"people of color"

[Ryusenshi]

What I found weird is that people of color is widely accepted while colored people is super-racist. I wouldn't even know how to translate them differently.

[Linguoboy]

What I found weird is that people of color is widely accepted while colored people is super-racist. I wouldn't even know how to translate them differently.

Off-topic (for the thread, though not for a languages group), but is it that different from a circumlocution like femme d'un certain âge?

[Travis B.]

What I found weird is that people of color is widely accepted while colored people is super-racist. I wouldn't even know how to translate them differently.

To be completely honest, that gets me too, and I'm a native English-speaker.

[Ryusenshi]

Off-topic (for the thread, though not for a languages group), but is it that different from a circumlocution like femme d'un certain âge?

I don't understand what you mean. For me, femme d'un certain âge barely feels like a euphemism any more: you're saying the person is old, plain and simple.

[Travis B.]

It should be noted, though, that certain usages of X people (e.g. those people) can have derogatory connotations in practice even if they are literally neutral.

[Linguoboy]

I thought everyone here was familiar with the euphemism hierarchy in English which goes roughly (from least to most polite) noun > adjective > adjective + noun > noun + qualifying phrase. For instance:

Jew > Jewish > Jewish person > person of Jewish heritage/persuasion/background/etc.

"Is he a Jew?"
"Is he Jewish?"
"Is he a Jewish person?"
"Is he a person of Jewish heritage?" "Does he have Jewish ancestry?" etc.

The first term is missing for "coloured", but otherwise we have:

0 > coloureds > coloured people > people of colour

[Raphael]

I thought everyone here was familiar with the euphemism hierarchy in English which goes roughly (from least to most polite) noun > adjective > adjective + noun > noun + qualifying phrase. For instance:

Jew > Jewish > Jewish person > person of Jewish heritage/persuasion/background/etc.

"Is he a Jew?"
"Is he Jewish?"
"Is he a Jewish person?"
"Is he a person of Jewish heritage?" "Does he have Jewish ancestry?" etc.

What, that exists in English, too? Here I thought that that particular example was a specialty of well-meaning but clueless German speakers.

[Ryusenshi]

I thought everyone here was familiar with the euphemism hierarchy in English which goes roughly (from least to most polite) noun > adjective > adjective + noun > noun + qualifying phrase.
[...]
The first term is missing for "coloured", but otherwise we have:

0 > coloureds > coloured people > people of colour

But the gap between the last two is too large to be explained by this general phenomenon. My impression is rather that colored people was replaced by something else, then by something else, and the euphemism treadmill went on, until it accidentally ended up on a phrase superficially similar to a previous one.

[linguistcat]

I thought everyone here was familiar with the euphemism hierarchy in English which goes roughly (from least to most polite) noun > adjective > adjective + noun > noun + qualifying phrase.
[...]
The first term is missing for "coloured", but otherwise we have:

0 > coloureds > coloured people > people of colour

But the gap between the last two is too large to be explained by this general phenomenon. My impression is rather that colored people was replaced by something else, then by something else, and the euphemism treadmill went on, until it accidentally ended up on a phrase superficially similar to a previous one.

I think we ALSO need to add in that, at least recently, acronyms are becoming the most accepted polite form (unless a specific person in question prefers a different term). POC is preferred even to the full phrase person/people of color; LGBT(+) is generally more polite than specific labels or queer (though I and many other do prefer queer as a self-identifier or even an umbrella term). I wonder if this is mostly online though since if you aren't part of the online communities, keeping up with preferred acronym usage must be a lot of work, and it can be even if you're someone as terminally online as I tend to be.

[Travis B.]

I had never heard of "POC" being more accepted than person of color myself, and rather took it is just an abbreviation of it for convenience's sake.

[Travis B.]

I thought everyone here was familiar with the euphemism hierarchy in English which goes roughly (from least to most polite) noun > adjective > adjective + noun > noun + qualifying phrase. For instance:

Jew > Jewish > Jewish person > person of Jewish heritage/persuasion/background/etc.

"Is he a Jew?"
"Is he Jewish?"
"Is he a Jewish person?"
"Is he a person of Jewish heritage?" "Does he have Jewish ancestry?" etc.

