Ethnic Minorities vs People of Color

For a few months now I have been meaning to write on why I believe ethnic minorities should not allow themselves to be referred to as ‘people of color’. If for whatever reason this phrase is unfamiliar ‘people of color’, not to be confused with the phrase ‘colored people’, has become the politically correct way to refer to all ethnic minorities with connections to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands.

The problem with this term is twofold. First and foremost in an attempt to forcibly racialize foreigners (non-Euro-Americans) it falls victim to being clearly inaccurate. As Eduardo Mendieta observed, “race...has polarized the grammar of U.S political culture into two extremes: white and black.” (Making New Peoples 49) In effect, this paradigm for understanding the world makes Americans color-blind to any other categories that may function better in making sense of the world.

Being that the historical ‘us’ in the United States has been white Anglo-Saxon protestants males it is not surprising that groups who they would not refer to as ‘we’ or ‘white’ would be thrown into the only other category they conceive, ‘black’ or a ‘person of color’.

The reality of the situation, however, is that not all of us that fall into this category are black or any darker hue than the average European. There are Latinas and Latinos with blond hair, blue eyes, and skin so light that the shortest of periods spent in direct sunlight can bring about a sunburn. The only difference these whites hold with whites in the United States is that they stopped in Latin America on their way to the U.S. instead of traveling direct. If this is the case than color is clearly not what differentiates them and should be rejected for failing to accurately define the differences between them.

Secondly, the term ‘people of color’ reinforces ‘white’ (Euro-American) as normative and everyone else as ‘white’ plus ‘color’. In this way it conceptualizes a world in which there are ‘people’ and then there are ‘people of color’. ‘People’ describes humanity in general, while ‘people of color’ is constructed as a special kind of people, one with an additive, i.e., color. The world as we have known it has been observed by white eyes and recorded for white audiences. The phrase ‘People of color’ derives from this history. How does a white individual appear brown? They put brown paint on. Therefore, a brown person is a person plus color.

It is of no surprise that a world conceptualized by Euro-Americans would use terms such as ‘people of color’. I am sure that when the Europeans arrived in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific islands the people thought that their guests had some sort of paint on to appear so unusually (not normal to their eyes) white. In the same way it makes sense that Euro-Americans would describe other peoples in a similar way. Yet, the difference between Euro-Americans and everyone else is that they had the power to make their conceptualization the standard and enforce to such an extent that it has constructed the very way in which we as ethnic minorities of various cultures and hues understand ourselves.

This being said, if we are looking for a term to describe our reality from a perspective that is not uniquely Euro-American I suggest we reject ‘people of color’ for ‘ethnic minorities’. Looking at the US and the world as a whole it is clear that lines of power align with lines of ethnicity, with Euro-American peoples holding the majority of the power in the world while the other peoples of the world have been forced to make due with the scraps left by them or taken from their trashcans.

I hope that one day this will not be the case and power will be shared amongst all ethnicities but the first step to seeing change in the physical world is to change the way we conceptualize it. We will not be able to create a space for ourselves in this world if we are not able to see ourselves for who we are, people.