I
am Not a Person of Colour
 |
| Image source: Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Association. |
My specific attention was
on one of the posters campaigning for more inclusion of the People of Colour (POC’s) in the general
university affairs due to perceived underrepresentation of non-white students.
Diversity is good, nonetheless, as a black man I, loathe to be identified as a Person of Colour.
This term gives me a
strange feeling that white people have whole-heartedly embraced it because
labelling a person black carries a negative connotation insinuating that it is
wrong to be black in the first place. It is not wrong to see colour, it is what
you do with it.
People
of Colour cements a concealed perception that white is the
palpable standard and everyone else is another. It catalyses the we (which is
the norm) vs them categorisation. Due to the sensitive nature of identity, it
has become a safe term in identifying every non-white person to avoid having
tough conversations.
I concur that the term Person of Colour seems distinctly sapid
to the ear because of its conventional political correctness nature. The term has
been widely accepted by modern-day progressives after Martin Luther King popularised
it in his 1963 I Have a Dream speech when
he referred to the collective victims of white supremacy as “Citizens of
Colour.” Nevertheless, the term People of
Colour has a longer history as it was the term used for slaves in the Prohibition of the Slave Importation Act
of 1807. Historically, this term has been used to describe people of African
heritage.
In the contemporary discourse, it is used as a
sort of a political solidarity platform to identify people who are not beneficiaries
of a culture of white privilege. It acknowledges that minority groups have been
systematically disenfranchised and therefore share recurrent experiences and
concerns; rightfully so. And I commend the idea behind the term, albeit it
gives the notion that all non-white minorities conform to some sort of
solidarity out of a common struggle, we don’t!
Putting “People of Colour” as one homogenous
group implicitly suggests that there is no anti-black hatred within the PoC
community. The majority of the overt racism I have faced is from non-black
communities of colour. You would be surprised by the inconceivable trans /homophobia
from the PoCs. There is a hierarchy in the PoC and admittedly black people fall
at the bottom as well. My struggle as a black man cannot be compared to that of
an Asian/ South American man. I have my own struggles which only a black man
can relate to. A black Muslim woman has struggles which a Taiwanese or Argentinian
woman cannot relate to. For white people to put us in a proverbial box that
non-white people share a common struggle is ignorant and undoubtedly far-fetched
from the truth.
If we continue sticking
to People of Colour as a term to identify
any non-white people, we will never move forward in the quest for justice and equality
as the mentality will always stick that people falling into this merged category
are lesser than white people.
I sympathise with the experiences minority groups face but I am an
individual; a black one at that, and it is not wrong to identify me as one. My experiences
are individual. Give me a chance to define my identity, ask me about my lived
experiences if you care but stop shoving me into a box with people who cannot
relate to my pain and suffering as a black person because you want to feel comfortable.
Generalisations make people feel comfortable.
PS: Image source:
Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Association.
