Dearest Land of my Birth...

[fluffy_twk]

The United States has produced/encouraged a great many things that we may find use for.
The term "person/people of color*" is not one of them.
If not in the USofA, please be sticking to the previously accepted, innocuous, and 99.9% more accurate "ethnic minorities", or the newer "of X heritage".

Much appreciated.

Comments

[resurgamlaura]

I'm dogsitting for this week and next, so I have *nothing* to do except potter about having tea and wander about teh interwebs.

'People of color' is one of the most ridiculous things ever, period. Its also screams 'white privilege' (what with the non-colour automatically being white, because that's the 'normal' majority, right?) like a banshee on acid. I'm much more fond of terms that reference heritage or ethnicity, because they can refer to anyone, be more specific and aren't so 'us vs. them'.

It also does not parse well grammatically. Stupid people.

My favourite 'replace with' came about on...GW, I think. It wanted to change 'Teal'c' to 'teapot'. This generated an excellent mental image.

My thoughts. Let me show you them.

[fluffy_twk]

I'm kinda between jobs at work. We should meet up for lunch or something.

It's so fucking foul ridiculous. Yes, some African-Americans decided to "reclaim" a set of words to attempt to empower themselves. Great for them. (Although, given how offensive the previous is considered, I doubt all of them feel that way.) But I fail to see how a particular subsection of a population being okay with it means it's fine to broadly apply to everyone who isn't white. Deciding amongst themselves to use a term which is meaningless, inaccurate, and merrily straddles previously deemed offensive terminology for a vast group of people they don't belong to smacks of WTF

Re: My thoughts. Let me show you them.

[resurgamlaura]

I grew up in an area which is overwhelming white and Asian (and isn't that a way too broad a word in itself, seeing as at one end of the borough it means Indian, and at the other Korean?), so to me its very much like 'so, where do the people I worked with and went to school with fit in? Or the ones who are caucasian but don't necessarily identify with western and/or British culture? Or...' Its very 'us and them' and doesn't take into account the real nuances of heritage, citizenship and ethnicity. And its bloody condescending

Re: My thoughts. Let me show you them.

[fluffy_twk]

From my vast learnings surfing the internet, AFAIK there are no nuances when it comes to race. Race only means one thing, and only exists to be considered in one way, and it doesn't matter that it is not a biological construct but a societal one, and thus is determined differently within different countries/societies to include a much greater/different range of people. If you present as white you go in one box, and everyone else goes in the other. (BTW sucks to be mixed race and genetically predisposed to one side, you don't get to pick a box yourself, and you better like it.) Whad'ya mean you don't all have the identical view on race as America

[resurgamlaura]

I've been seeing the same sort of mess with gender and sexuality. The inability to get the concept of social constructs across the board is just...aah. I've known families with quadruple mixed racial and cultural identities, for crying out loud.

I can definitely manage tomorrow/today now, or Wednesday sounds good. If either of those don't work then next Sat is still coolness :)

[fluffy_twk]

But it's so complicated.

Have PM'd you.