The status of terms 'people of colour' and BIPOC in the UK

[8ball]

Heh. Try referring to someone from the Caribbean as African.

I know a teacher who worked with a colleague who was American working in a UK school.

Took her a while to get it into her new colleague’s head that the black kids were not “African-Americans”.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Took her a while to get it into her new colleague’s head that the black kids were not “African-Americans”.

i vaguely remember seeing an amateur interviewer with nelson mandela and referring to him as 'african american' - he was amused rather than offended

 

[8ball]

i vaguely remember seeing an amateur interviewer with nelson mandela and referring to him as 'african american' - he was amused rather than offended

I think the term is so drummed into some Americans at school that it’s just an uphill battle to say anything else.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

i vaguely remember seeing an amateur interviewer with nelson mandela and referring to him as 'african american' - he was amused rather than offended

African would be weird also given it’s known he was South African. It would be like referring to the Queen as European.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I see the trap I fell into there.
Before anyone says German yada yada.

 

[newme]

Heh. Try referring to someone from the Caribbean as African.

Well on the corporate reporting scheme I was given for a project, they would be lumped together for a London based programme.
British Black / Black / African / Caribbean

I was not a fan of having to standardise this where the people collecting data had standardised nothing, is South African under this? Egyptian? British Black? All the the same as Somalian or Jamaican the guidelines I was given. I'm implementing a drop down and arguing with someone about it first after its sent to whoever should be dealing with it as this should not be some random persons call. Mixed anything is thrown together. Asian of any kind is put in with British Asian. Considering it is supposed to convey useful data then we need better more thought out categories. Just putting British meant you went in the white category, which is odd since you could be in any for that quite obviously.

If someone picked Cornish yes we are ridiculously skewed together white but no reason it cannot be someone of any ethnicity who was born here and chose to pick that. Badly designed data collection, especially if its supposed to be useful to anyone.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I always thought if you were born in Britain you were British. Was always the far right arguing otherwise. And African-British has never been a thing like it is in the States with African-American.

 

[A380]

UCU refer to lots of people as black:

"UCU uses the term ‘black’ in a political sense to refer to people who are descended, through one or
both parents, from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia (the middle-East to China) and Latin America. It refers to
those from a visible minority who have a shared experience of oppression. The word is used to foster a
sense of solidarity and empowerment."

It's pretty alienating if you ask me, especially as the sector contains a huge proportion of people defined thusly who are relatively recent arrivals to the UK and haven't spent 30+ years being familiar with the UK left and their language.

I’d bet a small sum of money that definition was written by white people…

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I always thought if you were born in Britain you were British. Was always the far right arguing otherwise. And African-British has never been a thing like it is in the States with African-American.

tbf a lot of these surveys contain a variety of terms in order to catch what people call themselves - in order to then lump them together using criteria you've decided on...

But there's no perfect way to collect data on race and ethnicity.

 

[Brainaddict]

I’d bet a small sum of money that definition was written by white people…

I think that's unlikely as it would have caused too much protest even in UCU. But activists often have the problem that they develop their own culture that is kind of divided from the mainstream. I think that's more what's going on.

 

[A380]

But if people consider it an insult to be called 'black' they should probably have a long hard think.

Calling Latin American people black is an interesting one though. A lot of the elites (from which many of those in university here will come) are very Euro-descended and distinctly pale in hue. But it's also true that almost no-one there is purely Euro-descended.

FFS.

You are telling people who aren’t white British what they should call themselves?

That’s up there with not being able to wait to get home from Uni so you can tell your pony about socialism…

Out of interest, and for context, how would you describe your ethnic background? I’m white English BTW.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well on the corporate reporting scheme I was given for a project, they would be lumped together for a London based programme.
British Black / Black / African / Caribbean

I was not a fan of having to standardise this where the people collecting data had standardised nothing, is South African under this? Egyptian? British Black? All the the same as Somalian or Jamaican the guidelines I was given. I'm implementing a drop down and arguing with someone about it first after its sent to whoever should be dealing with it as this should not be some random persons call. Mixed anything is thrown together. Asian of any kind is put in with British Asian. Considering it is supposed to convey useful data then we need better more thought out categories. Just putting British meant you went in the white category, which is odd since you could be in any for that quite obviously.

If someone picked Cornish yes we are ridiculously skewed together white but no reason it cannot be someone of any ethnicity who was born here and chose to pick that. Badly designed data collection, especially if its supposed to be useful to anyone.

Having said that there's no perfect way to do it, this is a really fucking awful way to do it.

 

[danny la rouge]

how would you describe your ethnic background?

We should probably start a new thread or it’ll be mostly white men discussing their ethnicity on a thread with literally “people of colour” in the title!

