I don’t like the expression “people of color.” I see in it an attempt to appropriate the uniquely tragic history of African Americans for the self-pitying needs of willing and eager immigrants or their descendants.
Curiously, the only people I ever hear use this expression are quite comfortable economically. An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who washes dishes for $3.50 an hour will not refer to himself as “a person of color.” What would that even sound like in Spanish? At most, he might refer to himself as “latino” but even then would ensure that nobody conflate his experience with that of a Mexican or a Dominican (let alone a Pakistani or a Singaporean.)
Anything positive that might come out of the expression “people of color” is, I believe, erased by the damage created as a result of refusing to acknowledge the unparalleled nature, in both its history and today’s consequences, of African American suffering.
I understand that those who use the expression have no intention of strengthening racist discourses, but ultimately that’s the result. Everybody in their right mind has to acknowledge that the level of poverty, criminality, drug addiction and hopelessness is extremely high in African American communities. There are two narratives that explain this:
1. The racist narrative of black people being genetically predisposed, etc. etc.
2. The narrative that acknowledges that the unequaled violence inflicted on African Americans throughout their history as a group creates these effects.
The moment you reject the narrative of the unparalleled history of African Americans by collapsing them into the vague “people of color”, you automatically slip into the racist narrative of genetic predispositions because that’s all that there is left.
The favorite argument of all racists, by the way, is “But why do Asians do so well academically and economically while African Americans don’t?” This enormously annoying argument is based precisely on a refusal to see a difference between groups with the past and the present that don’t overlap.
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What about the term “African Americans” solely applying to black people? I have heard some white immigrants from Africa who naturalized in the US complaining because they considered their backgrounds just as much “African” if not more so than those black Americans whose ancestors have been American for generations.
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This is the problem with diasporas that are displaced multiple times. The descendents of German colonists to the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries were always considered Germans in the USSR. When they came to Germany in the 1990s the local Germans considered them all to be Russians.
The most interesting naming problem for diasporas I have encounted is that of African Americans in Africa. If by “returning” to Africa they coming “home” shouldn’t they just call themselves Africans? Yet there are very strong and wealthy African American organizations in Ghana composed of emigres that advocate for interests that are distinctly “American” and opposed to the African majority.
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It should be noted that academically the most successful group in the US are immigrants from Black Africa and their children. They have a higher percentage of PhDs among them than Asian immigrants. One would assume that anti-black racism including institutional forms would be just as great against such immigrants and their children as against the descendants of slaves. So the simple answer that black Americans due worse overall than Asians (really first and second generation Chinese and Koreans) because they suffer worse racism doesn’t explain everything. Immigrants from Nigeria and Ghana and their children do even better academically than those from China and Korea.
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Great point. Immigrants from Africa do not carry the burden of the history that African Americans do, so the result is different.
People are a product of their history, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not.
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I don’t like this term either, to me it sounds like lumping together all these different groups just because they’re not white, even though they probably hate each other. I have to laugh when anyone calls my family POC because although our parents were born in Cuba, our grandparents all came from Spain, the Canary islands and Galicia. We’re white racially but according to these folks we’re POC because our parents are from Latin America. I wonder what an Argentine who is white and of German or British descent must think of being called a Person of Color?
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There was a story a ways back of an Argentine woman of Volga German heritage winning some sort of Miss Latino award in Los Angeles and her father screaming across the hall in Spanish, “We are German not Latino!”
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There was a story a while back of an Argentine woman of Volga German descent winning a Miss Latino award in Los Angeles and her father shouting across the hall in Spanish, “We are Germans, not Latinos!”
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I know a professor from Mexico who is a daughter of immigrants from Germany and whose favorite thing to say is, “As a descendant of Aztecs, I . . .”
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The cynical part me of thinks the dude was trying to get some AA benefits and that people would take him seriously as a Mexican professor, after all whites can’t be Latinos sarc I’ve known white relatives of mine who don’t think of themselves as white and who consider themselves to be totally Hispanic, some of them told me to my face that they started doing it to get AA benefits because “Americans are stupid”, quote.
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In some academic circles, it’s fashionable to present oneself as a victim of some oppression. It always looks very funny because academics are very sheltered, comfortable people. This is not all academics, of course, but a certain loud and obnoxious faction.
