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.

At that time, in our area, people born in 1930 wouldn't have been thrilled about their daughter marrying a black man. To comment on it would not have been intended offensively.

I'm thrilled for you that you lived and worked and grew up in such a progressive area. I didn't.

And Bert, she said 'a funny colour' in order to avoid the offensiveness of calling him black.

Bonkers I know, but there we are.

It sounded as if Rudd inadvertently slipped into the polite terminology of her upbringing

That wa smy reaction too. I'm another who expereinced the changes... black was OK, then coloured was the only correct term. Then I got utterly confused as one part of socoety said black is good, the other stayed with coloured.

Then our ever icreasing PCness hit and it became simpe. Anyone who is different from me (totally solipsistic I know) becomes person with/of a something or other.

So person with dyslexia
Person with a disability
Person of colour

But in my head I still thenk black person. My immediate reaction is to correct myself to coloured person, then I catch up and get it right.

I have no idea what the solution is. Listening to Jeremey Vine's callers I was tempted to tell the young woman to get out more, she needs a hobby! But she seemed sincere, if like so many other young people, utterly self centred - if you stand on my foot and I bleed then your intentions do not matter, the outcome is always that I bleed I suspect she could start a fight in an empty room!

What 'right' will be in 10 years I have no idea, but I will be too old to care by then!

I'm learning a lot today about what the right thing to say is!.

I too remember coloured being the right word to use in the 70s. In fact growing up in an area with a high population with heritage from India and Pakistan, I would not have thought of these groups as "black". There were and still are very few people there of African or Caribbean heritage who were then more normally referred to as "black". Thank God some of the awful racist attitudes that existed then have changed, but it is not as obvious as you might think for those of us brought up in another era and who now live in predominantly white areas to understand what words are offensive.That's not an excuse, but it is reality.
Slightly off topic, but if I'm staying around my home area, I can go for weeks without seeing any person of colour.
I think it's a shame that Rudd made a genuine mistake when the point she was actually making was in support of Diane Abbot and the abuse she has suffered.

Anyone who is different from me (totally solipsistic I know) becomes person with/of a something or other.
But even that can't be relied on - I have autism but I don't like 'person with autism', I like 'autistic'! There are so many variations, some acceptable and some not (and acceptable to some but not others), and so many abbreviations to keep up with, it's crackers. People will make mistakes no matter how hard they try.

I too remember coloured being the right word to use in the 70s.

But what about the 80s, 90s, 00s and the majority of the 10s we have lived through subsequently? Why do people still use "I grew up with it" as a reason for their choice of words four decades later?

I have autism but I don't like 'person with autism', I like 'autistic'! Eek!

Maybe I need to identify as an elderly person with immediate effect and give no fucks at all

matey yes! I grew up in Liverpool, black people, indian/pakistani people. I wonder how we knew who was whow? But we did and we just mudled along wth the cuiltural differences and lack of common language

Moved south, no people of any skin colour other than white... erm, no idea what the correct terminology would have been in those years.

Then coloured people became the norm, cos not all 'not white people are black' OK!

Then colored became an insult, I don't know why!

BAME... is that the current correct terminology? That sounds like someone trying to avoid being wrong!

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

But she would not have worked for Morgan Stanley as a child. She is 55 years old, so grew up in the sixties and seventies, when a quick google will show social conditioning in the uk had the use of coloured as the polite and correct terminology,

As such, I also suspect in that split second her brain just reached for the word she was taught was polite, growing up,

Why do people still use "I grew up with it" as a reason for their choice of words four decades later?

Because we are humans, and we make mistakes and if you're taught. As a child it's bad to say black, you must say coloured, them a mistake when under pressure with no time to think and reaching for the polite and correct term is nothing more than an inncocent mistake. She has stated she is mortified and apologised, I really don't think she needs to be crucified for it, given the context of her interview and what she will have been taught as child.

I hold Amber Rudd as a
senior politician to a much higher standard than I hold Auntie Amber, the woman down the road.

Why do people still use "I grew up with it" as a reason for their choice of words four decades later? For the same reason I know many nursery rhymes off by heart but am less sure of favourite songs heard and learned later in life.

It's a psychological thing. Your brain stores some things, earlier memories, most often repeated stuff, far more securely than later, less heard and repeated information.

I may know better but my brain will still default to the first version of soemthing it knew. Why else do UB40 sing I'm a Prima Donna and about having a one inch head, Neil Diamond The Reverend Blue Jeans, etc etc etc. Those errors were the first learned versions.

Why do even the most together of older people remember their childhoods more clearly than yesterday?

It's an inbuilt function of memory!

