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.
Clarissa's Blog 
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