# The term "People of Color" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 15, 2017, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688 "2017-05-15T21:13:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Reddy\_Mercury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@Reddy\_Mercury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reddy_Mercury)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/1 "2017-05-15T21:13:15Z")
Does anyone find this term both a little ignorant and offensive? In the 1960s, did not the African Americans and such of the time take umbrage at being called “colored people” and fought to be called “Black” - not Negro, not Colored? Also, it seems to put all people with a certain melanin level or above into one box. Latinos are not African Americans; Asians are not Latinos. Are ethnic Americans such as Italians or Greeks whose skin tone can range from pale to quite dark be considered “People of Color”; or is the term a way to make “non-minority” people feel like they’re an “other”? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/2 "2017-05-15T21:22:16Z")
It’s a slightly better phrase than “non-white”, which isn’t going away anytime soon. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/3 "2017-05-15T21:25:30Z")
About as stupid as ‘African-American’. If people are ‘White’ then they can be Black. It’s not as if the USA treads on egg shells when it comes to racism. #UKperspective ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/4 "2017-05-15T21:38:13Z")
Welcome to 2017! I’m not sure your gonna like it here. Manny of us have decided the polite thing to do is respect whatever term a group wishes to use for itself. mc ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/5 "2017-05-15T22:18:57Z")
> [@mikecurtis](#): > > Welcome to 2017! I’m not sure your gonna like it here. > Manny of us have decided the polite thing to do is respect whatever term a group wishes to use for itself. > > mc I question the “Many” in your post. It seems like a _lot_ of people have no problem calling groups and individual people whatever term of ridicule comes to mind. But I’m delighted to see that you aren’t among them, and I’m going to make an effort this year to join you in trying to contribute to civility rather than detract from it. I’ll try to call people by their preferred descriptors / titles, both here and IRL. Please call me out on it if you see me falling short of this goal here. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/6 "2017-05-15T23:05:09Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I question the “Many” in your post. It seems like a _lot_ of people have no problem calling groups and individual people whatever term of ridicule comes to mind. But I’m delighted to see that you aren’t among them, and I’m going to make an effort this year to join you in trying to contribute to civility rather than detract from it. I’ll try to call people by their preferred descriptors / titles, both here and IRL. Please call me out on it if you see me falling short of this goal here. Well, now I feel a little bad for being snarky to the op. I have to admit, I haven’t always been as successful as I would’ve liked to be. So, to comment on the op; the fact that the term “people of color” could be seen as an ambiguous descriptor, serves to highlight, imho, the fact that there is no distinct line separating us into groups. That, mostly, there is no clear “us” and “them” mc ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/7 "2017-05-15T23:09:21Z")
The term “color” is a stand in. Much the way “black” is used to describe many people who are not anywhere near black, “people of color” means that you belong to an ethnic group that has been discriminated against because of the color their skin. You might be light skinned, but if you last name is Rodriquez or Chang or Gupta, you’re in the group. If you’re looking for this to “make sense”, don’t bother. I have been studying these hyoo-mans for many of their earth years, and much of what they do does not “make sense”. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/8 "2017-05-15T23:21:45Z")
It’s part of a trend called “Person-First Nomenclature”. Basically, you’re supposed to say “person of color” rather than “colored person”, and “person with disabilities” instead of “disabled person”, and so on. The idea is that it’s supposed to emphasize that the person is a person first and foremost, and that the disability or race or whatever is just part of their identity. I’m opposed to it, because it seems to me that it has the opposite effect: It’s an unusual grammatical construction for English, which calls attention to the different-ness, and it’s only used for descriptors which are considered negative, which makes the attention-calling even worse. If you needed to get something off of an upper shelf, you wouldn’t ask for help from a “person of height”; you would ask for a tall person. And a boy or girl is, what, a child of maleness or a child of femaleness? ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/9 "2017-05-16T01:16:45Z")
If you don’t like it just wait a couple more years and the fashion will change again. When I read “PoC” or “POC” my inner voice pronounces it as “pock,” which sounds like a slur in itself. ---
