Use of the term People of Color (POC)

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Interesting

[jakelafortParticipant]

Yeah Pope i mentioned that google graph. It is pretty cool. I took the liberty of inserting the worst racist term for Blacks. Turns out that since 1980 nigger and people of color are mirroring each other. The spike after 1800 in POC usage makes sense since we know the Haitian revolution ended in 1804 and French referred to their color added biracial kids as POC. And as i mentioned earlier POC was used in statutes both for Jim Crow and the ACT ending the Atlantic Slave Trade. 1808 (just importation otherwise status quo) But i also recall reading how some Blacks chose the term POC after the civil war and yet the usage was minimal. It is hard to say the cause and effect relationship between the simultaneous spikes in POC and Nigger.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

While looking for a professional mental health event unrelated to PoC, I accidentally ran into this item:

[jakelafortParticipant]

That is it. Too modest. You are the gumshoe Pope whose parameters lack scope.

I shall take the liberty of hitting em with NCAP. (no color added people) For good measure lets add PIAPOC.U (People identified as people of color UNJUSTLY)

[PopeBeanieModerator]

jakelafort wrote:

You are the gumshoe Pope whose parameters lack scope.

Oh no! I specifically mentioned that I was not looking for these things (except for the Amazon book list), but I’m accidentally noticing references to PoC in everyday language. I do not call myself a gumshoe, but if you’re impressed with that label, it’s fine. You got “Pope” right.

Anyway, minor diversion dispensed with, I actually came back here to say that I finally asked my therapist what she thinks about the PoC label, as I said I would. She doesn’t like it because it wraps too many minorities and Low SES into one disparate group. We had a fairly long and exciting discussion about it, and I now understand there is such thing as the acceptable label “People of Low SES”.

I’ll give up on our argument, after this, while still believing that the trend is for the long term evolution of language to make this issue moot as so-called PoC take over ownership of the moniker in daily usage. I will continue to respect their new ownership of it, while at the same time I’ll not be upset with the imperfection of it not being explicitly precise about all the possible shades of color in people. It’s strange to me that “black” is okay, e.g. for Obama, even when he’s half white. I mean come on, even “white” people are not purely white. It’s the concept of injustice as historically perpetrated by the White Man that matters more than splitting hairs about actual colors. These terms in common usage just aren’t perfect, and never have been.

(SES = Socio-Economic Status.)

(OMG, yet another related coinkidink I wasn’t looking for… PBS News Hour is reporting how millions of Americans are checking off more and different boxes than they used to on census forms, so statistics on race/color are kind of a mess now. Lots of mixing going on out there, and political redistricting is getting a taste of demographic chaos.)

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by  PopeBeanie. Reason: added the word "more" to the last paragraph

[jakelafortParticipant]

Hey Pope, I wonder if your therapist reached her conclusion after being influenced by others. The articles i read critiquing the term had her reason as the predominant one. And i get it. The greater inclusion diminishes the sense of identity that comes with the label. The broadening and greater inclusion in the label only fortifies my contention that the term POC has zero meaning unless it is juxtaposed against the originators of the term as there is no rational basis to exclude Whites.

No matter how it is sliced POC is an explicit adoption of the perspective of racists and concomitantly of inferiority. There is no way people who were once described as Stupid People ameliorate their status by the label People of Stupid. Or fill in the transition with whichever epithet. My idea NCAP (No Color Added People) addresses the racism inherent in colored and says fuck you. That is a label that one can stomach without the baggage of racism past. I don’t think POC is similar to blacks who use the word Nigger or Nigga to diminish its sting.

Obama being perceived almost universally as Black came as no surprise to me. Me half Jewish and half Irish/French was always known as Jewish even by my friends. If a person is Half Native American and half White they’re known as Indian or Native American. The perceived bad part gets the headlines.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

The perceived bad part gets the headlines.

I don’t think it’s necessarily perceived as bad – just “non-standard”, which is often the same thing.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Ok Simon that is probably fair.

Lets say it is the colored in part that takes precedence. Not only does the nonstandard get the label but it swallows the standard and negates it.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

On a related note, boosted now by the House out to Cancel the Executive Branch’s use of a word. I had no clue that use of the term LatinX was yet another propagandanismistic (sp) tactic of Woke Culture.

As just another naive white guy, post-colonist, I sought out and found a bit of Latin[?] history and insight from someone, who I think is one of Them.

