Why are people asking me to stop saying “People of Color”?

Written By Mars Avila

On Tuesday, June 16th, Paper Magazine reposted a TikTok from a leftist educator named Gem (@urdoinggreat) of the them dancing to an audio of someone singing: “see, this what we not finna do” under the text, “Me when yall try to dilute specifically Black experiences by saying ‘poc.’” The original video was posted on TikTok and IG on February 4th, click below to watch the video and read the caption underneath.

In these weeks following the national uprising against police brutality and institutional racism, I’ve seen a pushback against the term people of color, abbreviated POC, across social media. On Twitter, people are divided on the benefit and harm of the term. Some explain that people of color is the appropriate term to replace the pejorative and antiquated term colored people. Others reference the term’s connections with the n-word and its murky history during the eras of slavery and segregation. Read the tweets below and click on them to learn more.

Before I begin, I want to quickly acknowledge my perspective on this conversation. My name’s Mars, and I grew up in the early 2000s in the San Francisco Bay Area and received a comparatively progressive education about race in the US that emphasized the achievements of marginalized peoples and celebrated multiculturalism. This was great news for me, growing up half Chinese, half Mexican, and very obviously queer. Though I always had a sense that I wasn't white, it wasn’t until around my political awakening in high school that I came to identify under the umbrella term person of color. My dad was involved with the Asian-American movement of the 1970s, so in our house, the term people of color connoted a solidarity between all non-white people. The first time I personally heard any criticism of the phrase POC was in the conversations on social media following the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony Mcdade, and many other recent Black victims of police brutality.

Tweets and TikToks like Gem’s really helped me clarify that the best support and solidarity I can give to the Black community now looks like directly donating, decentering myself as a non-Black person, and educating myself on the history of race in America—including racial terminology. But what exactly is this history? What is the origin of the phrase people of color, and why has it fallen in and out of favor in the US?

Some of the earliest usages of any variation on people of color in the Americas dates back to the late 18th Century in the French colonies of Louisiana and the Carribean Islands. In her book Transamerican Literary Relations and the Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere, Anna Brickhouse records that the term gens de couleur (lit. “people of color”) was used to identify mixed people of African and European descent who were freed from slavery. After the United States purchased the Louisiana territory, the English term people of color held the same meaning, distinguishing mixed free people from slaves. However after the Civil War, the term colored (as in colored people) became a proud endonym for many Black people, regardless of their complexion or ancestry, according to The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style. Referring specifically to Black people, the phrase colored remained polite and in favor to both Black and white Americans into the Jim Crow era of segregation.

“The Linen Market at St. Domingo,” 1804. This engraved print based on a painting by Agostino Brunias depicts freed gens de couleur at a market with African slaves in the background.

“The Linen Market at St. Domingo,” 1804. This engraved print based on a painting by Agostino Brunias depicts freed gens de couleur at a market with African slaves in the background.

By the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s, the term colored along with the term negro grew outdated and were denounced by Black Civil Rights leaders. Eventually, as the dominant culture in the US shifted around the Civil Rights movement, the phrase colored fell out of common usage, perhaps in part due to its connection with the Jim Crow laws and segregation. By the 60s, colored only survived in enclaves of conservative or socially-unaware white people. As a result, the mainstream American population came to view the usage of colored by those who held on to the term as pejorative and hateful. Around this time, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned a nation of “citizens of color” in his famous 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial, perhaps the first recorded usage of the phrase -of color to replace colored.

Though the origin of terminology is historically very difficult to document, especially terms originating in minority populations, it is around the 70s and 80s when the phrase people of color began to frequently appear in reference to all non-white people. This broadening was perhaps due to the American Indian Movement, the Chicano Movement, and the Asian-American Movement all becoming more publicized in the late-60s and 70s. Consequently, many centrist and left-leaning publications at the time acknowledged the suffering of all non-white Americans during conversations about race and racism. Moreover, people of color represented both the solidarity between all people disenfranchised by white supremacy as well as a pushback against the synonymous term racial minorities. Today, POC is still broadly used in mainstream American media and education.

