Person of color

The term "person of color" (plural: people of color, persons of color; sometimes abbreviated POC)[1] is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the United States; however since the 2010s it has been adopted elsewhere in the Anglosphere (often as person of colour), including relatively limited usage in the United Kingdom,[2] Canada,[3] Australia,[4] Ireland,[5] South Africa,[6] and Singapore.[7]

For the historic term for a non-white person, see Colored. For the Southern African ethnic group, see Coloureds.
See also: Definitions of whiteness in the United States

In the United States, people of color include African Americans, Latino Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islander Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, and multiracial Americans, though members of these communities may prefer to view themselves through their cultural identities rather than color-related terminology. The term emphasizes common experiences of systemic racism, which some communities have faced.[8][9] The term may also be used with other collective categories of people such as "communities of color", "men of color" (MOC), "women of color" (WOC),[10] or "librarians of color".[11] The acronym BIPOC refers to black, indigenous, and other people of color and aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people.

The term "colored" was originally equivalent in use to the term "person of color" in American English, but usage of the appellation "colored" in the Southern United States gradually came to be restricted to "negroes",[12] and is now considered a racial pejorative.[13] Elsewhere in the world and in other dialects of English the term may have entirely different connotations, however; for example in South Africa, "Coloureds" refers to multiple multiracial ethnic groups and is sometimes applied to other groups in Southern Africa, such as the Basters of Namibia.

History

The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style cites usage of "people of colour" as far back as 1796. It was initially used to refer to light-skinned people of mixed African and European heritage.[10] French colonists used the term gens de couleur ("people of color") to refer to people of mixed African and European descent who were freed from slavery in the Americas.[14] In South Carolina and other parts of the Deep South, this term was used to distinguish between slaves who were mostly "black" or "negro" and free people who were primarily "mulatto" or "mixed race".[15] After the American Civil War, "colored" was used as a label exclusively for black Americans, but the term eventually fell out of favor by the mid-20th century.[10]

Although American activist Martin Luther King Jr. used the term "citizens of color" in 1963, the phrase in its current meaning did not catch on until the late 1970s.[16][17] In the late 20th century, the term "person of color" was introduced in the United States in order to counter the condescension implied by the terms "non-white" and "minority",[18] and racial justice activists in the U.S., influenced by radical theorists such as Frantz Fanon, popularized it at this time.[19] By the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was in wide circulation.[19] Both anti-racist activists and academics sought to move the understanding of race beyond the black-white dichotomy then prevalent.[20]

The phrase "women of color" was developed and introduced for wide use by a group of black women activists at the National Women's Conference in 1977.[21] The phrase was used as a method of communicating solidarity between non-white women that was, according to Loretta Ross, not based on "biological destiny" but instead a political act of naming themselves.[21]

In the twenty-first century use of the term and the "of color" categorization continued to proliferate: for example, the Joint Council of Librarians of Color (JCLC), a recurring conference of the American Library Association, formed from the organization's five ethnic affiliate associations: the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, the American Indian Library Association, the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, the Chinese American Librarians Association, and REFORMA: The National Association to Promote Library & Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking.[11]

BIPOC

The acronym BIPOC, referring to "black, indigenous, and people of color", first appeared around 2013.[22] By June 2020, it had become more prevalent on the internet,[23] as racial justice awareness grew in the US in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. The term aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people, which is argued to be superlative and distinctive in U.S. history at the collective level.[24] The BIPOC Project promotes the term in order "to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black (African Americans) people have, which shapes the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within a U.S. context."[25] The term makes a distinction between Black people and "people of color".

Political significance

According to Stephen Satris of Clemson University, in the United States there are two main racial divides. The first is the "black–white" delineation; the second racial delineation is the one "between whites and everyone else" with whites being "narrowly construed" and everyone else being called "people of color".[26] Because the term "people of color" includes vastly different people with only the common distinction of not being white, it draws attention to the perceived fundamental role of racialization in the United States. Joseph Tuman of San Francisco State University argues that the term "people of color" is attractive because it unites disparate racial and ethnic groups into a larger collective in solidarity with one another.[27]

Use of the term "person of color", especially in the United States, is often associated with the social justice movement.[28] Style guides from the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style,[29] the Stanford Graduate School of Business,[30] and Mount Holyoke College[31] all recommend the term "person of color" over other alternatives. Unlike "colored", which historically referred primarily to black people and is often considered offensive, "person of color" and its variants refer inclusively to all non-European peoples—often with the notion that there is political solidarity among them—and, according to one style guide, "are virtually always considered terms of pride and respect."[10]

