Who qualifies as a POC, exactly? According to Wikipedia:
Person of color (plural: people of color; persons of color) is a term used, primarily in the United States, to describe all people who are not white.
Well, that’s simple. Anybody who isn’t white!
Good thing white is a clearcut category, and bi/tri/quad/etcracial people don’t exist.
Wait no, neither of those is right.
One of my childhood friends is half-white, half-gwich’in. Never knew he was half-gwich’in until high school. Dude looks about as white as I do, and look at my display pic, I’m pretty damn white.
Does he intrinsically know more about racism than I do?
How white do you have to be to be white enough to not understand racism? 1/2? 3/4? 7/8? Is it the “one drop rule”?
Are Eastern Europeans white? Italians? Spaniards?
Can somebody tell me where, in Eurasia, the line of whiteness vs. non-whiteness is?
Yes, some of those questions are facetious. I’m trying to illustrate a point here.
We should take ideas and statements based on their merits alone, not the heritage of the speaker. Equality means we are all treated equally, not that the opinions of one ill-defined group are denigrated solely because of the speaker’s ancestry.
Also, coarse categorization of granular data doesn’t fucking work.
So I’ve been trying to write a post for Wolfkazumaru on the subject of racism for a long time (those links are required reading for my followers, but I only wanted to go back 10 pages so… yeah).
Also I procrastinate.
Luckily I have friends who I can complain at, and ask questions of. One of whom was very very helpful. Found this gem under todiedreaming’s racism tag (those are required reading for my followers AND Wolf).
And to quote todiedreaming:
“‘Why should race be important?’ Because
- negating someone’s race is negating their experience. My experience as an Afro-Latina varies GREATLY from white person, not just on a cultural level but on a socio-economic one as well.
- How society views and tries to place me is due to my race. This is the core of race
- Imperialism tells PoC to shed their race and culture to fit in. This is where the “race doesn’t matter!!!11111” bullshit comes from”
And hey, look, I’ve even found some links to back up her statements because despite the fact that they should be fine on their own I know you won’t accept them as such!
- Here’s a great article about racial consciousness. You literally don’t even need to read past the first 4 paragraphs (but you should, because it’s a pretty good article).
- Read the summary of the above article.
- Colour blind, and aversive racism.
If anyone wants to correct me on… my links because that’s really all I gave, let me know!
