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[SSB] "Politically Correct" terms
Topic Started: May 8 2016, 06:43 PM (1,213 Views)
Kula Diamond
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atlus tracts

personally i never understood why people use "person of color" as to me it sounds like they're treating caucasian as the default

and why don't people just call "anti-blackness" racism
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Nell
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The Pretender
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Okay, I'll bite.

As I understand it, POC is a) not a term commonly used outside America/American-centric discussion, b) a term which, by its own nature, only operates in discourses about non-white minorities, and c) the neatest way to describe people of complex ethnic backgrounds. So, no, it's not something that, eg. a Korean-Japanese person living in Japan might typically identify themselves as.
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Momentime
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uh oh

Personally I never liked person of color at all as a term for minorities, precisely for the reasons you and Nell mentioned - ish. PoC by nature implies that 'America' or 'American' is characterized by being distinctly white - when you think of America, what do you think of? Beer, guns, burgers, trucks, various cities and their landmarks, etc. Who's behind all these icons and populating these cities in pop culture? 90% of the time it's a white american.

I find this incredibly strange and self-defeating because whenever PoC IS used, like Nell said it's used when talking about minority discourse, where you'd think, the subject minority would be center stage of the discussion. IMO when you use poc instead of black, asian, hispanic, etc. you're defeating the whole purpose of the discussion by making it about white people AGAIN. Minorities, by nature, are defined by the fact that they do not hold the position of the white majority. I'm not going to say that this is inherently a good or bad thing, it just is. So, when you finally have a chance to talk about YOUR experiences and life values, how you were shaped by your culture, etc., you're still saying "I'm the other, the not default." and this is a terrible thing to say when you're in America.

Bro, you have the mic, the spotlight's on you, and you only have so many things to say, then one of the things you're still going to say is that you're not white? COME ON.

Really, there should be no default. You can't say America is the land of immigrants, of diversity, of cultural exchange but then have a default "this (usually white) person is American", culturally. But you can because that's how it is today. Everyone's always talking about how America is a big melting pot, but it's sure hard to see this at times when your contributing flavor (if we're following the analogy) is put on the backburner and barely acknowledged.

The other reason is that by using poc you're essentially lumping every minority into one category, which is again, the "others", the "non-white", the "non-default". I'm only a first generation Vietnamese-American. My life experiences, what values are taught to me during my formative years, and what I want to see to improve in this country will be vastly different from blacks, hispanics, etc., and even other first generation asian americans. The little cultural nuances such as music and food and family structure is going to be massively different from a person from another culture, even if geographically the source cultures are very close. (Example, I celebrate Lunar New Year. Yes it's the same date as Chinese New Year. No I'm not Chinese. No it's not the same. "All you guys look the same anyway!" Yeah, [radio edit] you too.) IMO this should have stopped the second someone realized that many minorities have their own language that they use to connect and identify with each other. You'd never catch someone say that Spanish, AAVE, Chinese, etc. are all alike, so why are we treating their speakers as if they're one? They're not.

The end reason why I think people use PoC as a term is just simply that it's easy to use and cheap to say. Cheap as in, literally cheap, you could say PoC in like half a breath. The second is that in this walking-on-eggshells PC climate people just want to use a catchall phrase so as to not offend anybody. I get that, but I still wish people would not use it as I personally think it reduces whoever you're talking about to being a statistic. What can you do though?

Maybe in the future when America really gets the racial mixing going we'll see it being used less and less as then there would be so much mixing it's near pointless to say this or that person is not white. Or, in the case of asian americans, you just get people who are all like 50% chinese, 1/4 japanese, 1/8 korean, 1/8 white, etc. I know in AA circles Hapas are already seeing a lot of identity crisis.
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Vaèscent
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The Westering Sun

Re: usage of 'POC,' my tension with the term is how it commonly used and understood, not the term itself, it that makes sense.

The following piece is written by someone of South Asian descent and resonates with me pretty well. I'm particularly fond of the concluding remarks:

"The identification needs to carry some degree of humility, and a deeper commitment to allyship. The POC umbrella is not an excuse to disavow the ways we benefit from various racial structures and sit idly by as our communities reap advantages from racism towards other people of color.

Black-Asian solidarity in the US, for instance, is hard to find and it will continue to be difficult to build if we continue to use the uncritical ‘POC’ label. Rather, we can use ‘POC’ as a way of reflecting on our different racial histories and building coalitions in our struggles and their difference. POC is a term for building solidarity between movements, not a movement in itself. That distinction is important.

‘It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.’ –Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems"

* * * * *

I recommend reading the full article if you're not familiar with the issue: What's Wrong With the Term 'Person of Color'
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Momentime
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uh oh

You, intentionally or not, left out the one sentence that imo makes or breaks the entire thing about the term and usage of poc:
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Identifying as a person of color in solidarity with other people of color says ‘hey, my people have been oppressed by White people, maybe in a different time and space than your people, but we can work in solidarity.’

imo this further turns it into, no pun intended, a black and white dynamic of white people vs non-white people. And yes, it's great that minorities can band together to share their experiences, individually and as a group of people, different minorities will have different experiences fulfilling their place in this racial ecosystem. Even she realizes this when she says that black history vs desi history in the US is completely different, (in my view at least) to the point of being nearly incomparable.

