Quote:
Originally posted by jay_too@Sep 27 2005, 03:09 AM
In high school, my friends were Black. Then, I was in Atlanta for the Olympics and was hanging with a Black guy...."Puleeze, it is African American. Is my skin black?" I went away to Cornell and either seemed to be acceptable.
When I came out to Stanford, the guy in the apartment next door told me that he preferred "person of color." OK. So I start using person of color until a couple of guyz told me that they were Black and asked me if they looked like Indians? When I asked about African American as a descriptor, they asked, "Do you refer to yourself as English American?"
jay
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I have always thought that I understood the usage of "person of color" to be a oppositional negative in racial catergorizations during Colonialism. I thought that "person of color" was historically used to delineate those not "White", and therefore not sharing in political, social, or economic power. Now I understand that some people say "person of color" as a term of racial inclusivity to describe any individual or group not considered "White". But isn't this still an oppositional negative, since we would never refer to "Whites" as "person lacking color". It just bothers me a little.