Person of color (: people of color or persons of color; abbreviated POC) is a term used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is associated with, the United States. From the 2010s, however, it has been adopted elsewhere in the Anglosphere (often as person of colour), including relatively limited usage in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and South Africa.
In the United States, the term is involved in the various definitions of non-whiteness, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islander Americans, multiracial Americans, and some Latino Americans, though members of these communities may prefer to view themselves through their cultural identities rather than color-related terminology. The term, as used in the United States, emphasizes common experiences of systemic racism, which some communities have faced. The term may also be used with other collective categories of people such as "communities of color", "men of color" (MOC), "women of color" (WOC), or "librarians of color". The acronym "BIPOC" refers to "black, indigenous, and other people of color" and aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people. The term "colored" was originally equivalent in use to the term "person of color" in American English, but usage of the appellation "colored" in the Southern United States gradually came to be restricted to "Negroes", and it is now considered a racial pejorative. Elsewhere in the world, and in other dialects of English, the term may have entirely different connotations, however; for example, in South Africa, "Coloureds" refers to multiple multiracial ethnic groups and is sometimes applied to other groups in Southern Africa, such as the of Namibia.
History
The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style cites usage of "people of colour" as far back as 1796. It was initially used to refer to light-skinned people of mixed African and European heritage. In South Carolina and other parts of the Deep South, this term was used to distinguish between slaves who were mostly "black" or "Negro" and free people who were primarily "mulatto" or "mixed race". After the American Civil War, "colored" was used as a label almost exclusively for black Americans, but the term eventually fell out of favor by the mid-20th century. In the late 20th century, the term "person of color" was introduced in the United States in order to counter the condescension implied by the terms "non-white" and "minority", and racial-justice activists in the U.S., influenced by radical theorists such as Frantz Fanon, popularized it at this time. Both anti-racist activists and academics sought to move the understanding of race beyond the black–white dichotomy then prevalent.
The phrase "women of color" was developed and introduced for wide use by a group of black women activists at the National Women's Conference in 1977. The phrase was used as a method of communicating solidarity between non-white women that was, according to Loretta Ross, not based on "biological destiny" but instead a political act of naming themselves. Because the term "people of color" includes vastly different people with only the common distinction of not being white, it draws attention to the perceived fundamental role of racialization in the United States. Joseph Tuman of San Francisco State University argues that the term "people of color" is attractive because it unites disparate racial and ethnic groups into a larger collective in solidarity with one another.
Use of the term "person of color", especially in the United States, is often associated with the social-justice movement. Style guides from the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Mount Holyoke College all recommend the term "person of color" over other alternatives. Unlike "colored", which historically referred primarily to black people and is often considered offensive, "person of color" and its variants refer inclusively to all non-European peoples—often with the notion that there is political solidarity among them—and, according to one style guide, "are virtually always considered terms of pride and respect". Critics argue that this dynamic marginalizes non-white groups even as the term seeks to unite them, and some individuals express discomfort with having their identities defined in relation to whiteness rather than independently.
Comedian George Carlin described "people of color" as "an awkward, bullshit, liberal-guilt phrase that obscures meaning rather than enhancing it", adding, "What should we call white people? 'People of no color'?"
The use of the phrase person of color to describe white Hispanic and Latino Americans and Spaniards has been criticized as inaccurate. The United States census denotes the term "Latino" as a pan-ethnic label, rather than a racial category. Although many Latinos may qualify as being "people of color", the indiscriminate labeling of all Latinos as "people of color" obscures the racial diversity that exists within the Latino population itself, and, for this reason, some commentators have found the term misleading.
BIPOC
The acronym BIPOC, referring to "black, indigenous, (and) people of color", first appeared around 2013. By June 2020, it was, according to Sandra Garcia of The New York Times, "ubiquitous in some corners of Twitter and Instagram", as racial justice awareness grew in the United States in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The term aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people, which is argued to be superlative and distinctive in U.S. history at the collective level. The BIPOC Project promotes the term in order "to highlight the unique relationship to Whiteness that Indigenous and Black (African Americans) people have, which shapes the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within a U.S. context".
The term BIPOC does not appear to have originated in the black and Indigenous American communities, as it had been adopted much more widely among white Democrats than among people of color in a 2021 national poll. Asian and Latino Americans have often been confused as to whether the term includes them. The centering of black and Indigenous people in the acronym has been criticized as an unnecessary, unfounded, and divisive ranking of the oppression faced by the communities of color. The acronym's purposeful and definitional assertion that the historical and present-day suffering experienced by black and Indigenous people is more significant in kind or degree than that of other non-white groups has been described as casting communities of color in an oppression Olympics that obscures intersectional characteristics, similarities, and opportunities for solidarity in the struggle against racism. Critics argue that the systems of oppression foundational to U.S. history were not limited to the slavery and genocide suffered by black and Indigenous Americans, but also included the Asian-American and Latino-American experiences of oppression under the Chinese Exclusion Act and the doctrine of manifest destiny. Noting that "Black and Indigenous people are not at the center of every contemporary racial issue", other commentators have found it problematic that the ascendancy of the term coincided with the pronounced rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. By rendering Asian Americans as an unnamed "remnant", critics argue that the acronym renders the racial discrimination they experience invisible, thereby perpetuating harmful model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes. Some critics advocate a return to "POC" for its emphasis on coalition-building, while others call for a contextual approach that names "the groups actually included and centered in the arguments themselves". The term has also been criticized for being redundant.