Continuing off of this, I think that having this white vs non-white dynamic that PoC inherently bring to the table could easily make race relations turn hostile. Yeah, I know, lots of "PoC" feel left out, not directly discriminated against from another person but from society and from institutions. Lots of 'PoC' cultural achievements don't seem to be on our terms but on the majority's terms. I get it, but it's not an excuse to get angry and lash out. I can recall at least one incidence in BLM where people just seemed more angry and wanting vengeance than anything else. Maybe you have every right to be, but don't expect for that kind of mentality to bring a good solution.
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Ian889
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Death comes to all of those who oppose me.

A few the notes.

1. The term PoC can be used politically; white people are still the majority and it helps with demographically draw up charts for political strategists as "take the area in which I live for example." Black and Hispanic people are heavily intertwined in the same area, and when you have 140,000 people in your city as I do it helps you target certain areas as campaigning spots.

2. Staying on the political side of things since 1988 Hispanics, and Blacks have voted over 60% for one candidate in every election (With the exception of 2004, and usually for democrats, but not always) So classifying those two groups together as they now make up roughly 30% of the population is used to try and garner votes because if they are voting together they probably hold similar values. For whatever reason this term seems to poll better than just calling any non-white person a minority.

3. I think anti-blackness is supposed to be more than just generic racism. I couldn't tell you exact definition of it as I've read a number of articles about it and none of them seem to agree entirely. An Excerpt from one person about Anti Blackness

"Anti-Blackness is not simply the racist actions of a white man with a grudge nor is it only a structure of racist discrimination — anti-blackness is the paradigm that binds blackness and death together so much so that one cannot think of one without the other. When one thinks of dying, we think of “fading to black” — when we think of Death (Grim Reaper, Devil, Angel of Death), we think of a being cloaked in blackness. And in the popular imagination, when we think of black people (children, women, men), a dead body will come to mind. Everyday my newsfeed and certainly my television screens are filled with a new black person dead, so much so that the story is almost mundane. Our death is a commodity exchanged on screensand in songs, the strange fruit to whet the appetites of a nation of strangers."
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Sundancer
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Alright, time to unpack this shit.

A lot of really good points have been made about both the political necessities and the insufficiencies of "PoC" as a term. I think it's key to keep in mind that contextually speaking, this is more or less a term used mainly in North American political parlance, and so discussion about it has to be similarly grounded in that space.

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PoC by nature implies that 'America' or 'American' is characterized by being distinctly white - when you think of America, what do you think of? Beer, guns, burgers, trucks, various cities and their landmarks, etc


Can you explain to me where you find that logical connection between PoC = un-American, or normatizing whiteness as American? If anything, I find that the function of PoC is a reminder that Whiteness is not the default; that the racial lived realities of people in North America are brought to the forefront rather than ignored for a "unifying" identity that isn't truly representative. I just don't see the immediate logical connection that "PoC by nature implies that 'America... is characterized by... white[ness]" -- if anything, it seems to be offering the alternative narrative that immediate ideas about "American-ness" can and should be expanded to include non-stereotypically white experiences, which are designated as those of "People of Colour". To refer to those under the umbrella of "poc" as "non-white" would be moreso defining ourselves through othering, a lot of times I see PoC being used to refer to those who are non-indigenous settlers of these lands on the basis of potential shared oppressions and discriminatory/disempowering experiences in relation to a white-dominant system, which like it or not, is the truth in this time and place. I'll get into the nuances of the term later in this post.

I'm going to take a moment here to point out what I see as some of its other useful political applications within the Canadian context, though I cannot speak explicitly to the American one. At least here, part of Canadian national identity (particularly within urban areas, though I would argue overall we identify on a national scale in this way as well) is predicated upon how we are "multicultural" and a "cultural mosaic" unlike the American melting pot approach to racialized and cultural difference. So there's a very real sentiment of "look how us Canadians are better for advocating that people not abandon their previous identities once they reach Canada, unlike those Americans"... "we are more inclusive/more accepting/more tolerant of difference!" This may not be true of reality but these are the discourses of nationalism that operate on a broad level, so addressing it from that perspective, "PoC" serves as a more political marker of how multiculturalism has in many ways, failed, and we can't be complacently proud of ourselves for advocating it on a policy basis that is intimately tied to our national identity. It demarcates the ways in which very real systems of racism — and racial hierarchy, for that matter, including ideas about "desirable immigrants" (typically East Asian and Asian for the stereotypes attached to us about being "more intelligent" with "hard-working values" who can "contribute to the national economy" etc.) — continue to operate in virulent ways that directly impact peoples' lives and experiences in this country. It points out that our myth of multiculturalism is only a myth, that there is still political relevance and necessity to interrogating how whiteness is continually held up as an ideal and as a point of reference for other races to aspire to. This works to oppose the idea that Canadians have transcended race through our celebration of "diversity" as a useless buzzword, and starts to orient the conversation towards re-examining the unjust relations between PoC and white settler Canadians.

