Indicating someone's race...

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Ken

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I discovered this when I went to college and was very surprised to find that I (I'm half-Asian, half-white) was also included in this category. Until then, I had only heard "person of color" to refer to African-American or black people, so that was an education for me. Not to mention, I'd been trying my hardest to ignore my Asian heritage, but I won't get into that here. So it was jarring for me to be referred to as such, but I've gotten used to it.

My college had several groups, the Black Student Association, a group for southern-Asian, Mexican, Latin-American students etc. I didn't fit in to any of those categories so I was extremely happy when I discovered a student group for those of mixed-race, although there were very few of us. It was gratifying to have people to talk to about things.

Combinations are nice. It's cool you found a group of people to hang with. I gave up ever having that long ago. I never fit in anywhere. A perpetual outcast. Must be nice to fit in somewhere :)
 

Putputt

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That's the thing. No one is a hive mind, and one mistake white people often make, even when we like to think of themselves as liberal, is to assume that people from other backgrounds are more uniform in their opinions and experiences than we are.

But I feel like a dork for trying to argue eloquently on why it might not be a good idea to ignore these things in stories, because it can be hurtful to people who aren't the race that most people default to, and have someone gently remind me that it's not my battle to fight.

I do think that's a legitimate concern sometimes: white people, straight people, men etc. and other allies telling people of color, LGBT people, and women about their own experiences (I get annoyed with my husband, who is not at all sexist, about this now and again). This doesn't mean I'm going to ignore race, orientation etc. in my own writing, but it does make me more hesitant to tell others how they should approach it in theirs.

And still, we live in a world where this happened just ten years ago.
Bold mine.

Reg: the bolded part, I think you're a much more mature person than I am, because despite knowing that everyone's experience is different etc, I still get all ragey whenever I come across people who think erasure isn't a big deal. Especially when it's a fellow PoC, cause then I just want to shake them and yell, "Blood traitorrrrrr!!! You are THAT PERSON. The one people refer to when they say shit like 'My Asian friend doesn't think the term Chinaman is racist, so it's not racist and you're just being sensitive.'"

My brother is one such person. He genuinely thinks terms like 'chink' and 'Chinaman' aren't racist. It makes me want to punch him in the face because he refuses to learn about the history of those terms and why they've become such loaded, offensive terms. He even refers to himself as a "chink" sometimes. Gahhh.

Um, anyway, what was my point...I don't think I had one. :D oh yes, that you are much more patient than I am when it comes to this subject (and many others, come to think of it...).
 

Barbara R.

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So now I wonder if most of those writers out there who are blogging about this and are saying how important it is for race to not be invisible in fiction are just liberal white people who are telling PoC how they should feel about the way race is portrayed in novels. But I know PoC who have said it's important to them. But if I quote that, then I'm just falling into that "well my black/Asian/Latinia friend said that..." thing that is used by racists sometimes too.
n :(

I "know" most of the founders on Twitter and the ones I know are all non-white.

But I feel like a dork for trying to argue eloquently on why it might not be a good idea to ignore these things in stories, because it can be hurtful to people who aren't the race that most people default to, and have someone gently remind me that it's not my battle to fight..

It is everyone's battle to fight because every reader is affected, either enriched or impoverished, by the range of accessible reading material. It matters for everyone, but especially for children who need to see people like themselves (and unlike themselves) in the books they read--and this campaign started and remains focused on a call for more diversity in children's lit.
 

LJD

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I'd also like to add the term "Oriental" to the list of outdated terms. Not sure if I'm the only one, but despite my father's explanation that it's a counter to Occidental, I find it offensive, probably because I've read too much about Orientalism. I've yet to be referred to as such, but if I do, I'd like to tell them that I'm not a rug/carpet, thank you very much.

I consider Oriental outdated too, but it doesn't really bother me. I've rarely heard it used, and the main person I heard use it was my Chinese-Canadian mother.

A term meaning East Asian would be...uhh...useful, though. Where I live, people just say Asian...Asian tends to mean East Asian here, but that can be confusing sometimes. South Asians often refer to themselves as brown (at least in my generation), but my understanding is that in the UK, Asian often means South Asian?

I would also like to point out that person of color is predominantly an American term. I was not familiar with it until somewhat recently. The Canadian "equivalent," I guess, is visible minority, though the precise definition is slightly different.
 

Roxxsmom

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Oriental passed from respectable usage out here in CA a long while ago (the term got raised eyebrows even back in the 80s), but some people in my mom's generation (she's in her 70s) still use the term sometimes without intending to be offensive.

I have a friend who grew up in Hawaii, and he was surprised by the generic use of the term Asian or East Asian as a lump category. There, people focus more on which specific nation or region their ancestors come from the same way people of European ancestry often do. And people of European ancestry actually have a racial term applied there, Howlie, which means foreigner or newcomer. I remember feeling really weird the first time I heard that term. Stupid I know, but I'd never considered that there were places inside the US where my own appearance and background might get me tagged as something other than the default norm. Of course, there's no reason why there shouldn't be.

The thing about the term person of color that has always puzzled me is that it lumps everyone who isn't white together and still defines people of many different cultures and backgrounds in contrast to whiteness. This seems like something that could be seen as old-fashioned, even offensive, someday. But I also don't know what the alternative is, given the current default to assumed whiteness we still have in the US and elsewhere. Officially referring to everyone who isn't of European background simply as non white is certainly far worse.
 
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Mr Flibble

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my understanding is that in the UK, Asian often means South Asian?

In the UK Asian generally means someone from the Indian sub continent (So Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sikh)

I think the term Oriental is not considered so offensive over here (but I could be wrong!) but I'm not sure that using Chinese (which is what most people default to when talking of East Asia) is terribly helpful either, nor is the habit of referring to all South Asians as Indonesian/Filipino I'm sure.

