Completely unsure of what category this should come under, so apologies!
What do you call people who are not white, but you don’t know what ethnicity they are?
For instance, describing a stranger. You could say ‘black’ but to me that implies very dark skin, not slightly less dark ie lighter than Indian/Pakistani etc...
I don’t want to be offensive and now that ‘coloured’ is considered racist, I’m a bit stuck. My manager at work recently informed us that we should use ‘black’ as a catch all phrase. To me this is innaccurate and confusing. My friend is Pakistani, and that’s how I would describe him, but only because I know he is from Pakistan, which I couldn’t know just by looking. I could have easily made the mistake of thinking he is Indian or Arabic, so I guess I would have to call anyone who has his skin colour ‘asian’, even though to me that makes me think of Chinese/Japanese.
What is the appropriate term now? ‘Mixed parentage ‘ and ‘dual heritage’ don’t exaxtly roll of the tongue and I imagine using those terms would get me a few odd looks. The only thing I can think to say are ‘not white’ and ‘dark/darker skinned’