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Perhaps, in the spirit of sharing useful insight within these kinds of discussions, as a black American you could educate me about something? For context, I am

Perhaps, in the spirit of sharing useful insight within these kinds of discussions, as a black American you could educate me about something? For context, I am neither black nor American, I have little time for woke virtue-signalling and fake outrage, but I do want to be properly respectful of others whose background and sensitivities aren't necessarily like my own. With that in mind, I often find socially acceptable terminology around race confusing. For example, take the word "color". I can understand why an umbrella term such as "colored people" could be problematic. However, if that is the case, I don't understand why "people of color" should be any more socially acceptable, nor why one of the most prominent advocacy groups still uses the former term in its name. There is so much unconstructive commentary about this particular example that it's hard to figure out what the relevant history and genuine sensitivities are here. Can you enlighten me?

vmception 6y ago
It's just symbolic, and still part of a consensus forming continuum based on advances in communication across large landmasses. Black people in America are from many different cultures and are simply people that noticed that they had a shared experience of being excluded from institutions and even entire states. The terminology simply comes from individuals taking initiative in the moment and saying "they treat everyone that looks like us all the same and we need umbrella terms to acknowledge our shared circumstance so that its easy to refer to ourselves". Other non-black people already had terms for us and these terms were typically also used in the pejorative. Many people consider "black" to be an affliction even today. So what you have is that some black people reject those older terms, some people try to repurpose and "take back" those older terms, some people create new terms, most terms are still in use. These aren't scientific terms, but they do permeate into academia to convey a shared concept. So there isn't much to read into it except learning what the consensus is, and the history of why it is. But trying to merge it into the lexicon based on pattern recognition with other words will only confuse you.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Thank you, that's an interesting reply. Again perhaps this is my own lack of informed perspective, but I had always imagined that grouping all "non-white" people together under a single term was part of the problem. It seems like an act that diminishes the distinct cultures all being lumped in together, as well as the obvious racism if the whole group was then treated as somehow inferior or less worthy. But from what you wrote, it seems like at least some people in the affected communities do find these kinds of umbrella terms useful, as a form of solidarity and recognition of shared problems? But then even within those communities not everyone agrees on which terms are useful for positive reasons and which have too much negative baggage or pejorative history, and that's how we get the apparent contradictions like "colored people" being socially unacceptable, but not in the context of the NAACP, and at the same time "people of color" being socially acceptable?
  - vmception 6y ago
    yeah mostly accurate, but a lot of people would not agree with me for saying so :) but lets look at your example source of cognitive dissonance, NAACP: The NAACP has done historically monumental things on behalf of a group of very different people that were being excluded as if they were the same. It comes from a different era and different motivated individuals taking initiative. It predates a different individual pushing “African American” much later on. That predates such rampant subsequent immigration and population growth in the US where enough people find African American to be so ambiguous to the point of ridiculous, while there are many slave descendants that take pride in the term and make it their whole identity (or have it forced on them like many black people in other English speaking countries with no American parents, this is particularly comical to me), whereas others who may also be slave descendants adopt black American or other adjectives and identifiers. With the NAACP there is no utility in changing that acronym and no need to or drive to, like a landmark. It wouldn’t surprise me if they arbitrarily did change the name on their own, but there is no talk or consensus amongst its beneficiaries to do so (unlike other landmarks).
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      Thanks again. I learned something today. :-)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
edbob 6y ago
> I can understand why an umbrella term such as "colored people" could be problematic. However, if that is the case, I don't understand why "people of color" should be any more socially acceptable Scott Alexander explains this as a way for upper-class people to maintain their privileges: "The whole point is to make sure the working-class white guy whose best friends are black and who marries a black woman and has beautiful black children feels immeasurably inferior to the college-educated white guy who knows that saying "colored people" is horrendously offensive but saying "people of color" is the only way to dismantle white supremacy."[0] [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-republicans https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-...
- ModernMech 6y ago
  You might consider this alternative perspective: “Indeed, what is acceptable for white people to call African Americans and for black people to call themselves has evolved over the last century. The standard term has shifted from “colored” to “Negro” to “black” to “African American” as people sought to redefine themselves and their place in America. Now, in 2020, “people of color” often is used to refer to the collective group of non-white Americans. It is offensive to single blacks out as “colored.” That, in part, is because of the painful segregationist history associated with the term prior to the mid-1960s. “Colored-only” restrooms and water fountains are examples of harmful relics of the Jim Crow South that black people had to fight, and die, to remove from American culture.” https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-dahleen-glanton-colored-email-reading-list-20200304-utx7geiwm5hupa3t7w6xr3xqn4-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-da...
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The question is why “people of color” isn’t an equally harmful relic, which the article doesn’t really seem to explain.
    - edbob 6y ago
      It also doesn't explain why "black" was preferred for a time, then it was verboten, and now it's preferred but you have to capitalize it. Nor does it explain why "African-American" was required for a time even though many Black people don't identify as African, and it's obviously completely inappropriate to apply to a Black person who has never left the UK, but that's what was required nonetheless. Scott Alexander's hypothesis explains all of that. Constant change is what makes fashion fashion, and fashion is a very effective way to discriminate between the in-group and the out-group.
istjohn 6y ago
This is an example of the "Euphemism Treadmill." Words that refer to things that some portion of society hold negative views about acquire negative connotations over time. These words are then discarded by polite society for clean new words without the baggage. E.g. latrine to water closet to toilet to bathroom to restroom, or retarded to mentally handicapped to developmentally disabled. See: https://aeon.co/essays/euphemisms-are-like-underwear-best-changed-frequently https://aeon.co/essays/euphemisms-are-like-underwear-best-ch...
Barracoon 6y ago
NPR looked into this 7 years ago. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070/the-journey-from-colored-to-minorities-to-people-of-color https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070...