Criticism

Many critics, both whites and non-whites, of the term object to its lack of specificity and find the phrase racially offensive.[32][33][34][35] It has been argued that the term lessens the focus on individual issues facing different racial and ethnic groups.[36] Particularly African Americans.[37] Preserving "whiteness" as an in-tact category while lumping every other racial group into an indiscriminate category ("of color") can replicate the very marginalization the term was intended to counter.[38] Other commentators state that the term people of color is a misnomer and a arbitrary term in which people who are white are mislabeled as people of color.[37] People of color also encompasses various heterogeneous groups which have little in common.[39] Some arguing that American culture as a whole does not deliberate on economic inequality or issues of class.[39] The term has also been criticized for its uncanny resemblance to the pejorative term "Colored Person".

White Hispanic and Latino Americans
Main article: White Hispanic and Latino Americans

Misuse of the term has come under fire because it is an inaccurate modifier for White Hispanic and Latino Americans and Spaniards, neither of whom are people of color.[40][41][42] Applying the term this way incorrectly racializes this segment of the Hispanic demographic, projecting "coloredness" (or non-Europeanness) onto people who are, in fact, of European extraction. This is particularly (although not exclusively) true in the case of Spaniards and Latino Americans from South American countries with large proportions of White Latin Americans. While many Latinos are indeed "people of color," many are not, as "latino" is a pan-ethnic label and statistext rather than a racial category.[43] In the U.S. context, the Latino group with the highest proportion of self-identifying whites are Cuban-Americans, with 85.4% identifying as white.[44]

While the indiscriminate labeling of all latinos as "people of color" underscores common struggles in a racialized society, it obscures the vast racial inequalities that exist within the latino population itself; for this reason, many, both in and out of the latino community, have found the term unhelpful and misleading.[45][46] The racialization of latinos in the U.S. has created a situation in which it is possible to be racially "white" while being misperceived as "a person of color"—an intermediary predicament akin to that which Irish Americans and Italian Americans, among others, found themselves in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries respectively.[47][48]

