Sid said it all.

Ravi – my point about using ‘people of colour’ isn’t the term itself, because people are right in that there are different implications and different contexts.

My worry is more than it denotes only ethnic minorities have ‘colour’. That is especially worrying because the implication in certain circles that we are different because we have ‘colour’ and white people don’t.

We are all people of colour – just different colours

Its an American term, and a very political one at that – as Halima points out. But as ‘Black’ is phasing out here (probably for good), I think this too should be phased out.

I think we must move in different circles.

Heh yeah very true.

I am not really a fan of it, because it is uncomfortably close to “coloured”, which I was raised to consider extremely offensive, and neither term really makes any sense to me, because, as several people have commented, everyone has a colour. But it is definitely in vogue in the US at the moment.

I think we must move in different circles.

Stephanie

It could be worse. We could be the Drink.Soaked.Twats.For.War.

Heh, amen to that brother!

How amny people have you met that describe themselves as ‘persons of colour’, or for that matter, BME (black and minority ethnic)?

Hmmm….for person of colour quite a few (upwards of 70 odd, never heard of Colourful TV I take it?), for BME, maybe a thousand or so? Maybe more…

I suspect if you called the average South Asian the latter you would probably get a clip round the eaar.

Not in my experience, even those who are not sure of the term have always been interested with it once it was explained…

Helen

I’ve only just seen this post which is why I’m so late responding.

I apologise for using language that makes you feel uncomfortable.

I’ll amend the blog entry today.

Sincere apologies again.
Helen

Saying ‘woman of colour’ is a bit old-fashioned but for some reason, when I read that, I didn’t think of race at all, but of the expression ‘colourful character’ that you use to indicate that somebody has a varied and interesting nature.

So I can see how it could be used positively as well.

With regards to all the people talking about Rumbold… he might actually have a better idea of things than you think, because he lives near me, and my area is definitely ‘ethnic minority.’

I see why Sunny and others resort to using the term ‘brown’ – because it is easy – but I suppose it is lazy too, to do so. Lord knows I ain’t brown, though I wouldn’t mind being so! Perhaps a more specific term needs to be used.

http://www.asklyrics.com/display/Ice-T/Race_War_Lyrics/132759.htm

b’shalom

bananabrain

Any slower and it would be going backwards……

Deep down I suspect you’re right. I have been here since 7/7 broadly. I think that’s 3 years. I know about the good stuff. But right now that consensus doesn’t transcend race enough for me. There’s too much short-termist and blinkered racial posturing going on these days for my liking. I’ve got higher expectations (That’s proper higher Leon).
Admittedly, it’s making me bitchier than I would like to be. Maybe a holiday will chill me out.

sometimes women of black descent do use the term women of colour as a positive valorisation …

and I don’t like to say i am this and that, but would always politically be inclined to say ‘black’ as a political catogory – something that South Asian Brits aren’t comfortable doing. It would seem.

I don’t personally think I am ‘black’ in a cultural sense, but I am black politically in relation to a state that is homegenously white to me – though this is changing slowly.

But as Stuart Hall said a long time ago, the term ‘black’ was only constructed in opposition to another dominant term that is ‘white’… and that before he immigrated to the UK from the Caribbean he’s never given his skin pigmentation any thought. He was never aware that he was brown or black.

It is, in a the end, a socially constructed term, as with all such terms, they mean different things in different contexts.

So a white woman using the term a woman of colour would be misplaced .. to be kind. And especially misplaced coming from a feminist site – when we know feminism usually is concerned about allowing women/men multiple identities and expressions for how they live/label themselves.

“It only shows how ingrained and deep-seated these oldschool colonial terms of division are.”

Agreed.

Leon:

“Because he said ‘tends too’, I’m curious as to what that generalisation is based on.”

Personal experience. How amny people have you met that describe themselves as ‘persons of colour’, or for that matter, BME (black and minority ethnic)? I suspect if you called the average South Asian the latter you would probably get a clip round the eaar.

yeah, but I didn’t coin the term “yellow” for East Asians. I’m just registering my distaste for what is, essentially, a colonial term in the same way that “coloured” is. And the term brown seems to be falling for the same thing. I’m averse to colour coding when referring to large swathes of disparate people.