Re:Word usage guidance and alternative terms
by dragonwriter on Monday April 19, 2021 @06:38AM
(#26861154)
> I'd be very curious to hear what are the objective reasons why "yellow" and "red" are considered offensive when they refer to race, and "white" and "black" are considered appropriate. If you dig into it... it's just happenstance and habit.
All of them are artifacts of White racism, “Black” has been widely (but not universally, and many prefer other terms) adopted by the people it targets [0], as (perhaps less surprisingly) has “White” [1], the rest mainly have not. That’s pretty much the defining difference—the others are “viewed as offensive” because they are, in fact, broadly offensive to the people to whom the label is applied.
[0] largely, at least in the US, as a label of shared identity grounded in experience of White racism.
[1] among non-racists, its often not so much a strong identity (narrower ethnic identities often take that role) as acknowledgement as insofar as race os a thing, that’s a fine name for theirs.
> Colors are just colors.
The use of colors aa names of races (and the way some are also associated with subracial groups) is pretty arbitrary rather than descriptive, “red” Indians, “brown” latin@s, and “yellow" asian/pacific islanders aren’t particular different in skin color in any way that maps to the color names.
All of them are artifacts of White racism, “Black” has been widely (but not universally, and many prefer other terms) adopted by the people it targets [0], as (perhaps less surprisingly) has “White” [1], the rest mainly have not. That’s pretty much the defining difference—the others are “viewed as offensive” because they are, in fact, broadly offensive to the people to whom the label is applied.
[0] largely, at least in the US, as a label of shared identity grounded in experience of White racism.
[1] among non-racists, its often not so much a strong identity (narrower ethnic identities often take that role) as acknowledgement as insofar as race os a thing, that’s a fine name for theirs.
> Colors are just colors.
The use of colors aa names of races (and the way some are also associated with subracial groups) is pretty arbitrary rather than descriptive, “red” Indians, “brown” latin@s, and “yellow" asian/pacific islanders aren’t particular different in skin color in any way that maps to the color names.