Amber Rudd

[sue51]

I'm seeking to understand the differences between the terms “coloured women” and “women of colour”. They sound intrinsically similar but they may well be different, and a web search didn’t help in defining the difference.

The first term was used by Amber Rudd yesterday, and she quickly apologised as it had caused offence, but was still under criticism in the main national news. If a term is offensive then it’s right that it isn’t used, and where it has been used that should be the subject of an apology.

However, the term “women of colour” was used on Radio 4 this morning, and a review of the play Richard II at the Sam Wannamaker Playhouse by the Guardian’s Michael Billington prominently used the term “women of colour”, and one would have thought, given the Guardian’s credentials, that the term would not be used if it was likely to cause offence.

So, and asked in all sincerity, can anyone explain the difference between these two terms, and why one is deemed to be offensive while the other is apparently not? I would be mortified if I used a term which caused offence to someone but am genuinely curious about the difference in this case.

DH and I both grew up with ‘coloured’ being the polite term, both mid-40s, different counties in the SE. Somehow it has passed DH by, despite him being very widely educated, that it is no longer acceptable and I have to occasionally remind him (though he might now remember, thanks to Ms Rudd!).

I didn’t say Abbott was uneducated, I said she was innumerate which, in that interview, she was. I too listened to Rudd’s entire interview - not just the sound bite - and the context makes it clear that she’s far from racist.

I don’t understand why my experience in the 1970s is different from other people’s.........

Nor do I but there are an awful lot of us, don’t you think? Or is it a collective hallucination?

Or maybe because I am older, I am remembering how it was, rather than how it was filtered by parents, when were speaking from a previous generation? I can see how people whe were children then might have been told by their parents that “coloured” was polite......

I’m 65 so I think my memory of the 70s as an adult is pretty clear.

Can’t explain it then. Working in London in a very multi cultural office?

I have very specific memories of ‘coloured’ being used in some of the books I was reading in the late 70s/early 80s. I have just checked to see when they were first published, and it was in the 70s. I would like to think that an editor would have corrected it, if it was considered wrong for the time, given that they weren’t historical novels.

My father is also a nasty racist bigot, and he was using other words (he still does), so it’s not a case of picking up my parents language here at least.

"Coloured" or rather "Colored" is a deeply offensive term where I grew up. I find it shocking that someone would use it in 2019.

Really interesting thread...I agree that WHAT she was talking about was important, and that has now (probably rightly) been overshadowed. It will serve a point in that it means a lot of white people who don't normally have to think much about racial terms, have now learned what is acceptable and what is not. If they are decent people, they will take it on board. Just one thing though, I have worked in Radio a long long time and seen all sorts of people who have been media trained to death, make silly mistakes. She may have been distracted by something happening in the studio which caused her brain to jumble up "women of colour" to "coloured woman" (listening to the radio, you can't imagine how much stuff is happening in the studio whilst someone is talking) or it could just be that inexplicable spark in the brain which makes you say something you would never normally say. I've seen both things happen so I don't think we can take it that Amber Rudd is merely reverting to a word she would normally use, rather than the pc word she knows she should use. The most important thing is that she apologised very quickly and straightforwardly - no fudging the issue.

Fair enough. The government department i worked in must have been super-woke!

What books are you talking about, Bananas? It seems logical that fiction might have taken a while to catch up.

I also think that the use of the word "coloured" in 1960s/70s Britain probably depended on where you grew up. Perhaps you were much more likely to use "black" if you actually knew black people than if you grew up somewhere like the Westcountry or Norfolk.

I have to say to contextualise it further, I never refer to skin tone, not just because it's not relevant, but if I say someone is black I feel like I am saying something wrong, because I was taught this as a child.

It was nothing to do with my parents, although they did also teach me, but my gp was black as a very young child and I recall him telling me he was coloured, and that was what we said, when I asked about his skin tone. As a pp said, books used the word, teachers used the word, it was considered polite. It was considered very rude to say someone was black.

Times have changed, it's been forty years, but the past exists, and sometimes, even with the best of intent someone can get it wrong when politeness is what they are aiming for. Amber Rudd, who I am no fan of, was clearly trying to defend Diane and be poilite. This to me does not mean she is causally racist, more a product of her upbringing and human and she has apologised sincerely for it.

If she had not grown up in an era where she was told this polite my view would be different, but she did.

So again I'd look at causation and intent, whilst still accepting it was wrong in today's day and age.

BERTRAND I don't know why you're experience is different, but if the internet existed then and you were on line calling people black you'd have had your arse handed to you and been roundly accused of being racist.

www.rifemagazine.co.uk/2015/01/cant-say-coloured-questions-race-answered/
Quite an interesting article about this subject.

Bertrand, I don't know why your experience is so different. Were you an adult or living in a multi cultural area?

As a child in the 70s living in a poor white working class area I was also taught that black was offensive and that coloured was the polite term. I didn't realise that coloured had been used in the UK in the same pejorative way as the US. My dad told me about the "no Irish, no blacks and no dogs" signs on lodgings in the 60's so to me it was the word "black" that was the offensive word. I had no interactions with anyone from an ethnic minority to tell me differently.

Now as I've got older I have learnt that coloured is offensive and why. But if I am talking about ethnicity I do sometimes have to pause because I have to overcome the childhood programming that saying black is bad and coloured is good. Weirdly, I've had enough years of adult social conditioning that coloured is bad that I feel uncomfortable saying person of colour, an expression which has only relatively recently commonly been commonly used in the UK as we have used BAME instead.

Amber Rudd was wrong, she said she was mortified and apologised. Dianne Abbot was well within her rights to be offended.

I do think it is a shame that a white woman talking about the misogyny she experiences and highlighting that a woman of colour gets it even worse due to her ethnicity has been completely overlooked and ignored. I am perhaps not surprised.

“
BERTRAND I don't know why you're experience is different, but if the internet existed then and you were on line calling people black you'd have had your arse handed to you and been roundly accused of being racist”

Interesting. Because I was writing policy documents for a major government department in the mid to late 70s and used routinely used black to describe black peoples. I was also involved with a major HIV/AIDS charity a little later and used black there too.

*black people, not black peoples.

What dolor said!

I'm not quite 50. I was about 13 when my sister made a comment about the (stunningly handsome) boyfriend of a (beautiful blonde) woman we knew- that her parents probably wouldn't be happy. I asked why, her answer- because he was 'a funny colour'.

Now that was racist in every possible way, and an attitude out of the ark. It was normal for the time, in my area and no harm/offence was intended.

Bertrand, I think London and big cities generally was very different from other areas.

I don't really understand the "that's how it was when I/she was growing up" argument. I know there's a critical period for language acquisition, but I don't think it applies to individual words

“Bertrand, I think London and big cities generally was very different from other areas.”

Didn’t Rudd work for Morgan Stanley in London before becoming an MP? Or did I make that up?

“ It was normal for the time, in my area and no harm/offence was intended.”

Oh come on!!!! Somebody said that a woman’s parents wouldn’t be happy about her new boyfriend because he was a “funny colour” and no harm or offence was intended? Seriously???

I am her age and coloured was polite and black was very rude and you didn't say it. Anyway it doesn't matter- as long as people know what words are not liked these days and avoid them we are all in the clear. Can be a bit of a minefield however so best not to refer to anything if you can help it!

I have a friend in her mid-40s who recently used "coloured" quite innocently to mean BAME. Not everyone is up to date on these things, though I agree Amber Rudd should be (and probably is, just slipped up under stress).

I was about to correct my friend when I remembered that she is mixed race herself whereas I am white. So I let it lie.