**Author:** ![Reddy\_Mercury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@Reddy\_Mercury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reddy_Mercury)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/10 "2017-05-16T01:49:29Z")
It’s just rather idk…a non-sequitor to me. Not every “non-white” (whatever that means) has the same set of experiences; for that matter not every “white” does either. Just because your last name is Rodriquez or Change or Gupta doesn’t mean you have or will ever face discrimination. Lumping all these disparate identities into one label assumes things about large swathes of individuals and basically nullifies their individual experience in favor of a popular narrative IE “Whites all have it good, People of Color are all discriminated against.” Also, it sounds rather offensive to me. What, whites don’t have “color”? We’re the “People of Colorlessness?” ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/11 "2017-05-16T01:55:24Z")
> [@Reddy\_Mercury](#): > > It’s just rather idk…a non-sequitor to me. Not every “non-white” (whatever that means) has the same set of experiences; for that matter not every “white” does either. Just because your last name is Rodriquez or Change or Gupta doesn’t mean you have or will ever face discrimination. Lumping all these disparate identities into one label assumes things about large swathes of individuals and basically nullifies their individual experience in favor of a popular narrative IE “Whites all have it good, People of Color are all discriminated against.” Also, it sounds rather offensive to me. What, whites don’t have “color”? We’re the “People of Colorlessness?” I’m telling you, this species is crazy. Do not look for logic in the hyoo-man languages. It’s a fruitless endeavor. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/12 "2017-05-16T02:20:00Z")
> [@Reddy\_Mercury](#): > > . . . it sounds rather offensive to me. What, whites don’t have “color”? We’re the “People of Colorlessness?” I am sorry you are offended by this term. I don’t think it’s meant as a putdown to you. You may be taking the term too literal. It’s not three separate words; people - of - color. It’s meant as an opposite term to the group of Americans who have long held sway in this country; those of european descent. Rather than use a negative to describe these persons, ie: people of non-european descent, and since there is a long tradition of describing people by the color of their skin, the term “people of color” seemed like a good mostly non-offensive, non-negative term. That is not to say that it’s completely non-offensive, but it’s what we’ve got. btw, the opposite of “people of color” is not “people of colorlessness” [QUOTE=John Mace] I’m telling you, this species is crazy. Do not look for logic in the hyoo-man languages. It’s a fruitless endeavor. [/QUOTE] and what he said! mc ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/13 "2017-05-16T02:45:37Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > If you don’t like it just wait a couple more years and the fashion will change again. > > When I read “PoC” or “POC” my inner voice pronounces it as “pock,” which sounds like a slur in itself. I usually think they’re talking about the Pirate of the Caribbean movies. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/14 "2017-05-16T02:58:10Z")
OP: Believe it or not but there is actually an association called: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) > **[NAACP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Colored_People)** > > The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)\[a\] is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells. Leaders of the organization included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins. > Its mission in the 21st century is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of al... OP: You will be shocked to learn how many Blacks support this organization. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/15 "2017-05-16T03:49:43Z")
> [@Reddy\_Mercury](#): > > Does anyone find this term both a little ignorant and offensive? In the 1960s, did not the African Americans and such of the time take umbrage at being called “colored people” and fought to be called “Black” - not Negro, not Colored? Also, it seems to put all people with a certain melanin level or above into one box. Latinos are not African Americans; Asians are not Latinos. Are ethnic Americans such as Italians or Greeks whose skin tone can range from pale to quite dark be considered “People of Color”; or is the term a way to make “non-minority” people feel like they’re an “other”? It’s a clunky and unnecessary phrase. > [@mikecurtis](#): > > Welcome to 2017! I’m not sure your gonna like it here. > Manny of us have decided the polite thing to do is respect whatever term a group wishes to use for itself. > > mc Groups of people usually don’t make decisions such as these as some monolithic group though. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/16 "2017-05-16T04:00:35Z")
I’ve pointed out that “white” is a colour too, so “Person of Colour” really just means “person”. What I personally think is it’s a politically correct term for “Not white”, which implies there’s only two racial groups - White, and Everyone Else. This is problematic. Linguistically, I don’t see any difference between “Person of Colour” and “Coloured Person”, besides the fact even I know “Coloured Person” sounds like something that one’s stereotypical racist grandma from the 1950s uses now she knows she isn’t supposed to be racist anymore and is actually trying to be non-offensive. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/17 "2017-05-16T10:40:03Z")
