I had no idea what it meant and actually guessed it was some kind of slur (in line with PoS) until I learnt recently.

Weird term. Doesn't work unabbreviated as an adjective, an adjectival formation ('coloured') is long out of politically-correct favour (at least it is in the UK), and why, is 'of colour' different/better/at all a good description of someone anyway?

I'm, er, 'without colour', so it's hardly for me to object, but I couldn't comfortably use it. Fortunately (or I suppose that's why it 'feels' off to me) nobody ('of colour' or not) here seems to.

Or maybe it's just a lesson in tone etc. being harder to convey on the internet - for ages I thought 'MeToo' was against the alleged victims, as in 'oh yeah yeah me too, I'm Brian and so's my wife'.

It’s a socially constructed term that was popularized in 2010 or so to figure out a way to lump Black, Latino, and Asian people together. It almost never makes any sense talk about all of those different groups as one (“Latino” and “Asian” are by themselves over-broad categories) but that’s where we are.

I get that there is a need to differentiate, for the purpose of discussion, traditionally privileged white people from, well, literally everyone else. Any label using a negative prefix like "non-white" or "un-privileged" is not desirable because it suggests a lack of something. But it seems to me like we should be able to do a lot better than a rephrasing of a term associated with the Jim Crow era.

> I get that there is a need to differentiate, for the purpose of discussion, traditionally privileged white people from, well, literally everyone else.

Is there? Asians are wealthier, more educated, more upwardly mobile, less likely to be shot by the police, and live longer, than whites. As an Asian-American man, I can expect to live as long as my Irish-American wife. Latinos, meanwhile, have various disparities resulting from the character and recency of immigration, but have similar economic mobility to whites, and within 1-3 generations achieve economic parity with whites. Cubans, who came to the US as refugees with no money, achieved parity in just one generation. 60% of multiracial people, mostly white-asian and white-hispanic, identify as white, and not multiracial.

Black and Native American people, meanwhile, face persistent economic disparities that are both large and are completely unchanged since the segregation era. Almost all black-white multiracial people identify as Black or multiracial, not as white.

The constructed term "people of color" actually obscures the fundamental dynamics of American society:

1) America is incredibly successful at assimilating immigrants, white or non-white, both socially and economically. The term "people of color" obscures the fact that these groups are basically experiencing the same economic and social trajectory that Germans, Irish, Polish, Italians, etc., experienced over American history.

2) America has been unable to make any progress at eliminating economic disparities for two groups that face unique historical circumstances: Black people, and Native Americans. The term "people of color" obscures the fact that these groups are facing American experiences that are sui generis in American history.

"People of color" is strictly less useful of a term than what preceded it, "underrepresented minority." And it appears that people realize that impracticality, because you've seen the emergence of phrases like "assimilation into whiteness" or "white-adjacent" to describe Asians and economically assimilated Latinos. These are phrases (which are offensive, by the way) coined to remedy a self-inflicted problem: defining who is "privileged" in the country in terms of "whiteness" and not something that actually reflects society.

> why is 'of colour' different/better/at all a good description of someone anyway?

It's different in that it's a different phrase. It's better because it's different; terminology in this area is driven purely by fashion.

https://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/1988/08/28

When I was in primary school, handicapped was going out of fashion in favour of disabled (wikipedia tells me we were 10-15 years later than the US on that one, culture wasn't so instantly global then). A large part of this was that handicapped had been repurposed as an insult so there was a need for disabled (as happened for the previous terminology for mental disability, also). Of course even "disabled [person/people]" is heading into the "maybe don't use that" territory these days

It's clear why this happens, having difficulties is viewed as undesirable, most people would choose not to have them if they could (I'm aware some people with disabilities have felt it made them who they are and wouldn't change it, but they aren't the people to start using terms in a pejorative manner). As long as there are real negative attitudes against black people and real negative effects on black people, this is likely to be the same for terms used there also.

I feel the only reason person centered language like "people of color" and "person with disabilities" has lasted so long as the acceptable phrasing is simply because the more wordy phrases are harder to turn into a playground insult/drunk jeering/etc.

"Disabled" is being replaced by "differently abled".

That one was used pejoratively pretty much instantly, so never had much momentum, so my understanding is "person with disabilities" is the currently correct term.

I honestly find it tiring to have to always check what I'm saying just in case one of the words I'm using is on a WRL (Word Revocation List) - this basic assumption that if you use one of these words you're using it in a derogatory way...

I don't really have any suggestions about how this could be handled differently, just pointing out this aspect that does end up making me talk less, certainly about touchy subjects, because I'm afraid of being misinterpreted and seen in a bad light.

Edit: It's also especially bad because English isn't my native language so I might use some construct that seems "natural" to me but insulting to a native speaker

Nope! "Person with" was almost instantly rejected because it is insulting to an unremovable aspect of someone's existence, condemning someone as broken and lesser.

Here we have a too-common case of virtue chasers on the "same side" attacking each other because they have slightly different useless solutions to a problem. (The way you to show more respect to different people with differences is to show more respect in actions, not to play word games that the vast majority of affected people with effects don't care about.)

> The way you to show more respect to different people with differences is to show more respect in actions, not to play word games that the vast majority of affected people with effects don't care about.

If anyone cared what the group being described thought about the terminology, no one would ever have tried to say "Latinx".

Like I said above, pure fashion.

Huh, I was basing that on someone I know who recently completed a relevant college degree and is now working in the field of intellectual disabilities - the advice they received, both academic and professional is that "people with disabilities"/person centered language is the approach.

I had a look, the wikipedia page[1] indicates at least in the US that the American Medical Association, United Spinal Association and various federal and state bodies recommend it as best practice, but also points out various groups for deaf and blind people disagree.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language#Rational...

What's coming into vogue now is "diversability"[1], I guess to take the negative connotation out of "dis-ability", precisely as "differently abled" tried to do. To my mind, they're basically the same but I guess "differently abled" was derided as overly P.C. and became a comical term.

1. https://www.disabled-world.com/definitions/disability-disabl...

I think it has to do with which names have been chosen for people, and which chosen by people.

Not always, for example, Native American on reservations use the term Indian to refer to themselves, but outside this is becoming impolite in favour of Native American (including among some but not all Native Americans)[1][2]

See also the "Spastics Society", "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People", modern use of the n-word among black people, the use of "Negro" in "I have a Dream". Plenty of cases where a word in use by the group themselves becomes considered the impolite word.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controver...

"colored people" is a wonderful illustration of this farce because NAACP kept the name so long that it went from preferred to offensive and almost back to preferred, with "people of color" being the PC term in US (and "people with Foo" becoming dispreferred to "Fooed people" or "Fooed"/"Foo", and "racialized" being the PC term in Canada (which would be horrifically offensive in the US).

I enjoyed the suggestion I found somewhere that the NAACP should replace the problematic term "Colored People" in its name with "African Americans".

What happens if the name you chose for yourself doesn't match the name a Twitter mob chose for you, and they attack people using the name you prefer?

Approximately 97% of "Latinx" people do not identify as "Latinx".

Why is "Point of Sale" a slur? ;-)