 

[ElizabethofYork]

I know a teacher who worked with a colleague who was American working in a UK school.

Took her a while to get it into her new colleague’s head that the black kids were not “African-Americans”.

I think I've mentioned my colleague before who referred to our black students as African Americans. She was completely nonplussed when I pointed out that they were neither African nor American.

 

[8ball]

I think I've mentioned my colleague before who referred to our black students as African Americans. She was completely nonplussed when I pointed out that they were neither African nor American.

Was this in Leicestershire, by any chance?

 

[A380]

… mostly white men discussing their ethnicity on a thread with literally “people of colour” in the title!

Classic Urban

 

[MickiQ]

I always thought if you were born in Britain you were British. Was always the far right arguing otherwise. And African-British has never been a thing like it is in the States with African-American.

British is a citizenship not an ethnicity or a race. I don’t describe myself as British but as Anglo-Saxon.

 

[A380]

… but as Anglo-Saxon.

Bloody immigrant.

 

[danny la rouge]

British is a citizenship not an ethnicity or a race. I don’t describe myself as British but as Anglo-Saxon.

Barbies, here you go:

Thread 'Discuss your ethnicity! - incorporating “What is ethnicity anyway?”'
https://www.urban75.net/forums/thre...rporating-“what-is-ethnicity-anyway-”.382786/

 

[MickiQ]

Bloody immigrant.

The Neanderthals were in Europe long before Homo Sapiens arrived from Africa to steal their jobs and depress cave prices

 

[Serge Forward]

British is a citizenship not an ethnicity or a race. I don’t describe myself as British but as Anglo-Saxon.

I'm a Beaker Person.

 

[A380]

I'm a Beaker Person.

Messing up our Green and pleasant land with all them bloody stone circles.

 

[Serge Forward]

Messing up our Green and pleasant land with all them bloody stone circles.

I think that was johnny-come-lately immigrants. We just brought the cups.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

British is a citizenship not an ethnicity or a race. I don’t describe myself as British but as Anglo-Saxon.

Never seen that on a diversity form tbh.

 

[newme]

Having said that there's no perfect way to do it, this is a really fucking awful way to do it.

It's nearly 3 years into this, I raised it that day which was a few weeks back. ESG team will have to do something now. I report to the director and her head of compliance they won't let this stand if they know.

 

[hitmouse]

This is an aside, but the inclusion of indigenous people in any descriptor in this country is an interesting one. I initially thought it was a bad idea because only the BNP talk about being indigenous here. But I realised that the UK created a lot of the colonies in which indigenous people are oppressed, and because they're so far away it's easy for us to ignore them. But maybe we shouldn't.

I think it is a bad idea for precisely that reason, or at least it depends what you want to use language for. If you want to describe, for instance, the membership of the UCU, or people who might be attending an event that you're organising, then BIPOC isn't a useful term. If you're talking about people who might be affected by UK far-right organising, it is very unlikely to have any direct impact on First Nations people, and so on.

I think this is what I'm realising. That if nearly all black people call themselves black and a few hundred London activists use 'people of colour' then maybe we should go with black (and Asian, Latino etc).

The two terms do different things imo. Or at least black can do both if it's being used in the broader sense, but if you're defining black and Asian (and indeed Latin American, etc) as separate groups, then you're back to square one in terms of either saying POC, finding a different term or else writing out a long list.

 

[InArduisFouette]

Aye, back in our youth it was a political statement. British Asians were politically black. It was an all-inclusive term in Britain for people from immigrant communities and heritage facing racism. The move to eject you from that identity was a turning point, when anti racism started to be not about fighting inequality but about fighting for difference. But the OP asked that we not go there, so I won’t go into that. The issue I’m highlighting is that at one point it was your preferred term but others excluded you from it.

The link cesare posted is a good discussion, though I share Serge Forward ’s suspicion of “official” papers on the matter.

The general advice though must be: listen, learn and try not to be a dick.

didn't parts of the british asian community choose to eject themselves from being politically black - thinking Robinsons and Coopers from GGM and the current Black and Asian cohort of the Selfservatives

 

[danny la rouge]

I can’t parse your sentence I’m afraid. But I was speaking directly to Spy, not the generality of the British Asian community, not all of whom I know personally.

 

[danny la rouge]

Sorry InArduisFouette I meant to quote you there.

 

[kalidarkone]

I know a teacher who worked with a colleague who was American working in a UK school.

Took her a while to get it into her new colleague’s head that the black kids were not “African-Americans”.

I went to San Francisco in 1993 and stayed with my white liberal friends who referred to me as African American. I put em straight.

Even the lefty Liberal ones were woefully ignorant and American centric.