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So, when you finally have a chance to talk about YOUR experiences and life values, how you were shaped by your culture, etc., you're still saying "I'm the other, the not default." and this is a terrible thing to say when you're in America.

Bro, you have the mic, the spotlight's on you, and you only have so many things to say, then one of the things you're still going to say is that you're not white? COME ON.

To address this; somewhat similar to what I'm saying above already -- yes, when we speak within our own communities, be they Black, Indigenous, Desi, Chinese-Canadian, Vietnamese-American, etc. it may not be necessary or remotely politically useful to address ourselves as "PoC". But to experience being a person of colour in North America is to experience racism in some way, shape, or form; I would argue that it's inescapable. Sure, you can argue that there are various degrees to which this affects you (or HOW it affects you) and you can either choose to take action or think about it, or not, but the fact of that matter is that it will happen. To talk about "YOUR experiences and life experiences and life values, how you were shaped by your culture, etc." is in and of itself political simply due to the way things currently are, therefore to do so is already explicitly stating that you aren't white; this does not mean claiming that you aren't American—if anything, it seems the point is to claim these experiences as distinctly American, in the tone of "contrary to popular belief". And that tone is necessary because inhabiting non-whiteness still has very real effects on our lives in many different ways, and to demand of everybody to shut up entirely about the damaging effects of racism from a white dominant society is, imo, kind of asking of people to do what the Canadian "multiculturalism" and "diversity" policies have done; to reap a hypocritical self-affirmation for our "wonderfully diverse" countr(ies) without ever engaging with or acknowledging the ways that those very same identities cause us to possibly lose our jobs, prevent (some of) us from accessing housing, cause (some of) us to be far more likely to be imprisoned, to cause (some of) us to fear for our lives and personal safety, etc. Though I'm not saying we shouldn't ever have purely celebratory spaces, I think to mandate we don't talk about the ways whiteness and white racism has affected our communities (both directly and indirectly through cultivating internalized racism and racial hierarchies) or to think that we should have moved past that by now is simply unrealistic and moreover, a violence in and of itself for those who do continue to experience the violences of racism.

And now re: insufficiencies of PoC; I agree with a lot of what's been said. In fact, a lot of what I see more and more in Toronto activist spaces and some online which I'm not sure where they are based, is the use of "BIPOC" -- Black, Indigenous, People of Colour. It's not perfect, and still excludes a lot of nuance where folks may fall into multiple of those categories simultaneously, but I believe the intent is to reflect the somewhat different relations people of different racial/cultural backgrounds have to white dominant (some would say white supremacist) systems and ideals of governance. Coerced, enslaved Black labour has always been key to upholding capitalism; first through literal slavery, and now through the prison-industrial complex. Indigenous bodies, however, need to be erased for the settler-colonialist project (which any of us who are not Indigenous are complicit in—not to say we should [radio edit] off and leave, but that there should be a certain acknowledgement for the injustices present in that dynamic) to be successful; the more Indigenous folks you have, be they Canadian Inuit/First Nations/Métis or Native American (I'm not sure about the other terminology used in the States, I'm afraid, so please correct me if there are other nuances I'm missing there), the more guilty you'd feel for unresolved past and current injustices, the benefits reaped from literally committing genocide and literally stealing their land. "People of Colour" is still a huge umbrella here, but we occupy various roles depending on our backgrounds that are generally framed as "those Other invaders" that are "stealing all the jobs" or "backwards places we need to wage war against because they're awful". Sometimes simultaneously, because fun!

Anyway, I digress a little, but just offering different ways to think about this. Ultimately I think the purpose of using "PoC" within, well, PoC communities, is meant to foster solidarity and shared experience in the face of a racist white-dominant system that, though it impacts us all in very different ways, does nevertheless impact us all in ways that aren't experienced by white folks on account of racial difference. Whether it actually does the job of fostering that inter-community solidarity is a different matter; Vae's article speaks very powerfully to that.

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I'm only a first generation Vietnamese-American. My life experiences, what values are taught to me during my formative years, and what I want to see to improve in this country will be vastly different from blacks, hispanics, etc., and even other first generation asian americans.

Absolutely, and I agree with that; I think the politicized use of PoC however is to point out that there may be shared goals such as dismantling white dominant systems that continue to perpetuate racisms from within and without our communities, even if they're very different.

Quote:
 
imo this further turns it into, no pun intended, a black and white dynamic of white people vs non-white people. And yes, it's great that minorities can band together to share their experiences, individually and as a group of people, different minorities will have different experiences fulfilling their place in this racial ecosystem. Even she realizes this when she says that black history vs desi history in the US is completely different, (in my view at least) to the point of being nearly incomparable.

