A Rant, of Colour

[aggienaut]

The other day I was talking to my friend, who's majoring in Women's Studies. She mentioned that the thesis she was working on was something along the lines of "Exclusion of Women of Colour From the Women's Rights Movement" or some such. The term "people of colour" has always bothered me. I see several things wrong with it:

(1) It assumes a us-versus-them worldview of everyone versus persons of European descent.
(2) It defines people not by who they are, but who they're NOT.
(3) It assumed caucasians are "colourless," which is really pretty arbitrary
(4) It sets caucasians as the benchmark by which other people are defined (ie, having more "colour" than them)
(5) As opposed to more accurate terms like "minorities" it cannot be used to describe minority demographic tensions in places where both groups might be considered "of colour" such as the numourous ethnic tensions throughout Africa and well, anywhere else in the world pretty much.

My friend asked me what term I would use in place of "of colour," to which I said "minorities?" She proceeded claim that phrase was "dehumanizing" because it was a cold statistic that described people as not being the majority or some such (which she seemed to allege was an inhernetly pejorative prospect). I think this is really silly. Minority political groups never flinch at being called the political "minority," and their primary interest is in seeing that they are taken seriously and so forth. The argument went round and round but I really don't see how describing people by how much melanin they have in their skin compared to persons of European descent is exceedingly questionable.

I know that some scholars in related majors have espoused the "of colour" term, and their convoluted justifications are served up assembly-line style to students like my friend in liberal majors. My hypothesis, however, is that this term originated among people of minority groups who didn't think too hard about it and did in fact take a primarily us-versus-them view of "white people," but then scholars who were proud of their minority groups (which is fine) and wanted to justify everything they did (which is questionable) came up with their convoluted explanations of how "of colour" somehow makes sense as a politically viable term. And while in these liberal majors they spend their time stringently criticizing mainstream culture (which is fine), I think they are extremely reluctant to criticize one another, leading to a large scale groupthink scenario where you're a traitor to the revolution if you dare question the term "people of colour."

Comments

[misterschmoo.livejournal.com]

I think one of the problems with the word colour to describe a group is that it is country specific, in North America it means people who are black, whereas in South Africa it means people who are not black and not white, ie everybody else, a group incidently completely left out of affirmative action and other initiatives for black africans, still treated like second class citizens but afforded no help.

I fail to see how you can argue that the word colour has less negative connotations than the word colour historicaly.

I think the term "people of colour" as a term is vague, however one can identify themselves however they wish, personally, I would suggest that it would be more useful for one to describe one's ethnicity specifically, ie European, African, Malay, Chinese etc. I can't imagine your average Chinese person wanting to be described as a "person of yellow".

I don't much like the term "white" as this simply describes my skin colour and not my ethnicity at all, which has parts Swedish and parts Sioux Indian among other things.

If we are to argue that one cannot help the ethnicity one is born with then that arguement goes both ways, it's not my fault I may have been afforded certain oppourtunitys because of the colour of my skin, because I have no control over that.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

In re "however one can identify themselves however they wish," I think once we realized we weren't going to convince one another, my friend said "anyway, thats how many of them define themselves so I'm using it." The problem is, for example, some people define themselves as the master race or an obscure indo-european ethnicity they really have nothing to do with (Which incidentally, caused Persia to change its name to Iran in the 1930s in order to please Hitler and make the point that they were also of his "master race," I doubt it swayed him much). So one can see that how people define themselves is not always the best guide for what we should call them ourselves.

[colt-4-5.livejournal.com]

Its like the joke where a person of "colour" is talking to a white man saying "when your sick your green, when your scared your white, when your cold your blue, when your hot your red and you have the nerve to call me coloured!?
Im from a small northwestern ontario town where people are either white, or native. There is also small numbers of other cultures too, then moving to southern ontario and walking around downtown Toronto was quite the eye opening experience for me. I noticed that in a large urban metropolis, there is no minority. You look at one person and their Asian, another is Jamaican, another is east Indian and so on. In some neighborhoods you'll see more of one culture than another, Greek town, China town.. you get the picture. I didnt realize how multicultural this country was until I moved down here. For the first 4 months I was here I worked at one of the steel mills in Hamilton and I met people from countries I didnt even know existed. I guess the point im trying to make is when I hear someone say "person of colour" I think to myself colour really dosent mean anything to me anymore because it just dosent make sense. Im "white" but that dosent describe who I am. Im english, scottish, irish, german, polish, swiss, and I have a great grandfather who left my pregnant great grandmother at the alter so only god knows where he was from.

