communities of color

[David Metevia]

"For us, "people of color" is a term of coalition, signaling our common
cause with each other in the fight against racism."

This makes sense to me. However, I am looking for a better term as we are
all people of color - even albinos have color.

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 1:40 PM, Indigo Som <indigo at well.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Indigo Som <indigo at WELL.COM>
> Subject:      communities of color
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>
> Regarding this pair of questions:
> How common is it to regard "X of color" as excluding Asians?
> "How common is it for Asians, particularly the Chinese, to regard 'X
> of color' as including Asians?"
>
> These are my experiences (speaking as middle-aged Berkeley lefty Chinese
> American):
>
> Different interpretations of "of color" correlate most of all to political
> identity & secondarily to class, especially level of education.
>
> "of color" as applied to all people who are not of European descent
> remains a PC term used & understood by us PC folk: liberals, progressives,
> radicals of all ages & ethnicities. We tend to be more educated & more
> fluent in English. For us, "people of color" is a term of coalition,
> signaling our common cause with each other in the fight against racism.
>
> "of color" meaning only African American is used/understood by a group of
> people who seem to be 1) born earlier than approx. mid 1950s, 2) usually
> African American, but occasionally white. (It may well be that I simply
> don't encounter those older white people who use/understand the term that
> way.) Also, perhaps 3) not particularly political & 4) not highly educated?
>
> Among Asian Americans, immigrants who struggle with English as a second
> language would usually not recognize "of color" as applying to themselves,
> unless their smartass child comes back from college & tells them so ;) Or
> they learn it from their union organizer.
>
> Not all of us smartass Asian American kids come back from college w/ this
> information. Campus Christian types might understand "of color" to include
> Asians when someone else says it, but in my day (20+ years ago) they were
> highly unlikely to say it themselves. I suspect this has not changed much
> to the present day.
>
> Likewise among Latinos, the Mexican immigrant cleaning the roof gutters is
> less likely to say, understand or identify as "of color" than the Xicana
> lawyer who is fighting on his behalf. But her mainstream "Hispanic"
> law-school classmate now working in corporate law is highly unlikely to
> call herself a woman of color.
>
> In my 20s in the early 1990s I remember advertising for a "woman of color"
> housemate, only to be puzzled by the stream of working-class, middle-aged
> Black women who responded.
>
>
> Someone also asked if Jews are "of color". In my angry young woman days I
> used to get in *huge* fights with Jews of European descent who styled
> themselves people of color. Their argument: oppression based on ethnic
> identity=person of color. My argument: there are different kinds of
> oppression; anti-semetism is one kind; & racism is another kind, the
> specific form that creates the need for the term "people of color" in the
> first place. (Why the volatility? To say you are a person of color when you
> are white is to deny -- & thus duck responsibility for -- your white-skin
> privilege. A big no-no!) There are of course Jews of color, lots of them.
> They weren't the ones I was arguing with.
>
> Okay... there's my handful of data points for you language geeks :) Back
> to lurking.
>
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