like "colored people".:thumbdown:

but oh well, I hate battles over terminology more.

oh for sure, it really makes me cringe, especially in the case of that communique or whatever; it's bad enough, it's even worse when used by people in a country where the term is not used at all. my use of "activist-y" to describe the people who use it wasn't positive.

[Devrim]

the term "people of color" puts the person before the adjective as in a person is more than their race or ethnicity.

Are you serious?

Perhaps we should all start to speak French.

Devrim

[¿Que?]

Are you serious?

Perhaps we should all start to speak French.

Devrim
That's what someone explained to me at uni, but to be fair, I wasn't able to verify it with wikipedia nor did I really try to verify it anywhere else.

[Igor]

I don't know, the term really sound pretty archaic and antiquated to my ears. I personally wouldn't use it and it sounds odd when I hear Americans using it, I guess it's not necessarily a discriminatory term but I still get Jim Crow era vibes from it because I have never really heard it being used nowadays. Wasn't it also used by the apartheid South Africa?

And the term still pretty much has most of the problems just using "black" or "white" has, because the social constructs of race don't really have that much to do with your actual pigment, as we see from categorization of East Asians, for example. Also I don't really like the way how the term does treat being "white" as somehow the standard, with those outside the standard being "coloured".

[Zav]

Fuck defining people by their skin pigmentation.

The acceptable word for people with dark skin has evolved from 'Niggers/Negroes' to 'Coloreds' to 'Blacks' to 'People of Color' to 'African-Americans' (Will they call me a European-American because that's where my ancestors were born? I think not.), and it will keep changing until the concept behind it, that is the pseudoscientific idea of 'race', is destroyed.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Fuck defining people by their skin pigmentation.

The acceptable word for people with dark skin has evolved from 'Niggers/Negroes' to 'Coloreds' to 'Blacks' to 'People of Color' to 'African-Americans' (Will they call me a European-American because that's where my ancestors were born? I think not.), and it will keep changing until the concept behind it, that is the pseudoscientific idea of 'race', is destroyed.

It didn't mearly evolve. People had to fight for "Black" and "Afro-American". "African-American" and "person of color" came out of the PC era and have never quite been as universally accepted - I think because it originated (probably) in Universities or liberal organizations. Most black people in Oakland just say "black" or "folks".

I feel much more comfortable using terms that came from struggle and were fought for by the oppressed group themselves rather than some term that is used pretty much only by college-educated people and activists. But I think aside from all that, the term might be an attempt by some to get away from speaking about racism only in terms of anti-black racism. I still think it's inadequate and I think it's easy enough to discuss racism against specific groups or multiple groups without the term.

[Zav]

It didn't mearly evolve. People had to fight for "Black" and "Afro-American". "African-American" and "person of color" came out of the PC era and have never quite been as universally accepted - I think because it originated (probably) in Universities or liberal organizations. Most black people in Oakland just say "black" or "folks".

I feel much more comfortable using terms that came from struggle and were fought for by the oppressed group themselves rather than some term that is used pretty much only by college-educated people and activists. But I think aside from all that, the term might be an attempt by some to get away from speaking about racism only in terms of anti-black racism. I still think it's inadequate and I think it's easy enough to discuss racism against specific groups or multiple groups without the term.
I know that. I didn't specify how it evolved. No disrespect was intended towards those people who fought and possibly died for the words.

I don't generally use any of these terms, but when I must I use 'blacks', because it seems the most polite, and always in quotation marks, because it's silly.

[znk666]

The only race i know is human.

[harte.beest]

"Colored" is an American term, it was popularized by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) which started after the Springfield race riot of 1908, the movement grew in strength after it successfully banned the KKK film "Birth of a nation" from several major cities.

The NAACP still exists today, it's headquartered in Baltimore, MD with over 300,000 members
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naacp


The term "colored" appeared in North America during the colonial era. A "colored" man halted a runaway carriage that was carrying President John Tyler on March 4, 1844. In 1851 an article in the New York Times referred to the "colored population". In 1863, the War Department established the "Bureau of Colored Troops." The first 12 Census counts in the U.S. enumerated "colored" people, who totaled nine million in 1900. The Census counts of 1910–1960 enumerated "negroes."

