Stop teaching child that it’s okay to refer to someone’s skin colour

[CannotThinkOfName]

Calling someone - a random person you don’t know - black is racist. I don’t care if your personal friend or your family member or someone else you’re close to doesn’t mind being referred to like this because they’re speaking for themselves as individuals.

Pointing out someone by skin colour is rude at best and at worst a form of racism. This is because

1. Skin colour that I was born with is brown.
2. Skin colour that I was born with does not define anyone. It doesn’t define your traits, characteristics, hobbies, goals, ambitions or anything else that truly defines who a person is.
3. It’s a form of racial harassment to start bothering someone at random and bringing up their race and colour for no real reason and singling them out by it.

I’ve seen people say there’s nothing wrong with their child referring to people by skin because they are just “saying what they see”. This is wrong because as a child, I never ever saw myself as “black” or described myself “black”. This is taught as a way to refer to people, it’s not simply a child “saying what they see”.

Please stop teaching your child that it’s okay to refer to people that you don’t know this way. If you do know someone and they’ve told you to call them black then that’s their choice as an individual. They don’t speak for anyone else but themselves.

If you don’t know someone’s name, - just ask them what their name is and call them by their actual name. Not “that black girl” or “the black woman” or “that black lady”.

So you think the BLM movement has a racist title?

Best get BLM to change its name 😬 what about the BET awards? And MOBOs?

@difficultdayahead

Oh what bollocks. Saying the colour of someone's skin is descriptive, not racist.

But I find #blacklivesmatter discriminatory. Yes, of course they do, obviously. But you know what? White lives matter equally, but where's our campaign? Where's our protests, etc?

Posts like this really piss me off. The vast majority of people who use the terms 'black', or 'coloured', etc., do not mean any offence at all, yet people who are determined to be offended will always find a way.

Live and let live - even if that means stating the colour of someone's skin.

Can't stand people who answer Black Lives Matter with 'all lives matter', usually they are racists.

OP I do think I see where you are coming from now. I started out massively disagreeing, but I think you have explained it pretty well in the face of some rather rigid responses. Black is not factual but it has become accepted as if it were. Not everyone is ok with that. Why should they be? Words are very rarely completely neutral.

I’ve been in a room with mainly black and Asian people before and they’ve used the term ‘the white girl in the red top’ to describe the one white person there. They weren’t saying anything bad, it just helped identify her quicker. So I think a lot of people do this regardless of race and it’s never intended to be racist or derogatory.

It's a really interesting thread and unfortunately s lot of people don't know how to answer, as I don't. Anything that isolates a person or throws a highlight on a person won't make them feel good, one of my sons is more muscle than the other, another is smaller, if I was to use that as a descriptor it would make them upset. Ds1s best friend is from Pakistan but limps, he gets upset if people call him the boy in the class who limps but doesn't care about people using the colour of his skin. I know this only because ds told me he laughs about how he might be the only non white person in a room and people will use every other description brown eyes, dark hair, what he's wearing, to describe him. The problem is where a quick descriptor is needed, eg someone is lost or there's been a crime.

The discrepancy (outside of police descriptions etc) is white people get described as ‘blonde’, ‘brunette’ ‘redhead’ etc whilst black and brown people get just described ‘black’ or ‘brown’.

There is a clear difference in how we refer to BAME people vs white people.

Absolute bollocks.

Ps to the all lives matter person, there's some good explanations on the internet, you should look them up

'I will brand anyone racist who I feel is racist. Thankfully, the law is on my side and racism is determined by whether the victim feels it’s racist'- that's a ridiculous over simplification. It doesn't work like that...

But has anyone who knows your name actually referred to you directly as 'black'? I can't imagine this situation.

It’s actually has happened to me and does happen. It might be hard for you to believe but many people feel like bringing up someone’s race for no reason (not giving a police report) is completely acceptable

Obviously coming over to someone and saying "hey black lady, do you know when the bus is due" or "so, you're black. Where are you from?" isn't ok. But that's a very different thing to someone describing Sarah as the black girl with the pigtails or Harry as the Asian man with the hat on.

Presumably you live in a not very diverse area if yo u can't imagine a scenario where describing someone as white might be relevant but is this also racist because it DOES happen.