This person likes the genderless term “Latine”, which makes grammatical sense to me, in my limited knowledge of Spanish language.

It’d be funny if Wokesters, et al, and Biden, et al switched over to using the Genderless Pronoun Latine, in light of how the gender-full Latina introduced the anti-LatinX term amendment as an attachment to an unrelated, bigger bill.

For me, this video is a start, before I become more informed on this topic. It’s only 3:40 long:

And this was how She/Her//Latina/Gentleman from Florida so eloquently introduced the amendment (4 minutes long):

[—Participant]

PopeBeanie wrote:
On a related note, boosted now by the House out to Cancel the Executive Branch’s use of a word. I had no clue that use of the term LatinX was yet another propagandanismistic (sp) tactic of Woke Culture.

Pretty confident it wasn’t. There was just a divide between how different Spanish-speaking groups around the world approached creating a gender-neutral term. The term was created due to a legitimate need, but the approach in some regions appears to have been shaped by trends in English (Eg. use of Mx. in place of Mr. Mrs. Ms.) that were then adopted to Spanish.

PopeBeanie wrote:
It’d be funny if Wokesters, et al, and Biden, et al switched over to using the Genderless Pronoun Latine, in light of how the gender-full Latina introduced the anti-LatinX term amendment as an attachment to an unrelated, bigger bill.

To some extent, it’s not so different from how there are anglophones who still to this day get upset if you refer to a same-sex or same-gender union as a ‘marriage’. While outsiders shouldn’t dictate to use how we use our own language, you can still understand there are issues of homophobia at play when someone defines marriage exclusively as the union between one man and one woman.

It’s not for us to dictate how various people refer to themselves. But in the case where there is disagreement between LatinX, Latine, and Latino, we can appreciate that the former two are legitimate attempts to address issues of sexism and recognition of non-binary people.

I can’t dictate to other people what they should be called, but when I am being asked to adopt a practice in my own language, yeah, I can choose to side with those who are pushing for change toward inclusivity of women and non-binary people in the collective noun in their own language. I can choose, in some contexts, not to side with someone who is rejecting change.

Now if Ms. Salazar prefers the collective term Latino as situationally appropriate, I can do my best to use that with her. Truth be told, it will likely never come up because I rarely refer to people that way and she and I will never meet. But it doesn’t mean I don’t think she’s an asshole for her reasons for rejecting LaatinX/ Latine, and if I were working for the White House and a policy had to be adopted, hers would likely not be the Latina argument I’d favour when there are Latine and LatinX voices making a stronger case for change, just like I’m not asking a homophobe how to define ‘marriage’.

[jakelafortParticipant]

I am not too excited about POC. Groups can go with whatever handle they like. I propose POD for Muslims. People of death. And the funny thing is i think a lot of Muslims would take it and run with it.

[—Participant]

jakelafort wrote:

I am not too excited about POC.

Well, what’s important in all this is how it makes you feel. I will spread the word.

Groups can go with whatever handle they like. I propose POD for Muslims. People of death. And the funny thing is i think a lot of Muslims would take it and run with it.

Was the other thread not enough for you? Is the need to be a POS that great?

[jakelafortParticipant]

Piece of Sunshine!

Thank you ever so much Autumn!

[UnseenParticipant]

You pronounce Latinx to rhyme with “sphinx,” right?

We should do what we often do: default to the male term.

We use “man” to represent mankind. We often use the term guys when referring to any of our friends whether they are men or women, straight, gay, “queer” (whatever that means), trans, cross dressers, or drag queens. These terms have become gender nonspecific over the years.

Question: Are we supposed (according to the supposers) to jump ahead of the Spanish/Portuguese-speaking community and adopt these strange and unfamiliar modes of speaking even before they adopt them?

What do Hispanics think, anyway? (But why should we care, right?)

Juicy quote about “latinx”:

But although it may have good intentions, the term has yet to be integrated by most Hispanic people, data shows. And while some people’s reasonings for disliking the term may well be rooted in transphobia, for others, the issue is the word itself.

Naysayers call the term a form of “neocolonialism,” or a way for non-Hispanic progressives to control what Latin people call themselves — in other words, a “white people thing.”

[—Participant]

jakelafort wrote:

Piece of Sunshine!

Purveyor of shade with paucity of sensibility.

Thank you ever so much Autumn!

No problem.

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