Yes, I agree that the conversation about racialized politics in the States and also here have been very Black/White, and could use a shitton more nuance. Not only are Asian American voices consistently left out of the conversation, it also doesn't include any nuanced consideration of Indigenous experiences. I believe in the States a more vocal Latin American/Hispanic contingent has begun to make its experiences known, but that too is burgeoning. However, I would argue that the goal with solidarity is to try and see these experiences, as different as you say they are, as originating at least in part from one major shared source -- that of racist white dominant/supremacist systems. To see all our experiences as so different that they are incomparable is to detract from any hope of transcending a lot of divisions that are already imposed at least partially from colonialist and white supremacist legacies and influences—it's playing straight into a system that has "different minorities... [with] different experiences fulfilling their place in this racial ecosystem" as you say. It is upholding the status quo, and prevents coalition-building and the effective change we hopefully want to see happen from ever happening. To claim that we are all so different that we couldn't possibly compare our experiences is IMO ultimately unproductively, unnecessarily divisive.

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Yeah, I know, lots of "PoC" feel left out, not directly discriminated against from another person but from society and from institutions. Lots of 'PoC' cultural achievements don't seem to be on our terms but on the majority's terms. I get it, but it's not an excuse to get angry and lash out.

It kind of literally is though? At the very least, that is absolutely a good reason to be angry—what form that anger can and can't take is a debatable one that I don't particularly want to get into right now. But anger is not inherently bad, nor is it even remotely unreasonable; sure, you can try to "be the bigger person" or whatever but it's okay to get [radio edit]ing pissed when somebody's racist. Anger doesn't necessarily have to lead to violence, though again I don't particularly want to touch that question here; point is, getting angry about a racist system is totally fair and valid?

Back to the subject of solidarity though, I agree with needing to be vigilant about not using "PoC" as a copout, particularly for those of us with comparably more privilege on a basis of race and skin colour. I see too many Asian Canadians, particularly East Asian Canadians (Chinese and Korean Canadians mainly being my experience just due to the comparably less visible Japanese community in Toronto) maintaining very anti-Black attitudes, upholding the racist logics of the white dominant system. It's some real bullshit and requires a shitton of calling in in our own communities. We cannot pretend like the experiences of everybody who falls under the umbrella of PoC are the same; moreover, they are not only influenced by race but by other axes of identity—by gender, sex, sexual orientation, class, ability, age, and so forth. But just because a term is imperfect does not mean it has no helpful political power.

Relevant poem:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-A4GNn2Pe4[/youtube]
To say we are people of colour asks that we stand in solidarity, that we don't see ourselves as essentially different or better than other PoC in this system, that we can't simply distance ourselves from a problem because it's "their problem, not ours." That's what the potential power of PoC is, imo, in places where this is a relevant problem and relevant context i.e. North America.

Transcription of Franny Choi's poem:
"Last month, Officer Peter Liang was convicted of killing Akai Gurley, an unarmed Black man in a Brooklyn housing project.
Since then, hundreds of Chinese Americans have marched in support of Officer Liang, many of them carrying signs that read: "One tragedy, two victims."
If there is a second victim here, it is not you, Peter.
If there is a second victim here, it might be Akai's mother—who, like your mother, stayed up late sometimes worrying that he wouldn't make it home.
If there is a second victim here, it might be Akai's sweetheart—who, unlike your sweetheart, had to watch her man drown in his body's red unmaking, knowing that no help was on its way, never on its way in the neighbourhoods you patrolled, Peter. Never a friendly siren, only the iron lockstep of open prison guards like you, Peter.
You, who thought that keeping your darker brothers shackled in place, would be a good job. You, who forgot that there is only ever one enemy, though he wears many faces. And the same god who put Akai into those projects is the same god who hammered at our accents, until our mouths were clean and Biblical as stale bread, until we fit into the cogs of this pyramid scheme long enough to climb onto the backs of other Others, and so reach our scraps, our good jobs and our decent houses, with locks on all the doors to keep out the "bad people."
And it's true that no one wants to see us alive either. They would rather see us hunched over and suicidal in an iPhone factory, or begging for pleasure at a white man's feet, or not see us at all—but none of that makes you a victim today, Peter. It only makes you a disposable knife, a tyrant's tool. I will not mourn that justice was served to you. I will only keep demanding that the white versions of you get what you got.
I do not hate you, Peter. In the pictures, you could be my brother. You could be any boy at my church.
But that's the thing about family, isn't it? That when one of your own acts up, it's your job to call them in. So call in your people, Peter. Call in the crowds—tell them to come home, tell them to take down their signs, tell them that we have work to do.
Tell them that if there is a second victim here, it is not you—it is what was lost between two communities in pain. But unlike the first victim, this one can be brought back."