When my friends child started nursery, she was the only white child. No one would have described her classmates as "the black / brown / ochre" child because it would have been pointless. No one would have described my friends child as the one with brown hair because it would have been pointless. So if the kids say "the white girl!" to describ her are they all racists for not saying peach / cream?

@oblada

'I will brand anyone racist who I feel is racist. Thankfully, the law is on my side and racism is determined by whether the victim feels it’s racist'- that's a ridiculous over simplification. It doesn't work like that...

Correct me if I'm wrong but the poster I referring to the hate crime law. This law is only meant to apply if an actual crime has taken place. Then the victims perception is used to determine if racially motivated. Sadly, it's been abused by various police forces across the UK, particularly in Scotland against women. It's not meant to be used as the poster thinks.

This is a great piece on race as a social construct.

www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/16/how-fluid-is-racial-identity/race-and-racial-identity-are-social-constructs

Firewalled so copying a chunk here:

^^Race is not biological. It is a social construct. There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa.

Like race, racial identity can be fluid. How one perceives her racial identity can shift with experience and time, and not simply for those who are multiracial. These shifts in racial identity can end in categories that our society, which insists on the rigidity of race, has not even yet defined.

As I explain in my book "According to Our Hearts," whites in interracial black-white marriages or relationships frequently experience a shift in how they personally understand their individual racial identity. In a society where being white (regardless of one’s socioeconomic class background or other disadvantages) means living a life with white skin privileges — such as being presumed safe, competent and noncriminal — whites who begin to experience discrimination because of their intimate connection with someone of another race, or who regularly see their loved ones fall prey to racial discrimination, may begin to no longer feel white. After all, their lived reality does not align with the social meaning of their whiteness.

You do get a sense that the PP feel t hi at the OP is somehow taking something away from them.

How has her request led to SUCH defensive responses? What does what she says challenge about your identity?? Worth a thought by many PP (none will IMHO - no desire to want to understand the world differently / to enhance their own worldview).

I'm Asian and I would have no problem if someone refers to me as such. I do not mind (but do not like), being referred to as brown or black as in reality I am neither). However, in a room of largely white people if someone who does not knows me comes in and says where is Brainwave, it would be a little bit silly not to say she is the Asian woman over there wouldn't it?

How has her request led to SUCH defensive responses? because saying anyone who uses the word black as a descriptor is racist regardless of context or their own skin tone is going to get lots of backs up?

If you’re not black yourself, you don’t have any right to tell someone what’s racist or not because you’re not at the receiving end of it.

Not entirely true although your later comment was more accurate in that if you are on the receiving end of a racist tirade and you report it to the police they definitely should be handling it as racist unless it is unequivocally proved otherwise. And that is how it should be.

The problem is, as many PP have said, context can really change things. Which is how a lot of clever racists get away with saying appallingly racist things in the open and wiggle out of being found guilty of racism.

Sure, if i knew you, i would definitely refer to you by name. If i had to describe you, in a group of people where you were the only black person, i may (not always) say "sure, the black lady over there". I am, because i do try to be careful, more likely to say "the lady with the red dress/green cardigan/standing by the water cooler".

My granny might have once upon a time said "i was talking to a black lady at the bus stop" - which is unnecessary and racist. But the context of that might be that my granny came from a tiny northern village and didn't meet a black person in the flesh until the late 60s. When she learned that was offensive, she didn't say it again.

And I often get called English (tbh I am English but i take on board complaints of non-English brits and try to educate my friends/colleagues that British =/= English. That is an aside sorry) when someone has to describe me quickly. In a company of over 2,000 people I'm the only English one. It is pretty obviously a very easy to describe me.

"no, where are you really from" - yeah. That is a massive problem. If you genuinely want to know where the name is from, you could ask that (I have a non-English surname, being married to a non-English person and i changed my name on marriage). So instead of "no where are you really from" it would be better to say "interesting name, where's it from". But even then, saying that to a black person who has said they're from Yorkshire is very problematic and Othering.

And so on and so on. I don't think it is always disrespectful to refer to someone as black under certain circumstances, but if they subsequently came to me and said they didn't like that, then if that type of occasion arose again I'd find a different way to refer to them. I see POC and WOC used quite often and it seems to be a respectful way to describe people if there is a reason to use it - but again if they asked me not to, i wouldn't.

