I’m a white guy with vitiligo. I think all-y’all are people of color.
I am wondering if folks who feel ok lumping the recent descendents of Africans under the “people of color” umbrella manage to intuitively grok that European Africans are not included in this description. All this time I have assumed that this is universally understood, but maybe I am wrong.
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To me the shocking, yet unsurprising, revelation in this thread was Darren Garrison’s link describing how the Jewish quota, or, more accurately, non-WASP quota at American Ivy League universities has never gone away. Unfortunately, according to the article, the descriptions of Asian applicants in the discovered documents have been redacted, so we don’t know if the wording includes the phrase “people of colour”.
You guys? Who’s you guys? And I don’t know where “Protestant” came into this, but “WASP” is more of a social class in this country than an ethnic group. There might still be enclaves of old-money “blue blood” people on the East Coast who are very serious about being of old English stock and members of religions like Episcopalianism, who have property in that region which goes back a very long time and whose family names carry much social cachet. But these people have very little in common with Dutch Reformed people in Grand Rapids, Michigan, or Scandinavian-Americans in Minnesota.
The key question is “Do they reflect light?”. All people who reflect any amount of light are “people of color”, the only question then being “What shade and saturation of color did genetics pass on to them?”. Only those people who absorb all light and reflect none, making them invisible to the naked eye, are the ones who cannot accurately be described as “people of color”.
That answer is only semi-facetious. “People of color” is a human construct and means different things to different people when, in and of itself, it actually means nothing.
I thought my second post had adequately explained whatever might have been misunderstood from my first post, but I guess I was wrong, so please indulge me while I try again.
In World War II, The U.S. and Canadian government ordered Japanese immigrants as well as American citizens of Japanese descent interned. They did not do the same for German immigrants or German-Americans (despite the fact that there was a well organized German American Bund before the war) or for Italian immigrants and Italian-Americans.
On top of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Immigration Act of 1917, and various other exclusions which weren’t repealed until 1952, Asian-Americans in general, and Japanese-Americans in particular, felt they were discriminated against because of their race.
Does that level of discrimination exist in the U.S. today? No.
Do many Asian-Americans still have a feeling of “otherness” compared to whites? Yes.
Does that mean Asian-Americans self-identify as “people of color”? Some don’t, many do.
More or less in order:
“You guys” is Americans.
Protestant came into this both via the WASP expression and because we (where “we” is a bunch of foreigners trying to come up with an accurate label for a specific cultural group) found it to be a necessary part of the description: Catholics, Jews, Buddhists… were not part of that cultural group, did not display those specific behaviors.
And what I’m saying is that those people who you think have very little in common do in fact have a lot in common. Mainly, that both WAPs and non-WAP-Americans consider WAPs to be the Default American; the people in that group never begin an anecdote or a conversation with the equivalent of “I’m Jewish”, “I’m Irish” or “I’m Chinese” (-American in all three cases); if they mention religion it’s in a religious (actual discussion of religion, attempts to convert you) or social context (“what church do you attend?”), not as a shorthand for cultural traits which are considered minoritary enough that they can’t be taken for granted. Also, and this is something which applies to anybody who considers himself or his culture to be The Norm (not just WAPs), they tend to be really bad at meeting outsiders halfway. By definition of “norm”, it is everybody else who has to adapt.
Thanks for Spainsplaining our own culture to us.
Both groups actually have plenty in common with each other. It’s true that there are differences between the two groups- but there are differences based on social class and location among Jews and Catholics and Muslims etc as well. It may be that you don’t notice the commonalities because of your specific circumstances - where and when I grew up, an German Catholic marrying an Italian Catholic was practically considered a mixed marriage, but I’m sure the Protestants couldn’t understand the fuss- after all, they’re both Catholic. But the Protestants most likely only saw the commonalities while the Catholics mostly saw the differences.
As I understand it, “people of color” is shorthand in America for anyone who isn’t white. As has been said, it’s a shame that we have this term, but that’s the reality for now.
My partner is Vietnamese, and he considers himself a person of color in the US, because that’s how certain people see and treat him.
I voted “no”. To me the term means “black person”, due to it being a synonym for “colored person”, which is an archaic/obsolete american term for “black person”.
I also consider “asian” to mean “east asian”.
Wikipedia says:
(bolding mine)
While trying to look up an “official definition,” I came across this column: The term “people of color” includes Asian Americans. So there’s one person’s answer to the thread title’s question.
Just pretend that I included the same quote and bolded the last sentence instead. To me “people of color” = “colored”, and I never received the memo that we’re dissociating the terms now because the latter got tainted.
I understand that last sentence to be saying that “colored” used to mean anyone who isn’t white, but then it changed to refer specifically to black people. “Colored” isn’t used much any more in either of those meanings; but if you’re going to say that “people of color” = “colored,” you have to tell us which “colored.”
By my understanding of that thing called “the english language”, english syntax suggests that “colored people” is a synonym of “people of color”. I get that various strange people have allegedly tried to draw a sharp line between the terms in an attempt to ‘reclaim’ the “of” version of the term for inclusiveness reasons, but I’m not seeing as how that means I have to defend recognizing the obvious linguistic and historical connection.
And in any case, I straight-up told you which “colored” I mean when I use* the term - the archaric/obsolete “colored”=“black” one.
*I actually don’t use the term.
Think NAACP: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
So Black, Negro, Afro-American, Colored Person are all equivalent terms–but some are out of style or even considered politically incorrect. And “person of color” = “colored person”.
You should at least be aware that the majority of people who use the term “people of color” (at least in the U.S.) today use it as an idiomatic phrase (i.e. you can’t necessarily deduce the meaning based on standard English syntax) that means something different from what you use it to mean.
[same as below only everything’s black]
When you was born you was pink
When you was sad you was blue
When you was hot you was red
When you was sick you was green
When you was scared you was yellow
And you call me colored.
–Agra Gra
(note: this is attributed to this person and also noted as some kind of winner of “best poem of 2005” but I saw it as a poster in a bookstore in a somewhat different form, long before that. I would have linked, but there are many versions. Some with additional colors.)
The foreigners in question came from Spain, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, China, Taiwan, Morocco, Niger, Congo, France, Germany and Vietnam that I remember. I may be forgetting some.
And unlike mansplainers, I made my best to make it clear that I do realize I am speaking from a foreigner’s POV. Or in this case, that of a bunch of very-confused immigrants who spent many hours trying to find a fitting label for something we saw in our new country. “White” wasn’t accurate, “anglo(phone)” wasn’t either, and it was more frequent in people from certain areas but not exclusively linked to any. Turns out every person we’d seen exhibit that behavior was white (by the American definition), sole-anglophone and a protestant.
Mark Twain had something to say about that.
English is not arithmetic. The transitive property does not apply.