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ziq wrote

I think it's very USA-centric. No one says that elsewhere.

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moon_princess wrote

What terms do they use, and in what contexts? To me the "people of color" label seems to be, at least in part, a response to the nebulous nature of the terms race/racist/racism and an attempt to refocus the discourse specifically on white supremacy.

I don't see many people saying that various groups don't experience racism differently or that we should ignore the differences of various groups like the link suggests, it's just that the PoC label is supposed to reflexively illustrate that the common issue at hand is white supremacy, that anti-black racism and anti-asian racism and islamophobia (to name just a few ways white supremacy manifests itself) all spring from the same source.

No term is ever going to be perfect, nor will one ever remain static in its meaning; instead of finding the exact right word to use, I think it's more important to make sure we avoid ever becoming too reliant on specific, powerful words to the point that they supercede the importance of the message. Jargon shouldn't be the defining characteristic of a movement, and language is only ever a catch-all, a generalization, an over-simplification for the sake of expedience.

You shouldn't ever expect words alone to make what you mean clear; so while I'm sympathetic to the point of the OP link, that certain issues are being obscured, I don't think that's the fault of any specific term. It's easy to forget that the things we come to understand are the result of long, slow processes, and that we can't just dump the end-result on people (in the form of new language and new ideas) and expect them to understand exactly the same way we do right away.

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MeowZedong wrote

Weird, I've seen it and similar phrases used in non-US areas but admittedly it's often when communicating in English and translations could well be specific to certain orgs.

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