The NAACP announced Monday the group will not invite President Donald Trump to its national convention next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, the first time the prominent civil rights organization has opted to exclude a sitting president in its 116-year history.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson announced the move at an afternoon press conference, accusing Trump of working against its mission.
“This has nothing to do with political party,” Johnson said in a statement. “Our mission is to advance civil rights, and the current president has made clear that his mission is to eliminate civil rights.”
My mom’s first cousin never said anything but “colored” and she traveled to Nigeria to marry her second husband who was black and spent many years with him.
Some things I heard her say, “oh they just don’t like me because my husband is colored.” “If you see a colored man in a yellow shirt that says reading rainbow on it, tell him to get to the car or I’m leaving him here.” “I’ve never seen a white man more handsome than the ugliest colored man.”
“People of color” is also pretty much the same thing, and it’s almost universally used these days. What’s the difference between person of color and colored person?
I don’t know. Language changes and evolves, and it’s definitely falling out of fashion, I’ve never personally heard “colored” as an insult. If someone wants to be insulting they generally wear their hate on their sleeve.
I have a stamp that says, “Retarded children can be helped.” and it really isn’t that old. When it came out I doubt it shocked anyone, but when I first seen it my jaw hit the floor.
The main reason I’ve heard for why “person of color” is more acceptable than “colored person” is that the former focuses on their personhood first, the latter focuses on the color of their skin first. It’s somewhat similar to how it’s acceptable to say “the black man in the yellow shirt” to describe someone but not “the black in the yellow shirt.” Without the word “man” you’re reducing him to just the color of his skin
On the one hand, these minor language changes can seem extra and unnecessary, like people are just trying to find ways to say they’re better than you because they’re using the right words, but often it comes from people either studying the historical usage of words in relation to power structures or people speaking about how those words actually affect them when they’re used to describe them. In one of my college classes, the professor gave us an article to read describing why we should use the term “enslaved people” rather than “slaves” and she said she expected us to use the former in our essay. I thought it was kinda silly and unnecessary, but the author of the article explained that “enslaved people” calls attention to the fact that they’ve been forced into this. They weren’t born as slaves, as some creature whose only purpose is to serve and be owned, but as people who were then immediately enslaved. It also calls attention to the fact that other people did this to them. It focuses on the action of the people that participated in enslaving others. Since taking that class, I haven’t switched to only using “enslaved people” vs “slaves” but it made me think a lot about how the language reflects how people viewed slavery at that time, and even how some people view it today
Of course the most important thing at the end of the day is respecting those actually involved. If an old person says “colored” because that’s what they learned was polite then they’re doing their best to be polite. They shouldn’t be burned at the stake for using an older term. However if someone told them “hey I’d prefer you use person of color” to describe me instead and the old person refused because they’ve always said “colored person” then the old person is being a disrespectful asshole
Tl;dr usually these shifts in languages are about changing the focus or perspective of the original term. Some people use old terms bc that’s what they learned is respectful which is fine as long as they don’t use that excuse to disrespect people directly asking them to use other terms
Yeah, that tracks. She sounds like a sweetheart . It’s deprecated, but it’s not like a memo went out. It was much more common when I was a kid, I remember my grandfather griping about it and trying to make the change.
We moved North recently and I’m having the same problem with a different term. Lots of Italian in the area. I’ve always pronounced it eye-talian, it’s not a racist thing, I’m just a redneck and that’s what I learned. Some people find it offensive, so I’m trying to change it.
Well, I guess they find it offensive when they can understand me. Feels like I’m speakig a different language from everyone around here a lot of the time. I have an easier time talking to black folks than I do white, dialect is much closer. I regularly get jaw-drop suprise when I’m in public and say something.
Also having a hell of a time with Yes Ma’am/Yes Sir as there is high trans/enby representation in my social scene. I just apologize and move on. Southern charm and politness is a huge help.
I’m mostly self educated and my speech patterns are so stereotypically deep southern that most people assume I’m backwards. I was mostly raised in a Sundown town. All those inbred jokes and such. Black folks pick up that I’m not backwards faster than white because they understand me better. I find language and dialect fascinating, do a lot of involuntary code switching. When bullshitting with a group of white men around here, when I get comfortable, I unconsciously drop into full redneck speech and they really have a hard time understanding me.
As for colored, the below image is a good representation of why the term is problematic, it was used on Jim Crow signs. Calling a black man, “colored boy” is fighting words and roughly equivalent to the N word. I refer to white men as boys all the time but unless it is a mixed race group, I do not refer to black men as boy.
Left aiming to be holier than thou. Idea is to put “people” before their defining trait. Which is admirable, but in this specific case achieves nothing.
Feels like to a degree, at some point you just have to accept reality as facts and no fancy language is going to get around that.
Some people are white, some are tan, some are olive, some are black. We have different colored skin. In an area predominantly of white folk, asking for a black or colored man just makes sense.
Frankly the only problem with color in the situation at hand is it could also refer to a tan or maybe a darker olive toned man.
It’s just a descriptor of obvious usefulness given the context.
Plenty of words are bad given history as it is. And best avoided with out reason. But we do still need some words to use and using the simplest words is best. Leaves little room to brook an argument over the intention.