"People of Colour"

[ajva]

The term "people of colour" annoys me a bit, and I've just thought of a good analogy to explain why.

You see, I'm a person of colour too: in my case, pinkish with definite overtones of red, particularly after I've had my first glass of wine following a week or so of abstinence.

The analogy is this: there are those of a posh English persuasion who seem to genuinely believe that they speak English "without an accent". As if their mode of speech were the default, and all others are deviant. And yet everybody else would describe them as having, ipso facto, a posh English accent. Simple.

You see what I'm saying?

Do you reckon I'm overthinking this, or would you agree? Or is this in fact a well-known gripe and I'm just massively behind the curve? Or maybe you think it's useful to have a catch-all term for people who are not "white" in order to talk about various kinds of racist oppression? If so, what should it be?

Comments

[adjectivegail]

It is a well-known fact that "people of colour" is a problematic term.

Yes, one of the problems with dialogue about oppression and power dynamics is the presence of defaults - for example if I said "I was talking to my colleague", many people would assume I meant white, male, able-bodied, cis gendered, maybe relatively young, etc, etc.

The useful catch-all terms that we already have as being widely accepted to talk about different kinds of racist oppression including "BME", "non-white", and depending on the social group, "POC".

Frankly I'm glad that you clarify in the comments that you're not trying to say "but what about the white people", because your original post DOES come off that way.

Good comments above are so far good.

[adjectivegail]

Sorry, feeling particularly sensitive about all this at the moment because my predominantly white neighbourhood, who previously had BNP candidates (thankfully for neighbouring ward, but not much better) selectively leafleting on our high street, has been opposing a mosque planning application for the last couple of years claiming that it's nothing to do with not wanting that sort of people in the area but it's all about how the already-awful traffic would be so much worse on Friday afternoons and clearly there's no local need for a mosque because we don't already have one - well the building in question was painted with a swastika last night.

Plus our white business manager is basically currently bullying our black team admin.

Plus my line manager doesn't like our unit director and said "I had no idea Chinese poeple could be so cutthroat" and now I have to wonder how far that kind of shit pervades her thinking

Plus yesterday I had to hit someone with the Intent! It's fucking magic! link, and in reply I got HOW DARE YOU, I already said I didn't know any better why are you so meeeeeeeannn...

I am basically done with this shit for a while.

[ellemir.livejournal.com]

Crap!
I am sorry that you are having to deal with all this shit. If anything I said offends I'd rather know so I can put things right. And by that I mean apologise and take time to work out what I need to change in myself and my thinking.

But that shouldn't just be down to you. I hope anyone would call me on it. What you are saying hits home as I worry about my sister growing up and dealing with exactly the attitudes you are dealing with.

Regarding the Mosque, I have recently received a similar petition regarding a new gym that has opened in our very small and busy road.
It was worded in terms of concern about our already problematic parking, but they took great care to include the clearly non English names of the new Business owners in such a way that it was clear that this was supposed to influence our thinking. Of course there is also the fact that the instigators own the established gym at the other end of the street so want to avoid competition. Gah!

[adjectivegail]

Thank you but no, the comments here were great and thoughtful and sensitive and stuff. Just it still hit sore spots because around this issue I'm currently one giant sore spot and hypersensitive. I should probably not even have commented, but my perception (which I now acknowledge could have been wrong but yesterday I was a bit to knee-jerk to consider) was that everyone in the discussion so far was white and while that's not the post's or commenters' faults, and like I said the comments are thoughtful and good, see above re sore spot. Anyway, thank you but it's all good (apart from the actual racism in our examples, obvs).