After moving to the Caribbean I found that societal norms are not the same all over. In conversation with colleagues I used the term “African American” and was roundly criticized.
My colleagues from Barbados, St Lucia, Nigeria, Jamaica, Belize, and Cayman preferred the term “black” as they were not American and mostly not African though their skin is black. The generally expressed opinion, to borrow from Justice Stewart’s line about pornography, it that they’ll know it when they hear it if someone is trying to be pejorative.
Amen. That’s basically what I was trying to get at upthread. The perceived intent and the tone matter more than the actual words being used in the vast majority of cases.
Generally, the difference between “X person” and “person who is X” is that for the former, you define their identity by X, whereas in the latter, he is a person first, and X is only one of their characteristics.
Its the same reason why language is now changing to prefer “Person with disability” rather than “Disable person”. Contrast that with a harsher term like “A handicap” or “A cripple”. When you call someone a disabled person, like you would call someone a handicapped or a cripple, you are essentially saying this disability defines their whole identity. They are nothing more than a disability in your eyes. Even if they were to do something else, they would always be “a cripple who has done X”. Usually, people who are disabled don’t want to be seen only through the lens of that disability. They probably consider that disability to be only one aspect of who they are. Language helps to shift thinking, so it is important that people, as much as possible, try not to let it pigeonhole others into ready-made stereotypes.
It would be like if you went up to a random person and called them “that white guy” or “that Hindu” or “that fat guy”. Sure, some people may find primacy in those definitions, but most people don’t, and more importantly, you have no idea if they do or not. So you shouldn’t assume.
“Colored people” has an unfortunate connotation from decades ago. It was a step up from the n-word, but not as good as black or African-American when it comes to how neutral the word is used. And no, it does not matter one bit that the NAACP still has that in their name, that’s a holdover from a bygone era when it was normal and more than that, the organization has done a lot of good for African-Americans so their motives are not in question. The combination of self-defining, charity, and impossibility of misunderstanding gives them that leeway to continue on using that name. Plus, almost nobody says the actual words of that acronym anyway, so it is lessened even there.
As is often the case, the quest for a hyper-logical rule that applies universally is frustrating what is actually a really simple concept. It’s like a peculiar institutional form of autism. It’s as simple as this: words convey meaning. Human beings have feelings about meanings. Different words convey different meanings, for lots of reasons that aren’t symmetrical and formal. That results in different feelings. These are real. That’s all that’s going on.
A word that has never previously been associated with any cultural or social prejudice is not going to carry the same connotative freight as a word that has. “Colored” has. “Colored” was the thing they put, within living memory, on segregated facilities to indicate where the inferior people could find their inferior appointments. That is the explanation for why “colored” is different from “person of color.” It’s the explanation for why “colored” is different from “cisgender.” It’s why “boy” can be extremely offensive or incredibly heartwarming, despite being made up of the same letters in both cases! It’s the explanation for all of this. Language isn’t mathematics. None of these fucking arrangements of letters mean anything, except for the network of associations they conjure up. And, I mean, we all get this. It’s just messy, and so it’s convenient to deny when we don’t like the implications, i.e. the “special treatment” it requires.
A mathematical proof of why one word should be the same as another word is a ridiculous waste of everyone’s time.
If someone younger than the age of 80 says “colored” around me, I reserve the right to inwardly roll my eyes at them. I’ll probably not feel very comfortable around them. In my mind, a person who says “colored” in this day and age is either trolling or extremely provincial. Neither of these things makes me think “person I’d like to have a beer with.”
Am I offended by “colored”? No. It doesn’t register the same response as “nigger” or “coon” does. But it does mark someone as suspicious, IMHO. People who care about social progress tend not to cling to the terms used in more unenlightened times. A person who uses “colored” is basically saying they don’t give a fuck. That’s their right, just like it’s everyone else’s right to tell that person to catch up to the 21st century.
Now I’m a person of paleness aside from my arms and lower legs which are parts of tanness. In my ears “coon” is the most derogatory. Unless it’s a Maine coon or a coon-dog. “Colored” strikes me as mostly generational. My previous black neighbors used the term all the time. They were older though. “Nigger” is the word with the most nuance. It can be used with extreme hostility or affection and should be treated as such. I’ve been called it many times both in a friendly and in a not so friendly way. Now, personally, I don’t like using racial or ethnic slurs myself in speech of any sort.
All that said, the meaning of the word needs to be deduced not just from its denotation but also from context and intent. It’s actually sort of silly that these discussions even take place where a word is discussed in isolation.
When I look at “white” people I get no thoughts of coliur (unless they are tanned, then they are brown,). All “non-white” people are various shades of brown. I never think of people as “black”. I don’t like being called “white”. I’m not white, I’m a light-skinned Englishman who looks like a modern day Dane. “Coloured” = “brown-skinned”, of any shade.
I think this is a good example of how white supremacist influence on culture and society can seep into the mindsets and thinking of perfectly decent people (most people, in fact, including myself) with no intentions of any sort of racism or other bigotry – white people are thought of with “no thoughts of color”, while non-white people are all “various shades of brown”. The fact is, there is nothing more or less “colorful” about white people’s skin than any other race’s skin – we’re just taught by culture and society that the natural color of white people’s skin is somehow the absence of color, while other people’s skin has a color of some sort.
I certainly don’t mean that it’s racist to think this way, or racist to use terms like “people of color” – just that such thinking and language ultimately comes from cultural and societal norms that white people are the default people, and everyone else is some sort of variation, which derives originally from white supremacism.
As an aside, it should be pointed out that the terms “colored people” and “people of color” could be used as umbrella language covering all non-whites, not just those of African descent.
Personally, I’ve always found “people of color” to be an awkward construct. I don’t wear “jeans of blue”, I wear “blue jeans”.