Photo by Roz Payne, Oakland, CA 1969

Photo by Roz Payne, Oakland, CA 1969

Despite the widespread use and popularity of the term people of color, many Black people have been speaking out against the term’s obfuscation of Blackness. In a 2017 article in Independent, Adebola Lamuye criticized people of color for being too broad a term: “The fact that us ‘non-whites’ are lumped together into some absurd category of being ‘people of colour’ further reinforces whiteness as the norm.” Lamuye highlights that when people say POC to mean “everybody who’s not white,” it centers whiteness in discussions of non-white issues. This centering of whiteness is especially egregious when POC is used as a synonym for Black. Moreover, Tolani Shoneye compounds upon the issues of conflating Black and POC in a 2018 article, in which she describes her non-Black friends’ discomfort using the racial descriptor Black to refer to her. She goes on to say, “To be described as ‘people of colour’ feels like our blackness is being tamed. Like it’s being hushed to make our identity more palatable.” The unity and solidarity once associated with POC now erases Blackness when non-Black people are uncomfortable saying the word Black.

Additionally, Gem, the educator I mentioned at the beginning, tweeted on January 24th 2020: “i didn’t say poc i said Black.” They continued in an Instagram story, now saved under the highlight “i said Black,” writing: “The problem is that [non-white people] are *NOT* all struggling under the same capitalism. Capitalism relies on a bottom tier to keep it going & time after time Black ppl are relegated to a position of constant laboring w/o getting to eat the fruits of our labor,” concluding, “As long as anti blackness is rampant throughout nonblack poc communities i will always center & uplift Black ppl *first*.” Gem’s highlight goes on to include videos and TikToks of them elaborating on their critiques of the term; I highly suggest you go check it out.

Of course, we non-Black, non-white Americans deal with real disenfranchizement of our own. Yet, by lumping our experiences in with Black people’s, we’re erasing their stories and derailing the conversations and support they need. The Black community’s ongoing fight for human rights has always opened the door for us and helped our communities along the path to equality as well. I encourage my fellow non-Black people of color to reflect on what real, lasting allyship looks like. A good place to start is by saying Black when you mean Black.

Photo by Daniel Ximénez, “Your fight is my fight,” 2020

Photo by Daniel Ximénez, “Your fight is my fight,” 2020

Holding all of these critiques of people of color in mind, I want to make it clear that the term is not completely evil or to be abolished. It is still a useful umbrella term for the instances where we do mean all people who aren’t white. In addition, the term BIPOC, meaning “Black, Indigenous People of Color,” has become popular for its distinction of Black and First Nations peoples as distinct from other non-white groups. A throughline in all this discourse on POC is the call for specificity in language, particularly when discussing issues, hurdles, and victories specific to Black people. To that end, check in with yourself before you post. Ask yourself, “who am I really talking about?”

Language is fluid. Words, particularly names for peoples, come in and out of favor, and will continue to as long as there are peoples to name. In a 1988 New York Times article chronicling the rise in popularity of people of color, William Safire speaks with NAACP spokesperson James Williams about the use of the term colored in the organization's name. Williams responds: ''Times change and terms change. Racial designations go through phases; at one time negro was accepted, at an earlier time colored and so on. This organization has been in existence for 80 years and the initials N.A.A.C.P. are part of the American vocabulary, firmly embedded in the national consciousness, and we feel it would not be to our benefit to change our name.''

Language is of the utmost importance during times of social upheaval. We see the most drastic shifts in words identifying the Black community right after the Civil War and during the Civil Rights movement. This is because language shapes conversations, and conversations lead to change. Opening minds and inspiring empathy is an important first step in the societal shift needed to create a country where Black lives matter, Black pain is validated, and Black victories are celebrated. We are in control of the conversations leading us down the path to this future, let’s be thoughtful about how we have them.

UPDATE: As of 10:05PM PST June 30th, 2020, leftist educator Gem has been accused of sexual misconduct. They have responded to the situation in an Instagram highlight titled "accountability", available to view at @urdoingreat. TRASH MAG does not condone any form of sexual misconduct or the shielding of those who perpetuate rape culture. We stand with victims and commit ourselves to creating space and amplifying their voices.

Mars Avila
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