The first term is missing for "coloured", but otherwise we have:

0 > coloureds > coloured people > people of colour

I should note that from my experience referring to someone as Black is more polite than calling them a Black person, as the former simply states the fact that they are Black, while the latter reduces them to being a Black person, as if they were not anyone else than that.

[linguistcat]

I had never heard of "POC" being more accepted than person of color myself, and rather took it is just an abbreviation of it for convenience's sake.

Then maybe the preference itself is a terminally online one. I've even seen people posting, for example, that POC is not a replacement for black as it covers other ethnicities as well, and that if you want to specify a man or woman of color, it would be MOC and WOC as opposed to POC man or woman, etc etc. But I suppose offline it's just as easy or almost so to say the full phrase as any of the acronyms, with the advantage of being better understood.

[Linguoboy]

[Off-topic posts given their own thread in Ephemera, where they belong]

[Raholeun]

Jew > Jewish > Jewish person > person of Jewish heritage/persuasion/background/etc.

Would you say the following case is completely analogous to your case?

"Is he a Dane?"
"Is he Danish?"
"Is he a Danish person?"
"Is he a person of Danish heritage?" "Does he have Danish ancestry?" etc

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Jew > Jewish > Jewish person > person of Jewish heritage/persuasion/background/etc.

Would you say the following case is completely analogous to your case?

Not at all. Being Danish is not, to my knowledge at least, likely to put you in a marginalised group, consequently —

"Is he a Dane?"

This sounds rather odd or archaic.

"Is he Danish?"

This is how I would ordinarily ask.

"Is he a Danish person?"

This implies having first established that they were a person.

"Is he a person of Danish heritage?" "Does he have Danish ancestry?" etc

This would imply asking after some distant connection to Danish people rather than being an immigrant from Denmark (though Are they Danish? could also imply asking after ancestry rather than having at some point immigrated from Denmark).

[Travis B.]

In that case I would normally use "Is he Danish?" when asking if someone is from Denmark. I agree that "Is he a Dane" sounds somewhat dated. "Is he a Danish person" implies that someone could interpret "Is he Danish?" in a negative fashion, which seems odd given that being Danish, at least here in the US, is very unlikely to be taken negatively. and "Is he a person of Danish heritage?" and "Does he have Danish ancestry?" implies that one has Danish ancestors rather than being Danish oneself (if anything, it implies that one isn't Danish oneself).

[Raholeun]

At risk of being called oblivious, I do not see why "a person of Jewish heritage" is not analogous to "a person of Danish heritage". Why does only the latter imply the person is not actually Danish, but the first does imply Jewishness?

[bradrn]

At risk of being called oblivious, I do not see why "a person of Jewish heritage" is not analogous to "a person of Danish heritage". Why does only the latter imply the person is not actually Danish, but the first does imply Jewishness?

Jewishness is heriditary in a way that Danishness is not. Also, Judaism is a culture/religion (whichever term you prefer), whereas Danishness is simply a location. (Similarly compare ‘a person of Catholic heritage’ to ‘a person of Italian heritage’.)

[Travis B.]

At risk of being called oblivious, I do not see why "a person of Jewish heritage" is not analogous to "a person of Danish heritage". Why does only the latter imply the person is not actually Danish, but the first does imply Jewishness?

Jewishness is heriditary in a way that Danishness is not. Also, Judaism is a culture/religion (whichever term you prefer), whereas Danishness is simply a location. (Similarly compare ‘a person of Catholic heritage’ to ‘a person of Italian heritage’.)

Here in the US, being born of Danish parents in the US automatically moves one from being Danish to being a a person of Danish ancestry, whereas being a first generation American does not make one any less a Jew, as Jewishness is not tied to any given nation.

[bradrn]

At risk of being called oblivious, I do not see why "a person of Jewish heritage" is not analogous to "a person of Danish heritage". Why does only the latter imply the person is not actually Danish, but the first does imply Jewishness?

Jewishness is heriditary in a way that Danishness is not. Also, Judaism is a culture/religion (whichever term you prefer), whereas Danishness is simply a location. (Similarly compare ‘a person of Catholic heritage’ to ‘a person of Italian heritage’.)

Here in the US, being born of Danish parents in the US automatically moves one from being Danish to being a a person of Danish ancestry, whereas being a first generation American does not make one any less a Jew, as Jewishness is not tied to any given nation.

Same here; that’s the idea I was trying to get at.