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”.

This right here, this thread, is why people have stopped listening, OP.

[quote Brefugee]**@NameChangeNamaste i find it really fascinating how race/ethinc origin is handled in the States. So people will very happily describe themselves as African American, Irish American, German American and so on. It's an up-front "yeah - my roots are elsewhere" which not entirely unexpected in a country which has historically had a lot of immigration.

Also the use of Asian, IIRC, tends to mean what in the UK we'd be more likely to call east Asian, and they use south Asian where in the UK they'd say Asian.

It's all a matter of perspective, and familiarity i guess. There is definitely a lot to think about when conversations like this crop up, and it's often a very interesting and educating process. One thing is always clear though: context is important, and things change constantly.[/quote]
@NameChangeNamaste. That’s interesting. Where I’m living in the US, I think South East Asian, rather than Indian, might be used to describe you if someone was trying to point you out in a group,

I know from friends who’ve emigrated from India that their children born in the US can’t hold dual American/Indian citizenship. Calling them Indian is therefore technically inaccurate, it really is complicated!😂

Most people who identify as Italian Americans, German Americans are likely blends of various European heritages as well, like my DH. They choose to identify with one nationality more than the others. It’s such a melting pot here.

It has taken a while as an immigrant to the USA to realize that Asian here doesn't mean what it does in the UK.
The default settings of Asian without any further identifiers are completely different groups of people.

If referring to someone without malice by their skin colour is racist, then approaching 100% of humans are racist, and I feel I can no longer condemn racists with opprobrium. Racist just becomes a synonym for human.

@geesearego

It has taken a while as an immigrant to the USA to realize that Asian here doesn't mean what it does in the UK. The default settings of Asian without any further identifiers are completely different groups of people.

@geesearego. I remember someone telling me at a conference that he was Irish. I asked where he was from in Ireland…then I discovered that he was talking about his heritage, I think his great grandparents had emigrated from Ireland to the US!

I've had several conversations were I've been told "we are all Irish on Paddy's day"
What, no. I like the Irish fine but I'm definitely still Scottish.
@Cameleongirl

Americans like a range of heritages but seem to be particularly fond of clinging to Irish ones.

OP you as an individual of course get to be treated as such and can assert that in interpersonal situations but you as an individual are also in this thread using "we" as though you are part of a group of people. What would your group be comfortable with? Are you certain you speak for the whole of this group? What is this group? The problem with using any "catch all" term is that it is vague and doesn't suit everyone. It's all very well you saying black isn't appropriate but some people within that group that you choose to decide you are in have disagreed with you. Just as I know some people are more fine with being called white than others. But plenty of people will tick other or prefer not to say. If presented with an option. General terms take a very long time to be overthrown, as is clear during the half hearted efforts made by the media and schools for black history.

A descriptive word is not racist unless you attach a value judgment to it.

And pretending race doesn’t exist is very unhelpful. For example different races have different medical needs/are more at risk of different conditions which it’s important to be aware of.

I don’t think the Op can speak for everyone, she is entitled to want to be called whatever she wants to be called but she does not get to decide that for everyone.

Not read the thread -too long. But do you refer to white people as white? As we are more of a beige/pink.

@jcyclops

If referring to someone without malice by their skin colour is racist, then approaching 100% of humans are racist, and I feel I can no longer condemn racists with opprobrium. Racist just becomes a synonym for human.

🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

I think you are confusing nouns and adjectives. I don't see what's wrong with using non-offensive, objective adjectives to describe someone?

@Obecalp

so black and brown people.

To be fair, I have seen that online with US dwellers. You don't really hear it in the UK like that

It's very new, even in the US. It seems to come out of the same thinking as the term BIPOC, the idea being that you can look at all non-white people as a unit, in contrast to "whiteness".

@PlanDeRaccordement

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.

I think the reason scientists say race doesn't exist is just what you've said - there is a spectrum and mix of traits that cluster in various ways, but you can't actually draw any real lines.