vmception 6y ago

It's just symbolic, and still part of a consensus forming continuum based on advances in communication across large landmasses. Black people in America are from many different cultures and are simply people that noticed that they had a shared experience of being excluded from institutions and even entire states. The terminology simply comes from individuals taking initiative in the moment and saying "they treat everyone that looks like us all the same and we need umbrella terms to acknowledge our shared circumstance so that its easy to refer to ourselves". Other non-black people already had terms for us and these terms were typically also used in the pejorative. Many people consider "black" to be an affliction even today. So what you have is that some black people reject those older terms, some people try to repurpose and "take back" those older terms, some people create new terms, most terms are still in use. These aren't scientific terms, but they do permeate into academia to convey a shared concept. So there isn't much to read into it except learning what the consensus is, and the history of why it is. But trying to merge it into the lexicon based on pattern recognition with other words will only confuse you.

Silhouette 6y ago
Thank you, that's an interesting reply. Again perhaps this is my own lack of informed perspective, but I had always imagined that grouping all "non-white" people together under a single term was part of the problem. It seems like an act that diminishes the distinct cultures all being lumped in together, as well as the obvious racism if the whole group was then treated as somehow inferior or less worthy. But from what you wrote, it seems like at least some people in the affected communities do find these kinds of umbrella terms useful, as a form of solidarity and recognition of shared problems? But then even within those communities not everyone agrees on which terms are useful for positive reasons and which have too much negative baggage or pejorative history, and that's how we get the apparent contradictions like "colored people" being socially unacceptable, but not in the context of the NAACP, and at the same time "people of color" being socially acceptable?
- vmception 6y ago
  yeah mostly accurate, but a lot of people would not agree with me for saying so :) but lets look at your example source of cognitive dissonance, NAACP: The NAACP has done historically monumental things on behalf of a group of very different people that were being excluded as if they were the same. It comes from a different era and different motivated individuals taking initiative. It predates a different individual pushing “African American” much later on. That predates such rampant subsequent immigration and population growth in the US where enough people find African American to be so ambiguous to the point of ridiculous, while there are many slave descendants that take pride in the term and make it their whole identity (or have it forced on them like many black people in other English speaking countries with no American parents, this is particularly comical to me), whereas others who may also be slave descendants adopt black American or other adjectives and identifiers. With the NAACP there is no utility in changing that acronym and no need to or drive to, like a landmark. It wouldn’t surprise me if they arbitrarily did change the name on their own, but there is no talk or consensus amongst its beneficiaries to do so (unlike other landmarks).
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Thanks again. I learned something today. :-)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

edbob 6y ago

> I can understand why an umbrella term such as "colored people" could be problematic. However, if that is the case, I don't understand why "people of color" should be any more socially acceptable Scott Alexander explains this as a way for upper-class people to maintain their privileges: "The whole point is to make sure the working-class white guy whose best friends are black and who marries a black woman and has beautiful black children feels immeasurably inferior to the college-educated white guy who knows that saying "colored people" is horrendously offensive but saying "people of color" is the only way to dismantle white supremacy."[0] [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-republicans https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-...

ModernMech 6y ago
You might consider this alternative perspective: “Indeed, what is acceptable for white people to call African Americans and for black people to call themselves has evolved over the last century. The standard term has shifted from “colored” to “Negro” to “black” to “African American” as people sought to redefine themselves and their place in America. Now, in 2020, “people of color” often is used to refer to the collective group of non-white Americans. It is offensive to single blacks out as “colored.” That, in part, is because of the painful segregationist history associated with the term prior to the mid-1960s. “Colored-only” restrooms and water fountains are examples of harmful relics of the Jim Crow South that black people had to fight, and die, to remove from American culture.” https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-dahleen-glanton-colored-email-reading-list-20200304-utx7geiwm5hupa3t7w6xr3xqn4-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-da...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The question is why “people of color” isn’t an equally harmful relic, which the article doesn’t really seem to explain.
  - edbob 6y ago
    It also doesn't explain why "black" was preferred for a time, then it was verboten, and now it's preferred but you have to capitalize it. Nor does it explain why "African-American" was required for a time even though many Black people don't identify as African, and it's obviously completely inappropriate to apply to a Black person who has never left the UK, but that's what was required nonetheless. Scott Alexander's hypothesis explains all of that. Constant change is what makes fashion fashion, and fashion is a very effective way to discriminate between the in-group and the out-group.

istjohn 6y ago

This is an example of the "Euphemism Treadmill." Words that refer to things that some portion of society hold negative views about acquire negative connotations over time. These words are then discarded by polite society for clean new words without the baggage. E.g. latrine to water closet to toilet to bathroom to restroom, or retarded to mentally handicapped to developmentally disabled. See: https://aeon.co/essays/euphemisms-are-like-underwear-best-changed-frequently https://aeon.co/essays/euphemisms-are-like-underwear-best-ch...

Barracoon 6y ago

NPR looked into this 7 years ago. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070/the-journey-from-colored-to-minorities-to-people-of-color https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/30/295931070...