See also

References
  1. Jackson, Yo (2006). Encyclopedia of Multicultural Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. p. 77. ISBN 9781412909488. For example, the person of color (POC) racial identity model describes racial identity development for people of color...
  2. Askari, Javahir (10 October 2019). "The Political Correctness of 'People of Colour'". Political Animal Magazine. this year Amber Rudd had to apologise for calling fellow MP Diana Abbott a ‘coloured woman’ and admitted the term was ‘outdated and offensive’... The politically correct term at present is ‘People of Colour’ (abbreviated to PoC).
  3. Adam, Mohammed (11 June 2020). "Adam: Why the term 'people of colour' is offensive to so many". Ottawa Citizen. it is inevitable that Canadians will absorb and be influenced by aspects of American culture – good and bad. But one that, regrettably, Canadian media are adopting with increasing regularity is the American term “people of colour” to describe all those who are not white.
  4. Pearson, Luke (1 December 2017). "Who identifies as a person of colour in Australia?". ABC Radio National. POC, which stands for person of colour, is a term I have heard used more and more in Australia over the past few years, especially online.
  5. Freyne, Patrick (18 June 2020). "People of colour in Ireland need allies 'not bystanders'". The Irish Times. Dr Ebun Joseph held an online conversation with people of colour living in Ireland.
  6. Pillay, Verashni (23 February 2015). "Six things white people have that black people don't". Mail & Guardian. Guess what else most people of colour in this country have to pay for once they get their first job?
  7. Thanapal, Sangeetha (4 March 2015). "Chinese Privilege, Gender and Intersectionality in Singapore: A Conversation between Adeline Koh and Sangeetha Thanapal". b2o: an online journal. As a person of colour living in a supposedly decolonized Singapore, I would say that what makes our struggles markedly different from minorities in the West is that we have to deal with Whiteness on top of Chinese supremacy.
  8. Franklin, Anderson J.; Boyd-Franklin, Nancy; Kelly, Shalonda (2006). "Racism and Invisibility". Journal of Emotional Abuse. 6 (2–3): 9–30. doi:10.1300/J135v06n02_02. ISSN 1092-6798. S2CID 142971567.
  9. Alvin N. Alvarez; Helen A. Neville (1 March 2016). The Cost of Racism for People of Color: Contextualizing Experiences of Discrimination. Amer Psychological Assn. ISBN 978-1-4338-2095-3.
  10. Houghton Mifflin Company (2005). The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style (PDF). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 356.
  11. Landgraf, Greg (2018-01-02). "Blazing Trails". American Libraries. Archived from the original on 2018-01-04. Retrieved 2019-01-14.
  12. Trigger, Bruce G. (1978). Northeast. Smithsonian Institution. p. 290. Retrieved 8 April 2017.
  13. Butterly, Amelia (2015-01-27). "Warning: Why using the term 'coloured' is offensive". BBC Newsbeat. Retrieved 2019-09-25.
  14. Brickhouse, Anna (2009). Transamerican Literary Relations and the Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere. Cambridge University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0521101011.
  15. Powers, Bernard. Black Charlestonians: a Social History 1822-1885. University of Arkansas Press, 1994
  16. William Safire (November 20, 1988). "On language: People of color". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
  17. "The Black Press at 150", editorial, The Washington Post, March 18, 1977
  18. Christine Clark, Teja Arboleda (1999). Teacher's Guide for in the Shadow of Race: Growing Up As a Multiethnic, Multicultural, and "Multiracial" American. Routledge. p. 17. The term People of Color emerged in reaction to the terms "non-white" and "minority." … The term people of color attempts to counter the condescension implied in the other two."
  19. Rinku Sen (2007-07-10). "Are Immigrants and Refugees People of Color?". ColorLines. Archived from the original on 2010-04-18. Retrieved 2008-12-08.
  20. Elizabeth Martinez (May 1994). "Seeing More Than Black & White". Z Magazine. Retrieved 2008-06-27.
  21. Wade, Lisa. "Loretta Ross on the Phrase "Women of Color"". Sociological Images. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  22. Garcia, Sandra E. (June 17, 2020). "Where Did BIPOC Come From?". New York Times. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
  23. Garcia, Sandra E. (June 16, 2020). "Where Did BIPOC Come From?". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
  24. Sager, Jessica (June 9, 2020). "What Does BIPOC Stand For? What the Phrase Means and Why It's So Important". Parade. Archived from the original on 2020-06-09.
  25. "The BIPOC Project". Retrieved 10 June 2020.
  26. Satris, Stephen (1995). "'What Are They?'". In Zack, Naomi (ed.). American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 55–56. ISBN 978-0847680139. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  27. Tuman, Joseph S. (2003). Communicating terror. SAGE. ISBN 978-0-7619-2765-5.
  28. Maurianne Adams; Lee Anne Bell; Pat Griffin (1997). Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook. Psychology Press. p. 98. ISBN 978-0-415-91057-6.
  29. Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 319
  30. "Stanford Graduate School of Business Writing and Editing Style Guide" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2012. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
  31. Mount Holyoke College. "Editorial Style Guide". Retrieved 18 September 2010.
  32. Adebola Lamuye (31 July 2017). "I am no 'person of colour', I am a black African woman". The Independent. Retrieved 2018-01-23.
  33. Bland, Trinity (April 14, 2020). "Opinion: The term 'people of color' fails to be properly inclusive of the black community".
  34. "Adam: Why the term 'people of colour' is offensive to so many". ottawacitizen.
  35. Young, Damon. "The Phrase "People of Color" Needs to Die". GQ.
  36. "As a black woman, I hate the term 'people of colour'". 2018-04-22.
  37. Holzman 2015.
  38. "Readers React: The problem with 'people of color': It implies whiteness is the default". Los Angeles Times. May 4, 2019.
  39. Khan 2020.
  40. Lucía Benavides (9 February 2020). "Why Labeling Antonio Banderas A 'Person Of Color' Triggers Such A Backlash". NPR. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
  41. Laborde, Antonia (January 17, 2020). "Is Spain's Antonio Banderas an 'actor of color'?". EL PAÍS.
  42. García, Beatriz (September 24, 2020). ""Hispanic?" New York Times article creates controversy in Spain". AL DÍA News.
  43. https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/1997standards.html
  44. Sharon R. Ennis; Merarys Ríos-Vargas; Nora G. Albert (May 2011). "The Hispanic Population: 2010" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. p. 14 (Table 6). Retrieved 2011-07-11.
  45. Fowler, Yara Rodrigues (November 5, 2020). "Yara Rodrigues Fowler | White Latinos · LRB 5 November 2020". LRB Blog.
  46. Falcon, Angelo (April 3, 2018). "Latinos and the "Of Color" Problem". AL DÍA News.
  47. Steinberg, Stephen (November 1, 1999). "Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race by Matthew Frye Jacobson". American Journal of Sociology. 105 (3): 889–890. doi:10.1086/210385 – via journals.uchicago.edu (Atypon).
  48. "WORKING TOWARD WHITENESS | Kirkus Reviews" – via www.kirkusreviews.com.


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