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"people of color" is OK while "colored people" is found racist

Irredentist said:
It's not a fad, it's a broadly accepted cultural norm. When you're in public, or a professional environment, you are expected to conform your speech to certain standards. This is not just to prevent hurt feelings, but also because rudeness prevents productive discussion, which is important for a functioning society, especially a democracy. This is a view based in logic, and as such, it won't fade away easily
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You seem to be retreating to some more benign social dynamic with your "broadly accepted cultural norm" -- something more along the lines of Richard Carlin's list of words one cannot say on TV -- retreating to this less political line, I say, instead of your former more political line expressed in these posts (bolding mine):

Irredentist said:
Because telling people not to get upset is very seldom effective. In fact it usually makes them more upset. It is much easier to control how people speak than it is to control how others emotionally react.
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Irredentist said:
That's very nice for you but it is irrelevant to my point. Speech is easy to control, you simply impose consequences for speech that is unacceptable. You cannot control how someone else will emotionally react or feel in response to that speech. So, the proper strategy is to try and control what can be controlled, rather than what can't be.
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I'll say it again, since it appears not to be registering with you:

Speech is the cornerstone of the free political culture we enjoy;
lowering the threshold on exceptions to free speech is to erode free speech.
Your view (in its more strident version) lowers the threshold on exceptions to free speech.
Therefore, your view (in its more strident version) threatens the liberties of the political culture we enjoy.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Assuming you bolded for a reason, (sorry for missing that!) :) people born in the Sixties used either "black" or "Afro-American" but some still used "negro" although that began to fall out of use by around 1967 or so if I remember correctly. A person BORN IN 1961 would have probably begun to use "Afro-American" but that too fell out of use by the mid-1970's or so.

No, it was not a clear-cut and well defined thing. But for sure, "colored people" had fallen out of use by the mid-1960's except way down South.

By the way, I am not a politically correct person for the most part.
I grew up with "negro" being perfectly acceptable, so in my own youth it wasn't until black people started looking at me funny or laughing that I realized, "oh, is that not the term anymore?"

"No, we're black people"....."Okay...black people".

Afro-American sounded weird to my ears until I ran across the term "Afro-Cuban" and realized that the etymology was actually pretty well founded. Black people in the Caribbean, especially Cuba, were indeed "Afro-Cuban", so it made sense that black people in America were Afro-American.
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I"m 58, I grew up in the NY metro area...and 'colored' was still in use commonly. Including on TV shows. As was 'negro.'

And I think it's ridiculous to criticize people for using something neutral that they learned from childhood. Sometimes such things are ingrained. Stopping is good but mistakes are common.
 
Lursa said:
I"m 58, I grew up in the NY metro area...and 'colored' was still in use commonly. Including on TV shows. As was 'negro.'

And I think it's ridiculous to criticize people for using something neutral that they learned from childhood. Sometimes such things are ingrained. Stopping is good but mistakes are common.
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Well it seems that in this particular case, this Las Vegas "school board member" (who is an absolute utter JOKE - a HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT!!!) made a BIMBO FOUL, and being that she is in her late twenties or early thirties, no way did she "learn this growing up" unless she grew up in a tarpaper shack somewhere in rural Alabama or Mississippi.
 
I just want to report that the British apparently do not use "people of color."


I was reading the British liberal magazine London Review of Books (my favorite magazine) when I came across "BME citizens."


I went to the Web and discovered that it means "Black and Minority Ethnic citizens."
 
As a person who is transparent, having no color whatsoever, or non color, I am offended by people of all colors and no color.
 
'Darkie' predated nigger, and slave predated that. After 'Negro' is when a certain group of people decided that they should declare what they want to be called. Yes, it has evolved, but it would be like bubba requesting to be called white nationalist this year, but moving on to white supremacist in 2020.
 
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