AIBU to think if your own mothers refers to you as coloured

[Fusedog]

I was in tesco today talking to a women who was clearly pregnant we were down the baby isle and she started asking me about my dd hair, what I do with it ECt
Then she said I only ask because I am havering a coloured baby as well
AIBU to think this child stands no change in terms of self asteem in terms of her heritage or background if her own mother refers to her as coloured ffs

Btw I am black my ds is mixed the lady was white

I wasn't cross just felt a bit sorry for the baby she is gonna have

Sadly it's not on listen again any more but this was brilliant: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rg22v

I love the comment he makes about being mixed race and filling out the ethnicity form in the US. There were no mixed race option and he pointed out that he was as much white as he was black but he felt he couldn't tick the white box.

As I've grown up I've been told to say half caste, coloured, black, mixed race, black/English etc , Caribbean/African/Asian /English etc, and just English. it's got much more specific which in my eyes is as it should be. I know people personally prefer certain ones. I now ask if I need to know. Only on mn have I ever heard coloured is actually 'wrong'. I've never had that articulated in RL. Some of the others like half caste are just bloody obviously insulting.

Strangely if I said Irish/Germanic English I'd get looked at oddly. I'm white. I even got told recently English doesn't exist. It's British. ( passport office) Race definition is a hard and very personal topic I think.

I am white. Which is to say, actually I'm a sort of sallow beige - because white people aren't white at all, are they? It's often seen as rather reductive to define people by their skin colour. I personally hate having to tick a box to say that I would define myself as "White British", although I guess that's what I am. Interestingly, the terms that are bandied about in this thread are seen as offensive in America - I have Black American friends who define themselves as African- American, although their families have lived in America for many generations. They are shocked that their British brothers and sisters choose to call themselves black. Equally, if an American talks of an Asian person, they mean an East Asian (Korean, Japanese, Chinese) and not someone from the Indian subcontinent.

Ultimately, all that really matters is whether someone is trying to be sensitive or trying to be offensive, and that tends to be pretty obvious. It's up to a community, or an individual within that community, how they choose to define or label themselves; and if another person uses an outmoded term, a gentle reminder of what is preferred won't cause anyone upset. I don't think that this woman referring to her baby as coloured means she will bring her child up without an understanding of or respect for the father's cultural heritage, or indeed her own skin colour.

Fusedog, lol, I'm completely oblivious to people's race unless it's specifically brought up in conversation, I worry that makes me come across as ignorant. I'm much more fascinated by religious and cultural differences than by colour.

I agree that a mother simply using the term coloured will not condemn her child(ren) to a sad/bad life.

So much more needs to be taken into consideration.

I am a teacher and just saying the word 'black' (not even to describe somebody but something - your blazer is black) elicits accusations of being racist here.

It all gets a bit tiresome.

But its not a good omen,

Woodland I went to school where several of my teachers were out and proud racists and few more were closeted racists so I am glad the pendulum has swung in the other direction.

MrsDeVere - how sad, that someone would make a comment like that about a baby

I am similar to Ludways

I am much more fascinated with cultural differences but then, I and my peers grew up "safe" in regards to ethnic differences.

In our little corner of the country, religious politics/religious sexual politics emerged as the problem and remains so.

Murders. Rapes. Assaults. "Honour" murders.

Less of a problem when the diversity was simply about ethnicity and not other factors.

TheXxxd I would agree if it meant racism was eradicated; but it isn't.

What has happened is that students have worked out Being A Racist is Bad, and so bandy the accusation about to get someone into trouble without any understanding as to what racism actually is - really.

I was teaching a poem last week. It was about apartheid and so I showed my students a series of pictures showing black/white areas on the beach, bus stops, toilets and so on. They were silent.

Then I said something like 'so obviously this was awful, and then one brave black lady -'

Someone shouted out 'racist!' because I said the WORD black.

MrsDeVere you appear to be implying something about the OP why don't you go ahead and say it we're all big girls here.

I honestly didn't know that 'coloured' wasn't PC until I came on MN. 'Black' was not the said thing when I was young. 'Coloured' was polite.

Same here.

So you are discounting the feelings a black woman might have when confronted with the word coloured. Simply because the woman's delivery was pleasant.

I'm mixed race. I don't mind being called 'coloured' although the only people who have ever used it (in my presence) are from an older generation for whom, I imagine, it was the standard term.

I think the offensiveness comes from its association with segregation in particular in South Africa.

I honestly didn't know that 'coloured' wasn't PC until I came on MN. 'Black' was not the said thing when I was young. 'Coloured' was polite

I kind of assimilated over recent years that 'coloured' is not the PC term (as it is not used in the news media) but I too grew up understanding that 'coloured' was politer and preferable to 'black'.

I am mixed raced and I HATE the fucking word.

I'm genuinely astonished that some posters didn't know that 'coloured' is considered offensive. I thought most people in Britain stopped using it in the 70s.

Seriously how can anyone not know that many people find coloured offensive, I knew that from about the age of 8, anf my parents were hardly liberal folk.

I am of an age when "coloured" was the polite word. I was (very) vaguely aware of the Black Power movement in the US in the '60's; my parents always watched the evening news on tv and I picked up on some stuff, including when Cassius Clay changed his name. (I hero-worshipped the man, my CoS-bred parents had some explaining to do!)

Into my teen years in the 70's and I read a bit more, and came to understand that Black people (at that time, anyone in the UK who wasn't white) wanted to be called Black, because coloured had all these slave-ownerish connotations, along with half-caste and the many other "fractions of non-whiteness". So I started using the word Black (and yes, it was always capitalised).

Now I'm seeing a movement - it may be American, in the forefront (maybe?) again - away from Black/Asian/African American and towards the phrase "people of colour"/"color". I have no idea if this is any sort of retrogade step, or a move forward?

I'm sorry, I'm really just musing here, I do hope I haven't upset anyone. I've never lived in a proper multicultural environment so it's mostly what I read online.

I have recently heard the term people of colour and like it as I feel that people of asian descent have had a bum deal. There are many "Asians" who have never been to the continent. Plus I am white with a very black husband and we have a baby who you would think is of asian heritage. Interesting ly one of the first words of my husband's mother tongue I learned was 'white person' as that was what I am often referred to at mostly African parties!!!

I think 'dual heritage' refers to having two parents of different heritage, so you wouldn't be of many heritages as you only had two parents. In this sense someone with a French mother and a Scottish father is dual heritage.

I too have trouble with the term mixed race. It gives credence to the idea that there are 'races' which are separate entities - which might not necessarily a helpful way for children to think of themselves.

I have a partner who is a neither colour to me - he's neither black or Asian or dual heritage. It's the "other" box he always has to fill in on the ethnicity section of forms!
Our kids are very olive, one has very black hair. I struggle with mixed race because I don't think that's the best way to describe them. I think it's better to say "half English/half what they are" but I appreciate that's a conversation! I prefer dual heritage but then some people are triple or quadruple depending on their parents. So it goes on and on! My feeling is that I will see how the kids define themselves as the cultural input is there in the family.