As an Aussie, I don’t think you really understand racial issues in the US. I’m sure Australia has its own issues, which I only know from Midnight Oil songs (something about burning beds? Chilly deserts at 45 degrees? ;)). The US has a long a rich history of outrageous discrimination – we force-marched American Indians across country (and they still live in crushing poverty), we put Japanese citizens in camps (some of whom had been here for generations, when we had first generation Italians and Germans walking around freely), and of course segregation, etc., etc. Back to the OP, if people who have been discriminated against because of their skin color want some blanket term, that seems OK. The term probably applies to different people in different parts of the country (except blacks and Hispanics, who seem to be discriminated against nationwide). We don’t have much in the way of Indian Reservations here on the East Coast, so it wouldn’t apply much to that population here, but it would out west. Asians blend in pretty easily around these parts as well. When I was a kid, people from China, Japan, Korea were Orientals. Now, they are part of a larger group called Asians and Oriental is deprecated. Terms change, and what’s now People of Color will be something different in 30 years. So what? Use the term people want you to use. What difference does it make to you? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/18 "2017-05-16T12:38:34Z")
It is a never-ending dance of trying to separate denotion (identifying the people in question) from connotation (specifically racist connotation, a bunch of disgusting derogatory & contemptuous belief about the people in question) in order to describe and draw political-social attention to the racism itself as a social problem. You can’t easily talk about the social problem if you can’t identify the people. Nigger, you should realize, is a corrupted form of an Anglicized pronunciation of the Spanish term “negro” which means black. Thus, technically speaking, it denoted what “black” denotes. It’s the connotation embedded in it that makes it a horrible word. By the time it came into use in our culture, it had been used to refer to the enslaved people being brought as chattel property in the hold of the slaving ships. Hence, it was deeply mired in the connotation of someone as a subhuman piece of property that is of use to slaveowners but of no relevant value otherwise. “Colored people” was an attempt to push away the connotations, as was “negro” (pronounced “knee grow”, i.e., the Anglicized version with an “educated” pronunciation). “Black” and “African-American” were later iterations of that. “People of Color” is yet later. Many (most, even) of the terms reiterate the direct denotation of the predecessors, as you (the OP) say. (African-American being the outlier here). ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-term-people-of-color/786688/19 "2017-05-16T13:53:56Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > As an Aussie, I don’t think you really understand racial issues in the US. I’m sure Australia has its own issues, which I only know from Midnight Oil songs (something about burning beds? Chilly deserts at 45 degrees? ;)). The US has a long a rich history of outrageous discrimination – we force-marched American Indians across country (and they still live in crushing poverty), we put Japanese citizens in camps (some of whom had been here for generations, when we had first generation Italians and Germans walking around freely), and of course segregation, etc., etc. Australia has some pretty serious race issues - the Aborigines were openly shot as nuisances by early settlers, weren’t considered Australian citizens until 1967, our immigration policy was quite literally “[Whites Only](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy)” until the the same time, and even today the country is generally regarded as having a lot of racists in it. Being from a third-world country and coming here by boat without the correct paperwork will get your foreign ass thrown in a detention centre for an indeterminate period of time. True, it’s not like the situation in the US, but I’ve heard a lot of ethnically diverse people here using the term “Person of Colour” (clearly picked up from America) and it grates on my ears for a variety of reasons including the combination of imported Americanism, trendiness, and also being not a very helpful descriptor. > [@](#): > > So what? Use the term people want you to use. What difference does it make to you? Well, the terms people want us to use change a lot and for seemingly no reason, and when they do change it’s often quite sudden, arbitrary and sometimes nonsensical. Also, just because you want people to call you something shouldn’t necessarily obligate them to do it. I mean, I would like people to call me Your Excellency, but they don’t. Obviously if somethings outright offensive then yeah, what people want to be called does matter. But if it’s just a case of “Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please” then I’d suggest that getting worked up about it might not be a constructive use of one’s energy.