Op-Ed: The term ‘people of color’ erases black people. Let’s retire it 


(Adriana Varejão / For The Times)

By Nadra Widatalla 

As a black woman, I seek out inclusive spaces because I lack them in my
everyday life. I don’t think I’ve ever unintentionally entered a space and
immediately felt like I was a part of the majority. I remember when I joined
my first women’s group. I went to one club meeting, and never returned. I
felt like every issue these women were struggling with affected me more
intensely because of my race. It wasn’t empowering, just depressing.

No one looked like me. I didn’t expect to be in a room filled with black
women, but I also didn’t think I’d be the only one. And while the others
went on about empowerment, sisterhood and freedom, I was met with, yet
again, a feeling I knew only I could understand. In a room full of women
discussing ways to be heard among men, ironically, I was grappling with how
to do just that in the room we were in.

I should have known better when I saw the group advertised as “women of
color-friendly.”

The terms “women of color” and “people of color” are meant to be inclusive.
But, from my perspective, they only help to leave black people behind —
specifically black women. While every minority group faces its own
challenges in America, a “one size fits all” mentality toward diversity
erases the specific needs of the most vulnerable communities.

Any effort that sees the struggles of all minorities as a single movement is
actually harmful.

Just look at the fashion industry. According to the Fashion Spot’s annual
“Diversity Report, <https://www.thefashionspot.com/tag/diversity-report/> ”
one out of every three models in 2018 fashion ads were women of color. That
certainly sounds like progress. But editorials and magazine covers lean
heavily toward non-black women of color, and the terms non-white and women
of color are used repeatedly to bolster the analysis.

To see for myself, I picked up a random high-end fashion magazine. Out of
hundreds of models it had a total of 12 black women in it, admittedly better
than the one or two I was expecting. Looking closer, however, I noticed that
these women were either all extremely light-skinned, very dark-skinned or
highly established in their careers, like Lupita Nyong’o.

This was highly conditional inclusivity. Your everyday black girl was
missing.

While that’s perhaps not surprising for an industry that’s never been
particularly hospitable to everyday anyone, uncritical boasts about more
“women of color” in fashion are allowing an exclusionary industry to
rehabilitate its image without actually doing the work — at black women’s
expense. The industry gets to decide and control what type of black woman it
deems fit and more importantly, tolerable.

Nonwhite does not mean black. Women of color does not mean black either. Too
often, when a person or brand uses these descriptors, it papers over an
absence of black people. Bella and Gigi Hadid are among the nonwhite models
contributing to Fashion Spot’s misleading statistic. Though half-Palestinian
and half-white, both women racially pass as white.

The reality is that not all “people of color” suffer equally from the
effects of institutional racism. Black women are least likely to be promoted
and supported by their managers in the workplace.
<https://womenintheworkplace.com/Women_in_the_Workplace_2018.pdf>  Police
kill unarmed black people at higher rates than other races, especially black
women
<https://sites.wustl.edu/fips/?_ga=2.64720751.1167044817.1551075571-15716372
53.1548975279> . According to the Sentencing Project
<https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Women-in-the-C
riminal-Justice-System-Briefing-Sheets.pdf> , black women represent roughly
14% of the female population of the United States, but 30% of all females
incarcerated. Black children are also almost 9 times more likely than white
children to have a parent in prison while Hispanic children are three times
more likely. Research also suggests that black women are more likely to be
publicly objectified, harassed and dehumanized.

Meanwhile, in 2016, Asians were the highest-earning racial and ethnic group
in the U.S. The median annual income
<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/12/key-findings-on-the-rise-i
n-income-inequality-within-americas-racial-and-ethnic-groups/>  for Asian
adults was $51,288, compared with $47,958 for whites and $31,082 for blacks.

Of course, Asians aren’t a homogeneous block, and not all of them are
thriving. For example, in Los Angeles County, elderly Korean and Cambodians
are more likely to live in poverty
<https://www.advancingjustice-la.org/sites/default/files/pictures/coc-older-
adults-LA-2016.pdf>  and without access to healthcare than any other racial
or ethnic group. This further emphasizes the limitations of blanket
terminology and racial generalities, which can hamper the ability to
identity the specific problems facing specific communities. 

None of this is to say that the interracial and ethnic solidarity implied by
the earnest use of “people of color” isn’t important. Of course, they are.
Our struggles share commonalities. But even more important is doing the hard
work of understanding and fighting to overcome the distinct layers of
injustice that face people of different identities — and different layers
within those identities. A black person has different challenges than
someone who is both Muslim and black, and a black, Muslim woman has
different challenges still. Parsing the implications of these differences,
instead of flattening them, is what it means to be “intersectional
<https://www.law.columbia.edu/pt-br/news/2017/06/kimberle-crenshaw-intersect
ionality> ,” an important but widely misunderstood concept — even by the
liberals who use it most. Intersectionality is not about building the
biggest interracial team possible. It’s about catering to the individual
needs of different communities to make sure no one is left behind.

The idea of different groups of minorities working together to fight racism
of all sorts is fantastic, but any effort that sees the struggles of all
minorities as a single movement is actually harmful. Black women, for
example, are a minority within a minority — and we’re being left behind.
Rectifying that means the work of inclusivity has to go beyond being
friendly to “women of color.” Perhaps the best place to start is to retire
that term altogether.

Nadra Widatalla is a writer and producer living in Los Angeles. Follow her
on Twitter: @nadrawidatalla <https://twitter.com/nadrawidatalla?lang=en> 

EM         -> { Trump for 2020 }

On the 49th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
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                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
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