Race is predicated on the lines and the lines are arbitrary.(Which is why races can be defined quite differently over time, or depending on where you live.) There is more variation within any racial froup than between them.

The idea in extinguishing the idea of race is precisely about making people realize the lines are arbitrary and that we are all interconnected and overlapping. Which makes racism absurd, and in fact if there is no concept of race, you can't have racism as such. For many years this was the most dominant approach to anti-racism. While recognizing that racial conceptualizations had a real impact the ultimate goal was to deconstruct them.

This has been increasingly supplanted, at least among activists, by a model that, although it recognizes the scientific element which says race isn't a thing, it essentializes the cultural element of race. Which comes to the same thing in the end, essentization of race. Supposedly as a way to fight racism but I think it's no surprise it's generally resulted in people becoming more entrenched in racial differences and separation.

@SrownBkinGirl

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

From what OP said in response to your comment before, I'm going to add to it.

There was a time Chinese/East Asian people were called Yellow. There was a time Native Americans were called Red. These are now slurs because they resisted and instead they're called by their ancestry Asian/Chinese/East Asian, etc and Native American.

What OP and some people are beginning to say is time to stop calling us Black (like Yellow and Red) too and call us by our ancestry (African, Caribbean, American, etc just like Asian, etc).

You've conflated ancestry with race. Whose ancestry is Black? Where is Black country or continent on the map? What if they stop calling you Asian and start saying Yellow? Why is that wrong but you're speaking up for others to be called Black?

Except actually the OP seems to be pretty much in left field. Most people who are black don't particularly agree.

There does need to be some standard language that people can use and feel comfortable with. We don't and can't know what each person in the country would prefer if they could set that standard, and it's silly to pretend that's possible.

It's the same problem when you have some words that members of a group now say they do not like (and I mean here words that are not directly meant to be offensive slurs,) while other members of the group say they are fine or even use them themselves (and no, I don't mean in some way reclaiming a slur, I mean in an everyday kind of way.)

It makes it impossible for people who are just trying to say the right thing, whatever it is now. What happens is they end up trying to avoid the conversation, the issue, and the people who might be offended. They may even start to think that the issue is not being presented in good faith.

That is not a good outcome.

OP, you are being ridiculous and also racist. Skin colour is no different to eye colour or hair colour. It should not be deemed offensive in the slightest to describe someone in this way.

@missbunnyrabbit you may think that but society doesn't, does it? We live in a racist world and need to change it.

While recognizing that racial conceptualizations had a real impact the ultimate goal was to deconstruct them

You cannot whimsically 'deconstruct' elements of reality to suit a rhetoric.

Some scientists believe race (or ethnicities) can be tracked down to genes, hence does exist , who are those who believe it doesn't?

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4170574/

Anyway, I'm not sure why the OP is focusing on children.

I teach mine to be respectful but to not engage and stay away from people who appear to be consistently oppositional, as a self-preservation strategy.

I don't mean to cause any offense but I completely disagree.

How on earth is it racist to acknowledge/refer to someone's skin colour in a none negative way?

That's like me saying you can't refer to me as white or a brunette as you are being racist about my hair and skin colour.. That's no prejudice in any way.. Just a statement.

I despise injustice and degradation of any description but this is just political correctness gone too far.

You really shouldn't call people racist unless there is a specific an fair reason as when you call people out for 'racism' where there is none, you take away the stigma from the real racists.

There nothing wrong with it I'm mixted race

It's not racist 😂

@geesearego

I've had several conversations were I've been told "we are all Irish on Paddy's day" What, no. I like the Irish fine but I'm definitely still Scottish. *@Cameleongirl*

Americans like a range of heritages but seem to be particularly fond of clinging to Irish ones.

i think that's more comment about the extent of the festivities and wish to join in, rather than anything about accurate definition of ancestry. poetic metaphor re a well recognised experience.

In nursery my grandson would call his best friend brown, it was never done with malice but if you were with him and he saw his friend he'd say something like the brown boy's my best friend. I think in cases like this it's better as it's not built up into an issue it's just a description not an insult.