What can I write if I don't want to write BME / BAME etc

[HellonHeels]

Is Global Majority better?

Please help, not trying for woke points, just want to be inclusive and use the best language.

No style guide in my institution, other reports use BAME.

I would have no idea what ‘global majority’ meant. Sounds like a reference to women.

Use BAME or non-white if you need to discuss all non-white feoups as one category. But depending on what you are writing there might be a better way to say it.

Who are people from global Majority backgrounds?

Who does this cover?

It's a re-thinking of the previously used term BAME (still widely used).

Here is one definition I found. dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/global-majority

I work in payroll for a large organisation and we are currently trying to report our ethnicity pay gap. We asked all our non white employees in the UK what they would prefer as a blanket term and they suggested Ethnic Minority Groups. We're a multinational and are doing this in a number of countries so Global majority etc. becomes difficult. However they asked for more granular pay gap reporting which makes sense.

However the bigger issue for us is how to report ethnicity pay gaps in a more granular way- there are 20+ ethnicity options for individuals to select but some have so few employees in that from a data privacy perspective we need to combine categories to report in them- so for example is "black" ok if it covers people from African and Caribbean backgrounds? What about combining people from Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds? There are 8 options just for mixed as well. One particular area of the country has about 9 people from a traveller background- do we include them as white which feels odd as they are terribly discriminated against?

We went back out the the employees and there's no consensus. Some suggested combining all mixed employees together (so white mixed with African, chinese, Indian etc). Lots of people hated this. Some others suggested combining mixed with the biggest grouping- so black mixed combined with just black which really annoyed mixed people. It's been about 7 months. We're no further on and we haven't reported yet because we want to give employees something they want but now anything we do will not give some employees what they hoped for.

The government have been promising guidelines on this for years. They're 2 years late already but apparently have other things on their mind.

Another one who has never heard the term 'global majority' either.

Like in HE, I think it's more appropriate to refer to patients from ethnic minorities, BME, BAME etc. where it is relevant to all. Within the UK population, this is a minority group and that's one of the reasons it can be under-represented due to being ignored etc., default White patient/student etc.
I have not heard Global Majority for our students, though I've heard/used similar terms ("majority world") when talking about people and places outside the UK.
But if you are talking about my students, and your patients, they are IN the UK where they are a minority.

Global majority sound really weird to me. Google says,

Global Majority is a collective term that first and foremost speaks to and encourages those so-called to think of themselves as belonging to the global majority. It refers to people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities'.

It's just non white people. Why do they need to lump up everyone together? Weird.

Global Majority as a term has all the problems that previous terms such as BAME and POC have.

Its lumping people who have nothing in common apart from the fact that they are not white together.

From the explanations on this thread it's just categorising people who are not white, just using a different term that sound less offensive to the term's users.

It's just non white people. Why do they need to lump up everyone together? Weird.

Because ‘ethnic minorities‘ is habitually used - consciously or not - to make every non-white person feel small and isolated and helpless and at the mercy of the inalienably white ‘majority’ to whom they must be forever grateful for every lash and kick and patronising back door opportunity to sip fresh water or hold a pen.

Using the word ‘majority’ do describe non-white people redresses the psychological balance.

Very interesting @savagegardener

This is interesting.
I actually did feel a shift in being described a global majority! It is true that being constantly described as a minority does encourage me to be small and hide and invisible.

There’s probably room for more than one term depending on aim.

it would be interesting to see the impact of global majority terminology in eg primary school.

I've never heard of Global Majority possibly as I am in the retired sector. Not everyone is in a 'sector' and familiar with new terms.

I've never heard of Global Majority either, despite being classified that myself, probably.

You could be right that it will end up being problematic. But after consultation the "Global Majority" stakeholders in my sector have voiced a preference to this term over, say, BAME, as it is more factually accurate and less othering.

Racially minoritised.

Global majority. Everyone who is not white bundled up into one big group. 🤨

That very clearly makes the people the term defines passive receivers of a state imposed by others, @Bitterbean.

(Besides which, ‘race’ is an artificial construct!)

Sorry @Rowthe I posted too soon. I meant to add...

The necessity of having any terms at all is really only indicative of structural discrimination or exclusion in our society. As I said in comment above, this is about sectors and institutions trying to find language to discuss their approaches to inclusion in order to improve inclusion. And, in the UK the ruling hegemony is white, so those sectors and institutions are white-dominated and therefore the language has been / can be othering.

In an ideal world we wouldn't need any such terminology but that's not realistic at present and is no more helpful than someone saying "I don't see colour". We need language to adapt and evolve and help us to discuss and improve society I guess.

I agree - surely no one ethnicity is the majority so non white people only = a global Majority of lumped in with other groups, so what's the point? I am mixed race, hate BAME and have never heard of GM

Much better approach.

Individuals or groups with a non-white heritage or culture?

I really hope my children's generation don't have to worry about shit like this. Utterly divisive and helps no one.

People of colour is American and I hate that phase.

I am not white and ethnic minority has never made me feel small or helpless.

@wigywhoo see my comments above. Language is needed to discuss inclusion practice on order to improve opportunities. If people can't identify groups who are being excluded they can't improve things. And practically it isn't always possible for all individual backgrounds or ethnicities to be listed so some terminology is needed. "Non-white" has been unpopular due to the othering of defining people by what they are not, hence other terms like GM evolving into use.

"Non-white" positions white as the default to which all others either belong or not. It intrinsically"others" people. If you are a woman it would be like saying you are a non-man.

I’m an academic at one of the top unis. I’ve never heard of “global majority” despite a big inclusivity drive there. The journals in my field also do not use this phrase.