I asked my half black brother in law to explain to me the difference between “people of color” and “colored people” and why one is offensive. Because to me “people of color” is just a clunkier way of saying the same thing. He didn’t have an answer, he just said “it’s not up to you to decide what is and isn’t offensive.”
It puts “people” first. It doesn’t define the way “colored people” does - it makes it a trait of the person, not the person.
Hope this helps.
It’s a semantic gymnastics game, apparently describing people in a way one would in straight word for word translations from Romance languages is nicer than the good old way we do in Germanic languages.
But then why wouldn’t you say “a person of gayness” instead of a gay person. Or a person of whiteness instead of white person. Feels like wokeness, not semantics.
I asked my half black brother in law to explain to me the difference between “people of color” and “colored people” and why one is offensive. Because to me “people of color” is just a clunkier way of saying the same thing. He didn’t have an answer, he just said “it’s not up to you to decide what is and isn’t offensive.”
It puts “people” first. It doesn’t define the way “colored people” does - it makes it a trait of the person, not the person.
Hope this helps.
It’s a semantic gymnastics game, apparently describing people in a way one would in straight word for word translations from Romance languages is nicer than the good old way we do in Germanic languages.
But then why wouldn’t you say “a person of gayness” instead of a gay person. Or a person of whiteness instead of white person. Feels like wokeness, not semantics.
Citizens of Lesbos