Edit: Welp, I was too busy responding to the other responses and missed the second part of the original question.
Ian already touched on it but you can see it also in the poem I put there—racism as experienced by Black communities is different than racism experienced by other PoC. That crucial detail cannot be forgotten when we talk about justice. It needs to be named in order to be properly addressed, and naming it as it is and not under the overall umbrella of "racism" is crucial to properly addressing its violences. It's present in a lot of what I said up there about "BIPOC" and also even in Franny Choi's poem—the racism experienced by East Asians is not the same as the racism experienced by Black communities in North America, for example, and anti-blackness occurs within racialized communities as well as white ones. I have seen other communities of colour in Toronto erase the presence of Black people within their own communities (e.g. Black Muslims are sometimes/often erased in the discourses of the Muslim communities here). Also pretty strongly arguable is that anti-Black racism is by far the racism that implicates the most literal loss of life, and that shit needs to be addressed and named, not just shepherded under an overall moniker of "racism" that could entail anything from microaggressions about food, to job loss, to people having problems dating... Not that those aren't real problems, but that there is a disproportionate loss of Black lives as a direct result of racist policies and systems and people in NA. Same reason why it's Black Lives Matter, not All Lives Matter, or PoC Lives Matter, or something.

Double edit: I was going to get more into how POC is seen as more empowering than saying something like "coloured people" or "minorities" or whatever, because it puts the idea of being a "person" first and is literally a descriptor, but this post is really [radio edit]ing long already; suffice to say that there is literature out there on the history of this phrase and you can look it up. Also again that it is temporally and geographically contextual; "coloured" is a non-offensive ethnic label in South Africa, for example.

Moreover there's more to unpack here with "Person/People of Colour" being empowering but (some) disability discourses seeing "Person with Disabilities" as less empowering and preferring "disabled person" (which does not put "person" first) which shows how this language is particular/specific to discussions about race and how other identity politics are different but again, I am talking too much, ask me if you want me to expand on that.
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Momentime
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uh oh

i want to address your post but i have finals coming up

can u wait until like friday afternoon
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Sundancer
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Stargazer

Roflmao I totally understand that, I'm still mired in finals and school is technically over for me.

I can wait however long lol
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Adnarel
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I'd rather be outside.

Sundancer's post is the type of thorough and thoughtful post that can only happen during finals, when it's actually important to be doing something else. I think we've all been there.

As for me, I'm here as audience. Nothing to add. Yet.

:ivan: :ivan: :garet: :alex: :mercury_djinn: :agatio: :jupiter_djinn:
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Momentime
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uh oh

ALRIGHT LETS DO THIS SHIT TOTALLY NOT LATE FUUUUCK YEAH

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Can you explain to me where you find that logical connection between PoC = un-American, or normatizing whiteness as American? If anything, I find that the function of PoC is a reminder that Whiteness is not the default; that the racial lived realities of people in North America are brought to the forefront rather than ignored for a "unifying" identity that isn't truly representative. I just don't see the immediate logical connection that "PoC by nature implies that 'America... is characterized by... white[ness]" -- if anything, it seems to be offering the alternative narrative that immediate ideas about "American-ness" can and should be expanded to include non-stereotypically white experiences, which are designated as those of "People of Colour".


Before I begin, a bit nitpicky, but the word is "normalizing", not "normatizing". I think that's what you were going for.

Me personally, I find the facet of making normal America equal to being pretty much white is almost right there in the term. Person...of color. ??? To me, it's basically saying, "You're either white... or you have a color. It doesn't really matter what color you have, the important thing is that you have a color, and therefore, not white." That is what the term 'PoC' is saying to me, and I detest it. It's also why I distinctly prefer the term 'minority', as to me it doesn't bring up the fact that I am not white, and while it can include as many people as the term 'poc' does, 'minority' doesn't lump everyone together to form a supposedly diverse and inclusive mass, when really everyone is just characterized by being not white™.

It's not that white Americans are automatically American and no one else can be American, it's just that the rest of the American population seem to be a subset of being American.

Another reason is that simply, white people dominate American pop culture. Except for maybe rap, the majority of pop culture, which is all the culture and art that the common population sees and consumes, has a cast sheet of mostly just white people. Anyone not white tends to mostly be onboard because you gotta fill up that diversity quota, boss' orders. I'm sure you've all heard of the term 'token minority'. "Your tv show is good to go, but did you get a hold of a black guy? How about an asian girl? A lesbian? Yes? OK you're on the air!" This wouldn't be so bad, except for two things: 1, most of these token characters have to be justified to be interacting with the white majority. Bob, Steve, and Mary are all just here because, but Lee Chan is here because his parents own the local Chinese restaurant. 2, because they're the token minority, these characters are hardly ever the main character, and if they ever happen to catch the spotlight, the result can be all over the place. I just realized I'm blanking on this, so I'll get back to this later. You can disregard this if you want.

I do note that I am only talking about tv shows. I can only think of two shows that break this mold, Master of None and OITNB (personally I couldn't stand the main character if OITNB). As for music, To Pimp a Butterfly was very much a product of black culture and it was proud of that fact. For it to almost win the Grammy for Best Album really says something (of course, it won best rap album). For books, I'm much more ignorant. I know Three Body Problem won the Hugo Award, and The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize. So that's really good, I suppose. (I haven't read either) As for video games, after GG I just stay away from basically everything and just want to play my games.