I've often been the white person in China, Korea and Japan. One colleague once called me and my colleague "the long nose" as that is how he had always called white people (it's quite common) i don't really care, but my Jewish colleague immediately asked him not to use that expression again. And so on.

the TL;DR is that yes, context is key, but racists use that as an excuse sometimes. We should all remain respectful and take it on board when someone says "don't use that word for me"

@Beeth0ven I think people are on the whole struggling with how to now describe people who have varying skin colours. It’s already a loaded minefield and most people ( I say most but am probably using my friend group really as an example) want to make sure they get it right and don’t offend the person they are referring to. This seems to be impossible task though, given what the OP has posted, and clearly there are some black people who seem absolutely fine with using black as a descriptive word and the OP ( who is clearly not and possibly others that agree with her). It makes it a complete minefield when trying to be respectful if you have no idea of the correct language to use without offending said person. So I imagine, lots of people that believe they have been respectful and using what they believe is the ‘right’ terminology are wondering if they have/are committing a grave error. How do we solve this if we don’t actually know the person’s preference? Unless we go up to every individual we meet and ask them, which could be pretty tricky and not always possible.

I don’t agree with the OP and I’m Asian/Chinese, not white/European.
I don’t think disagreeing is a “defensive response” or a “challenge to my identity”. There is nothing racist about mentioning ancestry as a descriptive of a person you are referring to in conversation so the other person can identify who you are talking about. I think OPs assertion that “race doesn’t exist” is dangerous, because if race doesn’t exist, than neither can racism!

The whole “race is a social construct” fails to communicate the fact that it is a social construct built on the foundation of real, visible biological differences in morphology between human populations. Just because we have many social constructs as a result, doesn’t make it any less real.

The statement about there being no genes or gene clusters common to “all whites” or “all blacks” obscures the fact that genetically race is a spectrum as over time there has been constant intermixing between geographically close populations. Which means there are no genetic boundaries between races as we are all different mixes of the same gene clusters. To argue that means race doesn’t biologically exist is like saying crepes, pancakes and waffles are the same and do not exist as separate foods because they are made from the exact same ingredients of milk, eggs, flour and oil. Or that blue and yellow are actually the same colour and do not exist as separate colours because you can shade one seamlessly into the other with no boundaries by having green in the middle. Black-Brown-White is exactly the same.

There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites

Race is not a construct. There are probably not a cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites, but there are certainly clusters of genes that are common to subsets of white, black or asian groups and within those ethnicities a common denominator has been skin tone. You can choose to use a different word to replace 'race' if you don't like it, but it's not made up.

Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries

Some ethnicities will be less likely to mix due to isolation or religious reasons for instance (think Mennonites, Fijians, etc) and their characteristics and genetics will remain more constant.

@sleepstandingup - so OP should keep quiet so as not to offend people who she feels are offending her.

Do you see any problems with what you are suggesting?!

[quote Beeth0ven]@sleepstandingup - so OP should keep quiet so as not to offend people who she feels are offending her.

Do you see any problems with what you are suggesting?![/quote]
No, but there's a difference between "Steve, don't refer to me at Black Sarah because it offends me". "You don't know me, do not call me" pi, you, black wench", its highly offensive" "Manager, our diversity forms say need updating so they don't just say black or white", "Actually NoName204858282, I find it offensive when you refer to me as the black poster upthread" and "when you're 4 yo describes the only no white child in class as," Mo, the black boy I sit next to" he's a racist"

@mustlovegin - there’s no genetic basis for “black” because black is a construct.

African is not a construct, Samoan is not a construct, Brazilian is not a construct, Tahitian is not a construct - all will have some biological basis.

Black is a socially constructed catch all term that cannot have a genetic basis because it shifts culturally depending on the eye of the beholder.

Can you really not understand that?

@CannotThinkOfName Admittedly I started reading this thread thinking you were totally unreasonable.

As an American of Indian descent I’m used to publicly being described/identified as Indian (we don’t say Asian in the US) and casually referred to as brown amongst friends (though as a general rule, before Trump, no one really bothered about my skin color/ethnic origins any which way). Generally none of it bothers me and I refer myself interchangeably.

Realizing how that differs from the African vs black situation was a bit of an eye opener. As a general rule, I am publicly being identified by my actual ethnicity instead of all-encompassing “brown.” Really is food for thought.

Why can Asians be Asian but I must be black because someone else said so?
Do you prefer a geographical location then like
African or Caribbean? Is Black British also racist in your eyes?