[distort-japan.livejournal.com]

luckily trivial bullshit like that seems to be exclusive to the realm of academia over here

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess it mostly is here, or at least its in exceedingly high concentrations in academia. Even if you avoid the majors where they teach about that kind of thing, people force it on you with like "People of Colour Pride Day" and try to give you mandatory "diversity training" in which they tell you to use the term and all kinds of such really strange things.

[distort-japan.livejournal.com]

haha, i hope thats not a national holiday

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

haha no but at university one group or another had declared every single week something week, something awareness week, or something pride week, etc.

Gosh, we humans love a good binary

[ankhst.livejournal.com]

Wow. Clearly her department doesn't address race the same as ours. That topic wouldn't be accepted at Canterbury.

just off the top of my head, here are a few.
The exclusion of:
non-white ethnicities...
non-european ethnic groups...

If she's doing black/african-american specifically, then she should state the racial identity, not use a broard term like 'people of colour.'

The problem with the 'coloured' term, is that it has a long cultural history . It has been used mostly to mean black vs white, while allowing non-black-non-white races to be crammed into the powerless side of the binary. It allows those of European descent to place themselves above everyone else at one, while allowing the 'Othered' to have a sense of solidarity. Unfortunately, seeing race as a fixed, binary thing perpetuates the ideology of difference and exclusion, rather than challenging its constructed nature.

Did you know, that in some African countries the identity of 'White' and black are not racial terms, but economic (ie. the wealthy and powerful are white, even if they have dark skin)?

Re: Gosh, we humans love a good binary

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately this isn't exclusive to her department either, I've heard plenty of people holler about "people of colour" at my own school. I think it must be a regular part of the curriculum of Gender Studies, African American Studies, Chicano Studies, Womens Studies and other such majors that primarily focus on politically vulnerable groups here d=

Re: Gosh, we humans love a good binary

[ankhst.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sadly, it's a fairly ingrained term in the U.S. At Canterbury, we group all of those topics into a rather inappropriately named Gender Studies dept. (although we also have a Maori dept, but that's as much about language and culture as politics).

In the Gend dept. we look at the politics of exclusion and Othering in any area (gender, race, class, ethnicity, education, disability, sexuality etc), as the mechanisms are the same. We also look at ways of addressing and challenging all forms of Othering, hopefully without excluding or minoritising someone else in the process. We also look at how these categories are created and why, and how they impact on individual and cultural identity. Of course "coloured [people]" is not a term we ever use in NZ (as a rule). We use vague terms (as listed above) or very specific, because every label carries certain power-relation connotations, and we want to reduce those, or make their use very transparent.

Even affirmative action is seen as counter productive. Have you ever noticed how, if you give someone a quota to stick to, they won't attempt to exceed it? We have systems in place to prevent discrimination in employment that mean that if challenged about an appointment, employers must be able to say why a person was not chosen, and they can not include anything irrelevant to doing the actual job (youth peer support workers can be age limited, but teacher/nurse/shop assistant etc can't).

Re: Gosh, we humans love a good binary

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

sounds like you guys have a much more intelligent approach to it than they do here!

Them crazy colored folk...

[giographix.livejournal.com]

A black man talks to a white man:
When I was born I was black.
When I grew up I was black.
When I'm sick I'm black.
When I go in the sun I'm black.
When I'm cold, I'm black.
When I'm scared, I'm black.
When I'm sick, I'm black.
When I die I'll still be black.
But you...
When you're born you're pink.
When you grow up you're white.
When you're sick, you're green.
When you go in the sun you turn red.
When you're cold you turn blue.
When you're scared, you're yellow.
When you're bruised, you're purple.
and when you die you turn grey...

And you have the nerve to call me colored.

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

I was once talking to a group in my dorm. Most of the kids there were black. I was describing a different person. In trying to help them understand who I referring to, I mentioned that he was kind of pink. Everybody thought that was kind of surprising and funny. Then the referred to person walked in. I indicated in that direction, saying, "See what I mean?" Sure enough, he WAS pink. I was conceded the point.

White schmite.