ETA: I think most people would use the country of origin as a descriptor (Frex Thai) but as you might not know.... In the same way that in say Africa, I'd just be European unless they were aware I was British. But that gets all kinds of thorny!
 
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LJD

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In the UK Asian generally means someone from the Indian sub continent (So Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sikh)

Which is South Asian, no?

I think the term Oriental is not considered so offensive over here (but I could be wrong!) but I'm not sure that using Chinese (which is what most people default to when talking of East Asia) is terribly helpful either, nor is the habit of referring to all South Asians as Indonesian/Filipino I'm sure.

ETA: I think most people would use the country of origin as a descriptor (Frex Thai) but as you might not know.... In the same way that in say Africa, I'd just be European unless they were aware I was British. But that gets all kinds of thorny!

I would consider people who are Indonesian or Filipino Southeast Asian, not South Asian.

For whatever reason, people who are Chinese here almost always just say "Asian." Koreans tend to say "Korean." Filipinos say "Filipino." But people from China usually don't refer to themselves as Chinese where I live. Now I suppose many of them actually came from Hong Kong before 1997...The Chinese community is changing a lot here now. Used to be that the language of Chinatown was Cantonese because there were sooo many people from Hong Kong, but it's shifting to Mandarin.
 
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Mr Flibble

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Which is South Asian, no?

If that's who you mean when you say South Asia, then yes. It looks more middley to me, because there's quite a lot lower down on the map :D

I'd never even think of referring to someone from those areas as South Asian, and they themselves will refer to themselves as Asian (if they don;t specify which country -- but the local shop will be "The Asian shop" to them). But there you are, that's how things are different over here


I would consider people who are Indonesian or Filipino Southeast Asian, not South Asian.

Ah but if India is, er, Middle Asia....


If you said south Asian, I'd think somewhere south of India tbh (even if it is a bit east)

For whatever reason, people who are Chinese here almost always just say "Asian." Koreans tend to say "Korean." Filipinos say "Filipino." But people from China usually don't refer to themselves as Chinese where I live.

Ah, well again different here. Chinese call themselves Chinese (or at least some do, some of those I've heard talking about it. But they don;t seem to call themselves Asian mostly except as in "person from the all encompassing continent of Asia" the same as I might say I was European. Probably because "Asian" conjures up images of people from the Indian sub continent)

Maybe in each case (US/UK) the people calling themselves/being called Asian were the first of any Asians to be there in any number (at least in modern times anyway)?

ETA I suppose what I'm basically saying is, they get to decide what they call themselves, not me or anyone else. If they call themselves Asian, then that's their call. Why that is, and how it differs from country to country is an interesting discussion though (and may help me avoiding accidentally giving offence somewhere I'm not familiar with the vernacular!)
 
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LupineMoon

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Combinations are nice. It's cool you found a group of people to hang with. I gave up ever having that long ago. I never fit in anywhere. A perpetual outcast. Must be nice to fit in somewhere :)

Well I did until I came back to my hometown. Now I get the perpetual, "What are you?" and "How long have you lived here?" and "You speak English so well" that I never got at college.
 

Reziac

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Excellent advice here. And to clarify - black and African American are two different things. The later is a bit of a dated, "PC" (I hate that term, but it fits here...) status for black Americans that is becoming a very poor fit, especially as African immigration to the US continues to rise. Black is fine, okay, and dandy.

My fave demonstration of nonsense-PCism is when I saw news anchor Tom Brokaw, being ever-so-correct in avoiding the back-then recently-incorrected term 'black', refer to a black native resident of Africa as an "African-American".
 

aruna

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Oh, I've seen this and similar things time and time again. I've seen Naomi Campbell referred to a African-American ( she's British). I've seen black characters in the movie Hotel Rwanda, set in African and about Africans, referred to as African-American!!! If I were in the US no doubt people would refer to me as African-American.
That's why it's such a stupid substitute for black -- unless the fact of them being American is relevant, as in AA voters in an election. There's just no end to the stupid, and some people really think that America is the world.
 
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Reziac

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There's just no end to the stupid, and some people really think that America is the world.

Oh, that's hardly limited to America...

Patskywriter makes a good point that boils down to: It's a matter of relevance. If you need to describe a person so they can be recognised by a stranger, then "black, white, green, or plaid" (as the case may be!) is relevant. If you're comparing notes about the opera, it's probably not.
 

Lady Esther

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QFT.

My son (half-black) would never refer to himself as African American. He's black, as far as he's concerned.

I guess my question is, do people refer to themselves as African American, or is it a just term that white people use to be PC?

If it's just white people (ime it is, fwiw), can we please just... stop already.

I am from Maryland, USA. And yes, I call myself African-American. I know nothing about my father's ancestry and the only thing I know about my mother's side is that my great-grandmother was Native-American and my grandmother was black.

So, I call myself African-American to be politically correct, or black for generalization.
 

Lady Esther

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I'm having a problem with this, too.

My MC's best friend is black. She's white, he's black, but his race doesn't play into their relationship, really. They're both from similar enough backgrounds that they're just friends. It's a 1st person narrative, and I just can't hear her referring to him as "Black." I tried describing his skin color in various ways, but they come across cliche. I tried comparisons to a famous actor, but people just read it as a white version of that actor.

Maybe I just suck at creating a believable black character - but this guy is based on a real person, who really acts and speaks much the same way this character does, so I'm stumped.

I've described black characters without mentioning skin color.

My MC has a black neighbor and I make her focus on his hair and how it's always in cornrows. I assume the reader will think he's black because not many white men wear cornrows.

Maybe you can mention something that tells the reader who they are without mentioning skin color.
 
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