Today it is generally no longer regarded as a politically correct term. This history term is used in the acronym NAACP. Carla Sims, communications director for the NAACP in Washington, D.C., said "The term 'colored' is not derogatory, {however, all have color}, {[the NAACP]} chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used at that time. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive."

[Lobotomy]

I usually just stick to "non-white people" instead of "people of color" when I need a term to that effect.

[Luís Henrique]

Ah, political correction... the never-ending attempt to reform the world through terminology. :rolleyes:

In Brazil, "pessoa de cor" is widely perceived as an euphemism - a way to call a person Black without using the word "Black". As such, it is despised by the Black movement, which seeks to afirm the blackness of Blacks - Negros in Portuguese - as a positive thing.

Luís Henrique

[danyboy27]

In english, colored peoples.
In french personne(person) de couleur(of color).

I dont hear the term in Quebec verry much, people here are more straightfoward when designating someone beccause of his/her phenotipical traits.

if he black, people just say the black, if arab, the arab, that arab dude, if he is asian, that asian person.

Most people are polite and try to avoid calling people by their look tho, it sound just goddamn racist.

à tout(e) le monde is a much more inclusive formula, its basically mean: to all.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Are you serious?

I think it's fair to assume that's the thought behind it. Que didn't explicitly say he supported that way of looking at it.


Here in Norway the PC expression for "white" people is "ethnic Norwegians" whatever that's supposed to mean. Even worse: we have a "neutral" expression for "foreigners" -- "foreign looks". It's used by the news channels for example: "A man, supposedly with foreign looks, are on the run after robbing a store yesterday" etc. How the fuck is that supposed to mean anything? How the hell does a foreigner look like?

[#FF0000]

idk. i think it's an alright word to use when talking about more than one ethnicity. "Minorities" doesn't really work. "Non-white" sounds just as fucked up (should we call women "non-male"?).

I've seen activists of all backgrounds use the term, except, really, for white people, for some reason.


In Brazil, "pessoa de cor" is widely perceived as an euphemism - a way to call a person Black without using the word "Black". As such, it is despised by the Black movement, which seeks to afirm the blackness of Blacks - Negros in Portuguese - as a positive thing.

People aren't just black and white though, which is kind of the idea.

[Manic Impressive]

(should we call women "non-male"?).
Look at the word, we all ready do. It's from the old English which was something along the lines of wifemen or wifman in the singular. A man who is not a man but a wife man.

[#FF0000]

yeah the etymology thing might be true but I don't think that's especially relevant to how the word is used now.

[NewLeft]

To emphasize the visible in minority.

[Pretty Flaco]

i did see a thread on here in which someone used the term people of color and i mistook them for saying colored people. honestly i dont like it. it just sounds old, plus what about lighter skinned ethnic minorities that have just as much color as white people? like chinese and arabs?

[tachosomoza]

I'm a person of color, and that's my preferred term. We are people who are black, brown, reddish brown, yellowish brown, beige, or a million other combinations. So, we are people who have a "different" skin complexion, or are otherwise not considered "fully white". Individuals of partial or full African, East/South Asian, Native American, Latino or any other "non European" descent along with mixed race people are considered "people of color", because we aren't considered or phenotypically aren't fully Western European in origin. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, individuals who were of Southern European (Italian, Cypriot, Greek), Eastern European or Jewish descent weren't considered "white" by the Anglo descended individuals who ran (and still do run) this country, so they were people of color as well. Essentially, if you aren't of old school Northwestern European, WASP stock (English, French, German, Dutch, or Scandinavian), you're a person of color in this country or your ancestors were.

These are people of color.

http://harlemcondolife.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/powell.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Libyan_Arabs.jpg

http://www.mdkidspage.org/images/AnthonyBrownS.jpg

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/ellis-island/italian-women.jpg