I am Not a Person of Colour

Image source: Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Association.

My university just concluded its Students’ Parliamentary election (STUPA Wahl) and I could not be any more relieved to have the back of the campaign posters that constantly reminded me of identity politics. 

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.