I HATE the term “People of Color” and Will Never Use It. Here’s Why.
TL:DR
1. My social relationship to other supposed “people of color” does not exist past the fact that none of us are white.
2. Supposed “people of color” do not share a similar lived history in a country that was built on and fueled by anti-Blackness.
3. White people are not the center of MY universe, but the term “people of color” presupposes that to be true.
So, you want to be an ally? Be “politically correct?” Make sure that you’re inclusive? Diverse? Prioritizing representation? Etcetera, etcetera. Well, look no further than everyone’s favorite new term “people of color.” Want to know what you can do to help? STOP USING THE TERM. I get that the term is well-intentioned (currently), so let me explain.
Understanding how our language supports our oppression is the first step to decolonizing your thinking. First, what does the term “people of color” really mean? According to an article published in the Du Bois Review, “[o]riginally, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “people of color” designated an intermediate group in slave societies (the “free people of color”), while also serving as an umbrella category for non-whites, enslaved and free, including Blacks, those of mixed racial ancestry, and (in some contexts) the Indigenous.” There is conflicting information about how far about the usage of this term stretches and who it covers. What is clear is that for the majority of its historical usage, the term was intended to refer to Black people of some variety. Black lite and Black Black all could fall under this term.
Most frequently, in the United States in modern times, it describes any racial minority in the country.
This seems like any other term that has evolved over time. So why do I hate this term? Three major reasons.
1. My social relationship to other supposed “people of color” does not exist past the fact that none of us are white.
Professor Salvador Vidal-Ortiz explained in the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society: "People of color explicitly suggests a social relationship among racial and ethnic minority groups.”
But what is the social relationship between us? Besides oppression to varying degrees by a white-male oriented society? There is a cultural relationship that I feel I share with Black people. I find commonalities from language to mannerisms to point of views. Our kinship, even if fictive, is felt.
Outside of rolling our eyes at white non-sense, the social relationship that I share with a southeast Asian woman, for example, is very limited. Our food, our language, our way of dressing, our viewpoints on societal issues – these things overlap usually only to the extent that Black American culture has influenced the entire world in an unprecedented way. I’m not even going to get on my soapbox about the racism and anti-Blackness that we so frequently face from the other peoples of colors. Everyone who ain’t Black got smoke for us at one point or another.
So why are we being lumped together based only on the fact that we are both not white? I don’t view our relational distance from a center of whiteness as enough of a reason to lump people together. Now I had an interesting point of feedback from a friend at The Atlantic, who read this blog post in advance, that noted that there can be some value in essentially “banding together.” I take and understand this point. We all DO deal with shit from this white patriarchy, and we probably won’t ever be free of it without some level of unity. Which is why anti-Blackness is the weapon of choice to keep us divided, but I digress… Anywho, is unity accomplished by monolithic terminology? EHHHHH.
2. Supposed “people of color” do not share a similar lived history in a country that was built on and fueled by anti-Blackness.
My first point is not the only reason I dislike the reductive monolith that the term “people of color” attempts to create. The terminology, at least in the US (places like the UK or South Africa are a whole different beast that I do not have the expertise or lived experience to address), stems from references to Black people. Which takes me to my next point.
As the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper noted in November 1912 [excerpted by Kee Malesky in “The Journey From 'Colored' To 'Minorities' To 'People Of Color”]:
My first point is not the only reason I dislike the reductive monolith that the term “people of color” attempts to create. The terminology, at least in the US (places like the UK or South Africa are a whole different beast that I do not have the expertise or lived experience to address), stems from references to Black people. Which takes me to my next point.
As the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper noted in November 1912 [excerpted by Kee Malesky in “The Journey From 'Colored' To 'Minorities' To 'People Of Color”]:
"The statutes of Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas assert that 'a person of color' is one who is descended from a Negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor in each generation may have been white. According to the law of Alabama one is 'a person of color' who has had any Negro blood in his ancestry for five generations. ... In Arkansas 'persons of color' include all who have a visible and distinct admixture of African blood."
The term was used legally and socially as a way to continue to catch all the possible variations of Blackness in America that may have had the nerve to strive towards freedom. I hate that Black folks are lumped into the “people of color” category with other minorities now. The term originated as a way to describe us, but was enlarged as a euphemistic attempt to describe not just us, but other non-white people. That enlargement takes away from the lived experience of Black folks. We are absolutely a unique population of people in this country. There is no other racial minority that was forcibly relocated to this country, rather than migrated. There is no other racial minority that was enslaved writ large here. There is no other racial minority that was subjected to laws as deeply oppressive and repressive as the Jim Crow laws for as long a period of time. The basis of every single oppressive law, racist infrastructure, demeaning policy – hell, the basis of America itself – is not anti-person-of-colorness. It’s anti-Blackness. The way we were subjugated and oppressed created the playbook for racism against others in America: a subjugation that was often based on how proximate a group was to Blackness versus whiteness.
THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT OTHER NON-WHITE GROUPS HAVE NOT SUFFERED FROM RACISM OR OPPRESSION. I don’t even want to get into the genocide of Native Americans. Every group that is not white definitely shares some burden of historical animosity from the white majority in this country that has negatively impacted them as a group. What I am saying is that the position of Black Americans as a “commodity” seen as less than human for generation upon generation puts us in a wholly unique position that cannot be compared to any other group.
In explaining why it has replaced the phrase “people of color” with the term BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color], the YWCA notes that, “[t]he term ‘BIPOC’ is more descriptive than people of color or POC. It acknowledges that people of color face varying types of discrimination and prejudice. Additionally, it emphasizes that systemic racism continues to oppress, invalidate, and deeply affect the lives of Black and Indigenous people in ways other people of color may not necessarily experience. Lastly and significantly, Black and Indigenous individuals and communities still bear the impact of slavery and genocide.” That is a very nice way of saying, “we ain’t the same,” and I appreciate that. Something about bondage and genocide just hits different.
The math is simple, really. The people who were defined as 3/5s cannot be put into the same space as people who were at least always considered 1 whole.
3. White people are not the center of MY universe, but the term “people of color” presupposes that to be true.
I hit the unsubscribe button a long time ago on ideology that made white people the center of anything in my life, which is the biggest reason why I absolutely abhor the “— of color” terminology. If I am a person “of color” then who are the people? The plain ole regular people? The terminology implies that people are white. The term “of color” accepts and normalizes the idea that white people are the baseline and everyone else is….something else. What the fuck is that?
This is also why I don’t care if other Black people use and embrace the term. Many people simply have never critically thought about the underlying implications of it. I used to say “master bedroom” all the time until I realized who the “master” was historically (big yikes). Not that you can escape racism in the American English language, but hey. I try.
Why is whiteness the center of the universe and the rest of us all just orbiting entities of reduced importance? I reject THE FUCK out of that. No. I’m not some auxiliary person who isn’t white. And I’m not interchangeable with any other person who also happens to have some bit of melanin in their skin. I’m a Black person. A Black woman. A bad ass B**** who is absolutely Black and definitely not “of color.”
I am absolutely not, and never will be, a woman or person “of color.” And that’s just that on that.