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Then why did she enter in the first place? Cynically speaking, most of the contestants from Latin America in a beauty pageant are white girls and many don’lt even have Spanish surnames. Maybe the judges chose the whitest girl there like they always do, it’s fucking hypocritical.
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Many Argentineans are very attached to the vision of themselves as European to the point where even a statement like “Argentina is located in South America” makes them unhappy.
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Years ago, a Venezualan friend of mine told me that a common Latin American joke was “The best business in the world to be in is buying Argentinians for what they’re worth and selling them for what they think they’re worth.” 🙂
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Gosh, that would be a great way to turn a profit. 🙂
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“the unparalleled nature, in both its history and today’s consequences, of African American suffering”
You could make the argument that Native American suffering is comparable. Together with African Americans they are the only two groups that did not willing come to the US.
I do agree with the general point: “people of color” is a terrible term that is meant to give the well off a contact suffering high and/or progressive preening points.
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It got to the point where an academic who is whiter than I am told me that he considers himself a person of color because of the (purely imaginary) suffering he experienced in life. I almost barfed.
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I am glad someone else pointed out the Native American situation.
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Anything positive that might come out of the expression “people of color” is, I believe, erased by the damage created as a result of refusing to acknowledge the unparalleled nature, in both its history and today’s consequences, of African American suffering.
This refusal to acknowledge the unparalleled suffering and damage would exist whether people continued to use the term “people of color” or discontinued it altogether.
“People of color” is a term used for coalition building. It is a word for committees which is why it is clunky, annoying and reductive. I suppose the thinking is that if you’re going to get lumped into a giant non-white mass, you might as well get some kind of small advantage out of it. What is whiteness but a form of coalition building and a tacit agreement that “these are the people who will get the best treatment”? They’ve agreed to flatten out their national or linguistic identities to consolidate their power. This is why when everyone keeps going on about how white people will become a numerical minority in America by 2050, I simply don’t believe it will happen. Some other group which is not currently considered white will be considered white by then, and “white” will still be the majority.
Before African-Americans’ ancestors were transported here, they were not African, they were Igbo or Makongo or Yoruba whatever tribe or people they belonged to.
Native Americans weren’t some mass of Native Americans, they were Iroquois, Navajo, Cree, Chippewa, or whatever tribe or people they belonged to. Malinche didn’t have some pan-indigenous identity that she betrayed to translate for Cortes.
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““People of color” is a term used for coalition building. It is a word for committees which is why it is clunky, annoying and reductive. I suppose the thinking is that if you’re going to get lumped into a giant non-white mass, you might as well get some kind of small advantage out of it.”
Absolutely. This is an attempt to build togetherness and solidarity. I’m all for solidarity. However, the price that will be paid for this particular instance of solidarity might be too high. At least, if people want to keep using the term, they need to start thinking of ways to prevent it from underpinning the racist discourse of “something is wrong with African Americans.”
“This is why when everyone keeps going on about how white people will become a numerical minority in America by 2050, I simply don’t believe it will happen. Some other group which is not currently considered white will be considered white by then, and “white” will still be the majority.”
Great point!
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\ Some other group which is not currently considered white will be considered white by then, and “white” will still be the majority.”
Are Ashkenazi Jews considered white in USA? What about Sfaradi Jews?
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All people of Middle Eastern or North African as well as European origins in the US are white according to the official census and AA categories.
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Exactly. The popular imagination, however, doesn’t see them this way.
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\ Exactly. The popular imagination, however, doesn’t see them this way.
I asked about the popular imagination. 🙂
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It gets so weird. I’d be watching a TV newscast featuring red-haired and blond Syrian refugees and the person I’m watching with will keep insisting that they are not white. And the people would be right there, on the screen.
A more bizarre case was when am administrator listed me as a person of color because I had mentioned my Jewish origins. And you saw what I look like.
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It’s the religion, most Americans don’t think any Muslims can be white. If they were Christians, then people would think they were white. I’ve read stuff online where the posters don’t think Bosnians and Albanians are white or Europeans because they’re Muslims, if they were Christians people would automatically think they were white.
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Good point.
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Secret Squirrels have no colour because they’re trained to blend into whatever background they’ve encountered …
… but to tell the truth, for most of them, it really, really helps if the background is a bit beige-pink. 🙂
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