Out of Character: Racism
Fortunately, this is mostly on the periphery of my friends list. Please don't assume I think any of you are racists.
I just have to say that if I see the term "POC" or the full version "person of colour" applied to any human being just once more, I'm probably going to scream, make an effigy in snow of the person using it and kick it to bits.
Now, I know time has moved on, and I'm glad that a whole generation doesn't have direct experience of the days when South Africa was pursuing apartheid and related policies, but the term "coloured" was used to dehumanise many groups of people and "person of colour" is a veiled version of the same thing and, I note, mostly used by middle class people of very pale skin who use it in extremely patronising ways. To me, it is no less offensive than a certain word beginning with N.
If you need to distinguish between people by skin colour (which is, in my view, in itself, a racist activity), why not say they are darker/lighter than some imagined mean colour of skin? Better still, call them people and finally crowbar it into your heads that colour of skin is only skin deep and a person is neither defined nor fated by it.
I just have to say that if I see the term "POC" or the full version "person of colour" applied to any human being just once more, I'm probably going to scream, make an effigy in snow of the person using it and kick it to bits.
Now, I know time has moved on, and I'm glad that a whole generation doesn't have direct experience of the days when South Africa was pursuing apartheid and related policies, but the term "coloured" was used to dehumanise many groups of people and "person of colour" is a veiled version of the same thing and, I note, mostly used by middle class people of very pale skin who use it in extremely patronising ways. To me, it is no less offensive than a certain word beginning with N.
If you need to distinguish between people by skin colour (which is, in my view, in itself, a racist activity), why not say they are darker/lighter than some imagined mean colour of skin? Better still, call them people and finally crowbar it into your heads that colour of skin is only skin deep and a person is neither defined nor fated by it.