I detest the term “people of color.”
At the University of Washington , POC has become a euphemism for a selected set of ethnic groups who are not “white.” It is used as sad substitute for an effort to recruit students and faculty who come from disadvantaged groups.
How convenient! Instead of addressing the American crimes against slaves and Indians, we rename that concern “diversity.”
This selection has nothing to do with any real drive to correct past disparities in our society. How can that be when such successful ethnic groups as Hindus, Nigerians or Bahamians are lumped with the descendents of slaves and the remnants of the great Lakota people? I*f we claim that our goal is to correct past wrongs, why don’t we work at recruiting students and faculty whose roots are in Appalachia or Detroit?
The strangest use of POC is to identify people whose last names end in “ez” or “ia.” Somehow the arbiters of race have decided that Hispanics are POC .. even though there is no difference n melanin content of Spanish. Greeks or Moroccans. Should an upper class immigrant from Costa Rica displace the descendent of a Mexican farmworker? .
Look at it this way … are Arabs POC? Are Jews POC? For what it is worth, genetically Arabs and Jews are indistinguishable.
And then there are my people, the Jews. Why aren’t we POC? Look at the famous stars below .. all of these people are Jews by descent .. as well as having African or African American roots. Does there Jewish blood disqualify them as POC?
