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As a less rhetorical answer, that might help some people if not the OP – as an Asian man in America, I have to worry about people making stupid jokes about my p

As a less rhetorical answer, that might help some people if not the OP – as an Asian man in America, I have to worry about people making stupid jokes about my perceived culture, but usually not about getting the police called on me and being shot dead because I'm examining a BB gun that is on sale at Walmart [1] (sometimes, there are exceptions [2]). BIPOC puts this group of people (Black and Indigenous) as a separate group before POC, since they face these challenges of simply surviving in society while doing what most of the "rest of us" consider normal activities. At first I was puzzled about why indigenous people were included, but then realized, for example, that Native Americans are killed in police encounters at a higher rate than any other ethnic group [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_John_Crawford_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_John_Crawford_III [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sureshbhai_Patel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sureshbhai_Patel (it's sobering to note that even in this case, Patel had the police called on him because someone thought he was Black) [3] https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/us/native-lives-matter/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/us/native-lives-matter/index....

jt0 6y ago
Adding to this from the BIPOC Project [0] "We use the term BIPOC to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black (African Americans) people have, which shapes the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within a U.S. context." Not all groups face the same oppression and this term intentionally names the two groups which are systematically the most oppressed in a US context. [0] https://www.thebipocproject.org/ https://www.thebipocproject.org/
- olivermarks 6y ago
  Looks as if this site and the BIPOC media blitz was launched this month.
Anthony-G 6y ago
Thanks for the explanation. As a European observing from afar, I hadn't come across the BIPOC acronym until I started reading this thread. I was also unaware that police violence against native Americans was such big a problem as described in the CNN article.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  I'm black and I haven't come across the BIPOC term either. But it does a good job of encapsulating the differences in how society treats and processes visible minorities. Asian folk have their issues, but there isn't the same aspect of "assumed criminality" that is faced with black and indigenous groups.
throwaway711477 6y ago
Doesn't the "POC" term promote the idea that "people of color" have some sort of shared interests? Yet, is that always true? Person A is an upper-middle class Indian. They study software engineering at university in India. They immigrate to the United States and get a job working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. Person B is a working class African-American. Nobody in their family has ever been to university. They work in a service job and live in the suburbs of Atlanta. What do A and B actually have in common? It seems to me, probably not very much. Their life experiences are very different. A lives a much more privileged life than B. Probably, A actually has more in common with, and more commonality of interests, with their Caucasian American colleagues than with B. Given that, doesn't labelling them both as "POC" obscure more than it reveals? It also completely ignores the problem that India has with anti-African racism and violence, see e.g – https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/the-harsh-reality-of-being-african-in-india-race-violence-college-students/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/the-harsh-reality-of-be... – something of which person A may of course be personally entirely innocent, but then again maybe not. If anything, I think the term "POC" is deeply Western-centric (and even US-centric), and presumes that racism and racial conflict is always whites-against-everyone else, when in the wider world it often isn't. (Africans in India, Uighurs and Tibetans in China–and, I think the case of China shows, trying to blame European colonialism for non-Western racism doesn't always work. Or, again, consider how Japan treated Koreans.) I think the term BIPOC is potentially problematic in that it presents African-American and Native American interests as being more aligned than maybe they actually are. What is the foundational story of US history? The New York Times' 1619 Project presents it as being the Atlantic slave trade. Why that, and not the dispossession of Native Americans? Many African-Americans (and even many Caucasian Americans) seem to want to privilege the African-American narrative over the Native American narrative. Are Native Americans okay with that? I'm sure at least some are not. But lumping them together as "BIPOC" serves to obscure, even erase, these tensions. (Throwaway because, I hope people can appreciate my comments are an attempt to approach these issues thoughtfully, but in today's climate one has to be very careful what one says.)
- thex10 6y ago
  > Doesn't the "POC" term promote the idea that "people of color" have some sort of shared interests? Think highlight rather than promote. Think shared experience rather than shared interest. No, not identical experience, but think overlapping parts of a venn diagram. A relevant example in that overlap, assumed criminality, is mentioned in the very comment you are replying to. And sure, it's probably very Western-centric and doesn't encapsulate the complicated relations amongst many different races, nationalities, and ethnicities. Not sure why one would expect a single phrase to accomplish such. > I think the term BIPOC is potentially problematic in that it presents African-American and Native American interests as being more aligned than maybe they actually are. Do you have a similar issue with the LGBT framing?
deleted 6y ago
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jt0 6y ago