So, while I did say earlier that our achievements seemed to not be on our (our meaning, sigh, 'poc') terms, now it seems that it's really starting to turn around. Credit must be given where credit is due, and I will say that America now does seem to be acknowledging cultural pieces that are not meant for the white majority to be truly great. I respect that. We still have a long way to go, but I'm not going to say "WELL YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE BETTER, ALL POC ALL THE TIME" as to me that's not conductive.

Quote:
 
'm going to take a moment here to point out what I see as some of its other useful political applications within the Canadian context, though I cannot speak explicitly to the American one. At least here, part of Canadian national identity (particularly within urban areas, though I would argue overall we identify on a national scale in this way as well) is predicated upon how we are "multicultural" and a "cultural mosaic" unlike the American melting pot approach to racialized and cultural difference. So there's a very real sentiment of "look how us Canadians are better for advocating that people not abandon their previous identities once they reach Canada, unlike those Americans"... "we are more inclusive/more accepting/more tolerant of difference!"


If it's true that that's how Canadianland treats its minority, then ouch, that sucks. I feel for ya.

As for America's concept of melting pot, I can give several examples. As for east asians, I'm sure you've all heard of all the Chinatowns, Little Italys, K-towns, mexican restaurants, thai places, etc. etc.As for me and my places especially, Philly, NYC, and almost all of the tri-state area are pretty good about having all of these neighborhoods. In philly you could start in chinatown, get some pork buns, walk to center city for like a pizza or something, then go to little italy for some pasta. Shit was great, and of course it easily led to a lot of experimental fusion restaurants. Of course there were probably people who tried to cash in on making "wow this is so ethnic!" food but I never went to them because [radio edit] em.

As for holidays, Cinco de Mayo was like last week. Cities almost always make room for celebrations of Lunar (or Chinese) New Year. Hanukkah was always a thing. I dunno, it seems at least ok. Anything else I'm missing?

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To address this; somewhat similar to what I'm saying above already -- yes, when we speak within our own communities, be they Black, Indigenous, Desi, Chinese-Canadian, Vietnamese-American, etc. it may not be necessary or remotely politically useful to address ourselves as "PoC". But to experience being a person of colour in North America is to experience racism in some way, shape, or form; I would argue that it's inescapable.

Sure, you can argue that there are various degrees to which this affects you (or HOW it affects you) and you can either choose to take action or think about it, or not, but the fact of that matter is that it will happen.

To talk about "YOUR experiences and life experiences and life values, how you were shaped by your culture, etc." is in and of itself political simply due to the way things currently are, therefore to do so is already explicitly stating that you aren't white; this does not mean claiming that you aren't American—if anything, it seems the point is to claim these experiences as distinctly American, in the tone of "contrary to popular belief".

And that tone is necessary because inhabiting non-whiteness still has very real effects on our lives in many different ways, and to demand of everybody to shut up entirely about the damaging effects of racism from a white dominant society is, imo, kind of asking of people to do what the Canadian "multiculturalism" and "diversity" policies have done; to reap a hypocritical self-affirmation for our "wonderfully diverse" countr(ies) without ever engaging with or acknowledging the ways that those very same identities cause us to possibly lose our jobs, prevent (some of) us from accessing housing, cause (some of) us to be far more likely to be imprisoned, to cause (some of) us to fear for our lives and personal safety, etc.

Though I'm not saying we shouldn't ever have purely celebratory spaces, I think to mandate we don't talk about the ways whiteness and white racism has affected our communities (both directly and indirectly through cultivating internalized racism and racial hierarchies) or to think that we should have moved past that by now is simply unrealistic and moreover, a violence in and of itself for those who do continue to experience the violences of racism.


Sorry, I had to break it up in order to read it right.

>But to experience being a person of colour in North America is to experience racism in some way, shape, or form; I would argue that it's inescapable. Sure, you can argue that there are various degrees to which this affects you (or HOW it affects you) [...] but it will happen.

Agreed. The difficult thing is that: how much of this racism is consciously malicious vs just how people are brought up to believe? There's active stereotypes (hahaha this black guy doesn't have a dad! This asian guy just eats rice all day! Aren't all asian pussies tight as [radio edit]?), and then there's the microaggressions (WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM), and then there's just honest, well-meaning, but mislead ignorance (So, uh, Vietnam. I know we fought there, but where is it again?). The first two is pretty bad, but for the last one, I personally think just blaming them doesn't help things.

>To talk about "YOUR experiences and life experiences and life values, how you were shaped by your culture, etc." is in and of itself political simply due to the way things currently are, therefore to do so is already explicitly stating that you aren't white; this does not mean claiming that you aren't American—if anything, it seems the point is to claim these experiences as distinctly American, in the tone of "contrary to popular belief".

