Forum - View topicThe List - 6 Awesome People of Color in Anime
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SailorTralfamadore
 Posts: 499 Location: Keep Austin Weeb |
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"Colored" as a term has a legacy of racist baggage (at least, in the United States, with its use in Jim Crow laws) that "people of color" does not. You can't approach sensitive issues like racism in a beep-boop well-this-word-kinda-sounds-like-another-word manner. These issues are almost always ruled by emotion and context, not "logic." As it stands, one of those phrases has emotions associated with it that the other one does not.
I'm kind of iffy about the title/subject of this, but more because I don't think you can really apply what we think of as "people of color" in the United States to a completely different country and culture with its own, distinct legacy of racism and who is oppressed/privileged. Technically all ethnic-Japanese people would be "POC" in the U.S., but that doesn't mean they're oppressed there--and it certainly doesn't mean they conceive of race in the same way we do. And how each culture envisions "color" vs. "white" is different. As someone of Polish and Italian descent, I wouldn't be considered "white" in a lot of northern Europe (or in the U.S. 100 years ago), for instance, but I absolutely am white and benefit from white privilege in the U.S. today. And a lot of anime characters who might read as "white" to us are not to Japanese viewers. But that's more about the application of the term. The term itself is not racist. |
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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Wow, I am amazed there was that much debate over the term "people of color." That term is like the MOST neutral, unoffensive term that people have come up with to describe ethnic minorities in Caucasian-majority countries (specifically the U.S.). I think this was a proxy debate though. The guy constantly chiming in to complain about the term left little clues in his posts about his real agenda - he is raging about the idea of even highlighting ethnic minorities in any way because he thinks any such discussion is a zero-sum game. To him, any positive discussion about ethnic minorities is like literally taking something away from a Caucasian guy somewhere. It is a common mentality among those who strenuously object to any discussion about race/ethnicity.
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I'll say this much: I am a person of color and I do not mind even one little bit about being called as such.
In an ideal, perfect world, no one would care what anyone else's skin color or country of origin is when they judge people, but they do. People, by their very nature, make assumptions about people they see all the time. Wearing glasses makes a person look less threatening. Tall people look imposing and authoritative. A man who talks with a lisp creates thoughts of homosexuality among strangers he speaks to. The color of one's skin and other physical markers of geographical lineage create similar assumptions--one can ignore them (albeit one must be aware of them in the first place), but the thoughts will still be there. Thus, while it would be great to act as though racism does not exist, it does, and I believe it's naïve to pretend otherwise. |
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