Adding to this from the BIPOC Project [0] "We use the term BIPOC to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black (African Americans) people have, which shapes the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within a U.S. context." Not all groups face the same oppression and this term intentionally names the two groups which are systematically the most oppressed in a US context. [0] https://www.thebipocproject.org/ https://www.thebipocproject.org/

olivermarks 6y ago
Looks as if this site and the BIPOC media blitz was launched this month.

Anthony-G 6y ago

Thanks for the explanation. As a European observing from afar, I hadn't come across the BIPOC acronym until I started reading this thread. I was also unaware that police violence against native Americans was such big a problem as described in the CNN article.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
I'm black and I haven't come across the BIPOC term either. But it does a good job of encapsulating the differences in how society treats and processes visible minorities. Asian folk have their issues, but there isn't the same aspect of "assumed criminality" that is faced with black and indigenous groups.

throwaway711477 6y ago

Doesn't the "POC" term promote the idea that "people of color" have some sort of shared interests? Yet, is that always true? Person A is an upper-middle class Indian. They study software engineering at university in India. They immigrate to the United States and get a job working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. Person B is a working class African-American. Nobody in their family has ever been to university. They work in a service job and live in the suburbs of Atlanta. What do A and B actually have in common? It seems to me, probably not very much. Their life experiences are very different. A lives a much more privileged life than B. Probably, A actually has more in common with, and more commonality of interests, with their Caucasian American colleagues than with B. Given that, doesn't labelling them both as "POC" obscure more than it reveals? It also completely ignores the problem that India has with anti-African racism and violence, see e.g – https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/the-harsh-reality-of-being-african-in-india-race-violence-college-students/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/the-harsh-reality-of-be... – something of which person A may of course be personally entirely innocent, but then again maybe not. If anything, I think the term "POC" is deeply Western-centric (and even US-centric), and presumes that racism and racial conflict is always whites-against-everyone else, when in the wider world it often isn't. (Africans in India, Uighurs and Tibetans in China–and, I think the case of China shows, trying to blame European colonialism for non-Western racism doesn't always work. Or, again, consider how Japan treated Koreans.) I think the term BIPOC is potentially problematic in that it presents African-American and Native American interests as being more aligned than maybe they actually are. What is the foundational story of US history? The New York Times' 1619 Project presents it as being the Atlantic slave trade. Why that, and not the dispossession of Native Americans? Many African-Americans (and even many Caucasian Americans) seem to want to privilege the African-American narrative over the Native American narrative. Are Native Americans okay with that? I'm sure at least some are not. But lumping them together as "BIPOC" serves to obscure, even erase, these tensions. (Throwaway because, I hope people can appreciate my comments are an attempt to approach these issues thoughtfully, but in today's climate one has to be very careful what one says.)

thex10 6y ago
> Doesn't the "POC" term promote the idea that "people of color" have some sort of shared interests? Think highlight rather than promote. Think shared experience rather than shared interest. No, not identical experience, but think overlapping parts of a venn diagram. A relevant example in that overlap, assumed criminality, is mentioned in the very comment you are replying to. And sure, it's probably very Western-centric and doesn't encapsulate the complicated relations amongst many different races, nationalities, and ethnicities. Not sure why one would expect a single phrase to accomplish such. > I think the term BIPOC is potentially problematic in that it presents African-American and Native American interests as being more aligned than maybe they actually are. Do you have a similar issue with the LGBT framing?

deleted 6y ago

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