I completely agree with this. America is characterized by being a nation of immigrants. What I'm asking is that when you're talking about your own culture and life values, why even bring up the fact that you're not white? I'll give you life experiences, but imo if you're proud of your culture and want it to stand on its own, [radio edit]ing act like it.

OK I need to go to work now I'll have more when I come back.
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Saturos
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Shadow, just an observation, but I think the term 'people of colour' is used when you want to bring up the racial context. And in those conversations, I don't think it's 'people of colour' and 'people,' it's 'people of colour' and 'white people.' Outside of the racial perspective it's just people for both.

With 'minority,' Shads, how would you talk about people in other countries, where they might not be a minority in the population? Also, would say 'racial minority,' as opposed to like, 'religious minority,' for example?

Don't have too much to add, being white (so it's not my place to weigh in on this), but I'm reading!
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The Abominator
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Question: since "person of color" is grounded in American race relations, does it apply to people living in other countries? For example, is a native born ethnic Han in China a person of color, considering they don't suffer from racial prejudice where they live?
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Dracobolt
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From what I gather when discussing this with reasonable people, if someone is a citizen of a different country where they're not a racial/ethnic/etc minority, you wouldn't call them a POC unless they moved to the US/lived here long-term. At least, that's how I've been viewing it, so anyone more educated on the matter, please feel free to correct me.

:mercury_djinn: :mercury_djinn: :mercury_djinn:
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King in the North
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I'm trying to think of one, but I can't come up with a good term used in Sweden that would be used in the same way as people of color. We just use minority, either ethnical, religious or sexual. We don't ever use the word race. I'm guessing that has a lot to do with the difference in the history of racial issues and conflict in Sweden and USA.
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Dracobolt
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The US seems to have a lot of different minority groups. Does Sweden have that? If there aren't as many immigrants from different parts of the world, a very loose catchall term may not have evolved because it wasn't needed. But that's just me speculating.

:mercury_djinn: :mercury_djinn: :mercury_djinn:
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Slimegunk
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Sweden gets a lot of refugees from the middle east i think, or they used to at least

though the Sámi people are a minority, and while things are getting better for them, they aren't exactly great yet

I'm curious though KitN, as a Swede what is your take on the Sámi?
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King in the North
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It's not like we're that stereotypical cold pure country in the north that Hitler loved, we're not uncommon to immigration lol. But yeah it's not on the same level as USA. USA is a country of immigrants. Built by immigrants for immigrants (swedish immigrants included). Sweden is known in among the european countries for generous immigration and jobs, money and new life etc so after Germany, we got a lot of the syrian refugees but we're not on the same level as The American Dream in general historical immigration.

The samis aren't immigrants though, just minorities. They're indigenous people living in north Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. About 20k in Sweden I believe out of like a total of 80k. You could compare their situation to the indian relatives in USA, with history of racism and oppression against them. Natives with their own old culture and history who wants to preserve their identity.
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Slimegunk
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Oh yeah i know theyre minorities, I just wrote a couple papers about them for my classes actually
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Momentime
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Round 2 to sundancer's post, and then I'll try to respond to some other posts.

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Anyway, I digress a little, but just offering different ways to think about this. Ultimately I think the purpose of using "PoC" within, well, PoC communities, is meant to foster solidarity and shared experience in the face of a racist white-dominant system that, though it impacts us all in very different ways, does nevertheless impact us all in ways that aren't experienced by white folks on account of racial difference. Whether it actually does the job of fostering that inter-community solidarity is a different matter; Vae's article speaks very powerfully to that.


To me, and this is the basis of what I'm saying, is that I don't see how "PoC" can accomplish anything that "minority" cannot, especially when in my view minority can also include people like LGBT. I also don't see how "PoC" doesn't further divide and separate the minority population and the white majority rather than helping to reach compromise and understanding between the two supergroups. So it's a double edged sword, to me. Yes, I can see how it fosters intergroup relations and helps build solidarity. It brings all the little whispered complaints into one loud, exigent voice, of which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But all those voices have different things to say, and at times it seems to me that some in the "POC" community are less interested in trying to find a way to bring a better tomorrow, and are more interested in exact some kind of cultural revenge for past grievances.

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Yes, I agree that the conversation about racialized politics in the States and also here have been very Black/White, and could use a shitton more nuance. Not only are Asian American voices consistently left out of the conversation, it also doesn't include any nuanced consideration of Indigenous experiences. I believe in the States a more vocal Latin American/Hispanic contingent has begun to make its experiences known, but that too is burgeoning. However, I would argue that the goal with solidarity is to try and see these experiences, as different as you say they are, as originating at least in part from one major shared source -- that of racist white dominant/supremacist systems. To see all our experiences as so different that they are incomparable is to detract from any hope of transcending a lot of divisions that are already imposed at least partially from colonialist and white supremacist legacies and influences—it's playing straight into a system that has "different minorities... [with] different experiences fulfilling their place in this racial ecosystem" as you say. It is upholding the status quo, and prevents coalition-building and the effective change we hopefully want to see happen from ever happening. To claim that we are all so different that we couldn't possibly compare our experiences is IMO ultimately unproductively, unnecessarily divisive.