I hold Amber Rudd as a senior politician to a much higher standard than I hold Auntie Amber, the woman down the road Me too! But I wouldn't set about her, as some have done today, for that mistake.

I would have corrected her... no more! Her reaction to being corrected would have been more telling....

Sometimes it's hard to keep up with language changing . Most of us have a jolly good try. as most people don't want to upset others.

I don't like some of the changes to language such as dropping ts and not using to whom etc and some of those I will keep "getting right " (i.e not changing) until the bitter end.

“But I wouldn't set about her, as some have done today, for that mistake”
I wouldn’t “set about her” either, but it would certainly tell me something about her.....

but it would certainly tell me something about her I'm interested, honestly. What would it signify for you?

I could undertsand how she might simply have regressed in her speech patter. She sounded quite emotionally engrossed in what she was trying to get across. I would just assume that she, like so many politicians these days, isn't quite as careful about how she speaks as politicians of yesteryear. That I do think a little less of her than I did on , say , Monday. But I would just have corrected her and moved on, maybe with half an ear for a repeated error!

But I do that for all current politicos as I don't really rate m/any of them!

'hold Amber Rudd as a senior politician to a much higher standard than I hold Auntie Amber, the woman down the road.'

Yes you already mentioned 'auntie amber' up thread.

The point is senior politician or not she is human and as such will make mistakes. She has apologised. Can we not focus on the message that she was actually getting across about the abuse that women and black women receive?

Or perhaps Bert would like her sacked and told to wear a hair shirt for the foreseeable?

Or perhaps Bert would like her sacked and told to wear a hair shirt for the foreseeable?

As I understand it, BertrandRussell does take a fairly hard line on this: what Amber Rudd has done is “unforgivable” and is now permanently on her record because she has revealed embedded racist thinking. That’s a point of view many here disagree with - unfortunately however, according to one poster, that makes them guilty of “casual racism”.

I am white so I may be wholly wrong about this but ‘coloured woman’ suggests semantically that the colour is viewed from outside perhaps even defined from and by and imposed by others whereas woman of colour denotes it belongs and is of her - ie not to do with the external gaze but rather to do with the woman herself, self and pride etc.
In addition and less self identifying if could the word ‘coloured’ has terrible history inextricably linked with all sorts of Oppressive, racist situations as pps have said.

I said she was innumerate

She isn’t though. She just made a mistake.

But hey, because she’s dianne Abbott she’ll get a harder time than someone using outdated and offensive language.
It shows what a sheltered life Amber Rudd lives and how out of touch she is. Which is a worry given her position.

Why do people still use "I grew up with it" as a reason for their choice of words four decades later?

Yes, this. I am a few years older than Amber Rudd and I can remember in the 1970s the word 'coloured' being used in newspapers, for example, to describe people. But that was a LOT more than half my lifetime ago! I haven't heard anyone of my vintage referring to 'coloured people' for decades. So it's a mystery to me why a modern politician would use the term, and I honestly don't think 'That's what people said 40 years ago' explains it.

OK, @iggly, show me some evidence that Abbott isn't innumerate, she was snatching random figures out of thin air in that interview. It wasn't a mistake, it was ill prepared nonsense. Anyway this thread isn't about that.

Yep. Abbott screwed up. Which means that she will rightly be scrutinized more closely whenever she quotes figures. That’s how it works, surely?

I have a feeling @Alsohuman that you wouldn't change your view about dianne Abbott regardless of what information I dug out. On your behalf.

Plenty of politicians make mistakes about figures, and many of them get away with it because they do it so smoothly. Abbott was clearly flustered in that interview and it came out subsequently that she had medical issues.
She clearly doesn’t do well in interviews.

I’m not one to judge the mettle of a politician based on interviews alone so I wouldn’t make the leap to innumerate based on a few nervous answers. That’s ridiculous. She’s shit at interviews!

I will judge someone as casually racist at worst, at best ignorant, for using the term that Rudd did.

I can’t actuallt believe that in among all the rest of this shit no one has picked up on a poster saying that using the term ‘ funny colour’ was about being polite and avoid using the word black (WTF at I reading) along with because people grew up in the 30’s they wouldn’t want their daughter to marry a black man but it’s ok that was just the time and they were still super polite because they didn’t use the word black.

Hands up who is actually a BAME person on this thread 🙋🏽‍♀️ (Guess what we don’t want to be called coloured... not then and not now)

“can’t actuallt believe that in among all the rest of this shit no one has picked up on a poster saying that using the term ‘ funny colour’ was about being polite and avoid using the word blacK”

I did. But I had already questioned the poster concerned about it and I’m already fighting a bit of a rearguard action on this thread!