Read on Twitter
I came across this on Facebook, and BIPOC is inadequate. Catch-all terms are inherently inadequate because they are catch all terms. I think what we object to isn't so much the term itself as the assumption of shared experience. https://www.chatelaine.com/opinion/what-is-bipoc/?utm_medium=organic&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2nlrZ8BQKee6PlqhSTBcKmtyzp3EYFlQnR_cFlosvFp0z72SLyrjPfU7I#Echobox=1605213573
Some terms are going to be problematic, but none of them will be adequate. The piece suggests racialized as a better option and it really isn't. Using racialized to refer only to non white groups renders whiteness invisible. White people are also racialized.
Part of the problem is that these racial categories are so malleable and porous. They were originally conceived of as biologically distinct, and despite the best efforts of scientists there just isn't any biological basis for the social assumptions it made.
And whiteness is constantly evolving, adding new members to the club like some borg collective, except that this collective doesn't want to assimilate everyone. Certain groups will need to stay outside forever. So that makes whiteness as a category more complicated.
People who would have been "non white" 100 years ago are now considered white (Irish, Eastern European). Others, used to be considered white in the census and now aren't (southwest Asia, north Africa).
idk what would be a useful term to group non white people, because it is necessary to talk about people collectively. Neoliberalism atomizes us into small, essentially powerless groups of individuals + rejects the broader patterns that become visible through collective identities
I tend to use marginalized, those who are violently pushed to the margins, because it includes so many others who get grouped into whiteness and see none of the social power, or little enough of it. Within that ocean are many currents that come together and split apart.
We name oceans, Pacific, Atlantic .. but they are all connected and the water that is today in the Pacific may be in the Atlantic next year, or travel through clouds across the Rocky Mountains. Within the ocean are currents and still places, temperature variations.
It is helpful to think about the oceans in terms of geography and weather, but they aren't discrete containers of water.
Catch all terms are like that. Helpful to look at broad patterns, but they aren't discrete containers, and there's a lot of variation within them.
Catch all terms are like that. Helpful to look at broad patterns, but they aren't discrete containers, and there's a lot of variation within them.