Yes, it is a shame that Asian American voices are routinely left out (for the moment, I'm going to assume that the Asian Canadian and Asian American voices are effectively the same. If you take issue with this then feel free to say so. Also, from now on I'll call us AA/CA), but I think this is ultimately to be expected, as AA/CA generally does not have the population number or western cultural power to exert much of a voice. Anime and manga, kpop/kdrama, Bollywood etc. are distinctly Asian, yes, but but they are not AA/CA. But, I think, we are starting to gain traction. Is it much? No, not really. But, one step at a time. It's not gonna be next year or maybe even next decade, but I think we as AA/CA will have a loud and strong voice.

To your other point, maybe you're right, and maybe it is better to ultimately bond over a shared experience of being subject to the supremacist system. As I said before, unifying can bring a movement which cannot be ignored, not if North America wants to keep claiming that it is one of the best continents. However, I will say that we as minorities must also demand that because the different minorities will have different experiences with the dominant system, the solutions for each racial relation problem must also be different. I'm worried that the dominant system will see us all as absolutely interchangeable and try to put on a one-size-fits-all kind of solution, when in my opinion, it should be the exact opposite. I can tell you with confidence, in the future this will be an issue.

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It kind of literally is though? At the very least, that is absolutely a good reason to be angry—what form that anger can and can't take is a debatable one that I don't particularly want to get into right now. But anger is not inherently bad, nor is it even remotely unreasonable; sure, you can try to "be the bigger person" or whatever but it's okay to get [radio edit]ing pissed when somebody's racist. Anger doesn't necessarily have to lead to violence, though again I don't particularly want to touch that question here; point is, getting angry about a racist system is totally fair and valid?


You are correct that it is a good reason to be angry, I was talking about getting angry and lashing out, for example with something like violence and non-civil protest. Know what I'm sayin? Absolutely, I can understand anger, I can understand feeling wronged. So ultimately, I agree with you, and you just articulated what I meant, I suppose.

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Back to the subject of solidarity though, I agree with needing to be vigilant about not using "PoC" as a copout, particularly for those of us with comparably more privilege on a basis of race and skin colour. I see too many Asian Canadians, particularly East Asian Canadians (Chinese and Korean Canadians mainly being my experience just due to the comparably less visible Japanese community in Toronto) maintaining very anti-Black attitudes, upholding the racist logics of the white dominant system. It's some real bullshit and requires a shitton of calling in in our own communities. We cannot pretend like the experiences of everybody who falls under the umbrella of PoC are the same; moreover, they are not only influenced by race but by other axes of identity—by gender, sex, sexual orientation, class, ability, age, and so forth. But just because a term is imperfect does not mean it has no helpful political power.


I see this too sometimes in my circles. Makes me smh. I want to yell at them: "You're not making yourself better, you [radio edit]. You're their [radio edit]ing lapdog, don't you get it? You're a chew toy. You really think you'll be elevated in their eyes, by putting others down? You really [radio edit]ing think they see you as equals? They [radio edit]ing don't man, so stop that shit."
And lastly, PoC, yes is an imperfect term. I cannot deny the power it has. I just think it's too imperfect and that we should be using another term. Maybe that's just me, though. In this circle, I certainly seem to be in the minority (no pun intended).
Saturos
May 16 2016, 12:53 AM
With 'minority,' Shads, how would you talk about people in other countries, where they might not be a minority in the population? Also, would say 'racial minority,' as opposed to like, 'religious minority,' for example?

Don't have too much to add, being white (so it's not my place to weigh in on this), but I'm reading!
Quote:
 
Question: since "person of color" is grounded in American race relations, does it apply to people living in other countries? For example, is a native born ethnic Han in China a person of color, considering they don't suffer from racial prejudice where they live?


I mean, this is coming from the guy that doesn't want to use POC in the first place, but I personally wouldn't use POC when talking about race relations that clearly doesn't mirror the USA situation. For example, educated Nigerians are certainly a minority, and yes, a POC here, but stick any white american in Nigeria and they would probably be considered the minority, and hence, the POC. Or say a white expat in corporate China or Japan. I suspect their minority white experience might actually mirror what minorities experience here in white-dominant America, but I can't be sure as I'm not them.

I actually do remember reading a blog about a black guy who went to China and kind of expected them (the Chinese) to bond over the fact that they weren't white, but the Chinese had no idea what he was talking about. To them, the default society was Chinese, and they never had to experience being a minority. Tryina find it atm but nothing turns up. Oh well.

And I actually do want to hear your thoughts and opinions. The way I see it, one of the few ways to effectively progress race relations is to actually talk to the white majority. This thread can't all be just me and Sundancer writing the 5 page essays. This way we can clear up, what are the ramifications REALLY of your actions, how can you grow as a person in your relations? I don't ever want to say "X is bad, Y is good, period, end of discussion" as this is too rigid.
Edited by Momentime, May 17 2016, 11:07 PM.
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