strugglingtobeheard:

“Person of color” = someone discriminated against for their race/ethnicity on a systematic level by the white majority

miswritten:

zuky:

rosaflora:

(Inspired by the commentary on this post)

For the purposes of anti-racism struggles, that’s all you need to go by.

Yes, the term, “colored” is not normally associated with Asian people these days, but it was definitely used to label people of Asian descent in this country in the past. We have been and still are the targets of White racism:

Believing the fallacy that people of Asian descent are not authentically or legitimately ‘Colored’ or ‘People of Color’ is wrong because:

1) It ignores the long history of racial discrimination and persecution of Asians in the U.S. (e.g. the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the Japanese-American internment during WWII, explicit campaigns to drive Asians out of the American West, the lynching of Asian Americans. (Which is something that is not commonly known due to the fact that many Asian and Mexican victims of mob violence in the 19th c. were classified as ‘White’ in official records*)

2) It ignores the history of White European imperialism in Asian countries, which intersects with White racism against Asian immigrants in White-majority countries. I assure you that White imperialists certainly did not view Indians, Chinese, or Vietnamese as being anything other than ‘Colored’

Imperial map of Asia, source of map

White European man receiving a pedicure from South Asian servants

3) It plays into the White racist divide-and-conquer strategy.

Even a brief look at the history of race/ethnicity in U.S. law alone makes it apparent that a key aspect of White racism has been the classification of non-Whites according to (white-defined) categories.

Those hailing from Asia (as well as the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America) have been legally categorized in a myriad of ways—very occasionally as White, but more often as non-White (e.g. Ozawa v. United States, United States v. Thind). In general, Asians have occupied a strange ethno-racial limbo as ‘Other’ (e.g. the Census prior to 1870). As far as Whites were concerned, Asians might not have been ‘Negros’, but we certainly weren’t White either. Our otherness made us targets for discrimination and violence, and—because our right to citizenship has constantly come under attack—we’ve historically had as little recourse to the protection of the law as African Americans have.

Massacre of the Chinese at White Springs, Wyoming (source)

Yes, Asian people have (somewhat more recently than you think) enjoyed certain perks due to our ethnicity/race compared to Black and AmerIndian people (e.g. ‘the model minority’). But that’s just a more recent aspect of the divide-and-conquer strategy, which the White hegemony has used to pit minorities against each other so as to distract us from the real problems facing our communities.

And yes, some Asian people are complete racist dicks to those who aren’t Asian or White, but that’s internalized White racism. If you’ve been kicked and beaten by your master for years, then suddenly given a few scraps from his table, would you throw them in his face? Or is it more likely that—as beaten down as you are—you’d give in to Stockholm Syndrome and play along? (To be clear: that’s an explanation for Asian racism, not an excuse.)

Even so, incidents of Anti-Asian bias (e.g. Vincent Chin, Wen Ho Lee) and straight-up racist violence occur frequently enough these days that Asians are hyper-aware of the fact that many—including non-whites—don’t view us as Americans, let alone ‘Colored’. We’re simply foreign ‘others’.

So if White is grudgingly treating you OK, while Black and Brown seem to hate and distrust you, then whom do you ally yourself with? More importantly, who benefits from this apparent alliance?

In the American black-white paradigm of race relations, ‘others’ like Asians get shit on no matter which side we’re on. So the Asian internalization of White racism makes a twisted kind of sense as a survival strategy, particularly if your natural allies (other victims of White racism) are treating you like foreigners and even equating you with the oppressor himself. 

My point: Asians’ conflicted, sometimes tense, relations with African Americans and those who have been historically, categorically considered ‘Colored’ is an artifact of White racism. This means that if you exclude Asians from ‘Colored’ solidarity against White racism, you are reproducing a highly successful strategy of White racism.

Let that sink in for a minute.

To conclude: Anti-Asian exclusion from POC solidarity movements is ignorant, wrong, and just plain stupid. Asians’s current role as a prop of White racial supremacy is not our doing, just as our historic role as the foreign ‘Other’ is not our doing. The peculiar place of Asians in race relations today has been the result of the intersection of White racism, xenophobia, and imperialism. It is a mistake to think otherwise.  

TL;DR: Questioning the identity of Asians as “people of color” reinforces White racial supremacy.

ETA: There appears to be an uptick in hostility against Asians in these recent hard times. Last time there were major layoffs and bumps in the US economy, Vincent Chin got beaten to death. Unfortunately, I’m waiting for similar news to emerge from the current downturn. Even in so-called social justice circles, resentment of Asians under the umbrella of the model minority myth is often palpable. And this often comes from US Americans who have apparently shrugged off their own country’s racist invasions of the Philippines, Samoa, Hawaii, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, the atomic bombs on Japan, the ongoing US military presence in Okinawa and the Korean peninsula, the ongoing occupation of Hawaii and Samoa. Two million Asians killed by US forces in Indochina and they think we don’t know oppression. It’s pretty amazing to hear people talk about how good Asians have it or how racist Asians are against this backdrop.

i have conflicted feelings about the original post/analysis, and disagree on multiple points… i can’t really pinpoint what makes me uncomfortable yet, but i guess it feels simultaneously like an explanation and a rationalization for the oppressive things asians do to other people of color in the US.  and one point of contention is (what seems to be) the underlying tone that “asians aren’t seen as valid americans and that’s the problem.” 

of course, that might just be me projecting on OP, though, just because so much of asian american activism/analysis tends to rely on the problem of “we get shit on because we aren’t seen as american,” and the solution is often “therefore we need to be seen as true americans and not seen as “asian-” americans.  which is a shitfest of a conclusion to come to, because the oppression of native and black people is inherent in the creation and perpetuation of the US. 

i agree that white colonialism, imperialism, and racism have broken us in different ways that make it really damn hard to build anything as different colonized and decolonizing peoples. 

and mostly i just reblogged for zuky’s commentary.  mulling over it all…

(Source: downlo)

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

guerrillamamamedicine:

Creatrix Tiara: “Person of color” = someone discriminated against for their race/ethnicity on a systematic level by the white majority

downlo:

(Inspired by the commentary on this post)

For the purposes of anti-racism struggles, that’s all you need to go by.

Yes, the term, “colored” is not normally associated with Asian people these days, but it was definitely used to label people of Asian descent in this country in the…

while i am really interested in the history of asians and asian-americans, especially the history of resistance to colonization, i find this post to be problematic. 

especially this analysis:

So if White is grudgingly treating you OK, while Black and Brown seem to hate and distrust you, then whom do you ally yourself with? More importantly, who benefits from this apparent alliance?

In the American black-white paradigm of race relations, ‘others’ like Asians get shit on no matter which side we’re on. So the Asian internalization of White racism makes a twisted kind of sense as a survival strategy, particularly if your natural allies (other victims of White racism) are treating you like foreigners and even equating you with the oppressor himself. 

My point: Asians’ conflicted, sometimes tense, relations with African Americans and those who have been historically, categorically considered ‘Colored’ is an artifact of White racism. This means that if you exclude Asians from ‘Colored’ solidarity against White racism, you are reproducing a highly successful strategy of White racism.

my response to this is from here:  nopper

and here is an excerpt that i think complicates your analysis…

Contrary to the popular image of blacks as racially restrictive, Yancey discovers that black respondents are the most open to all other races.  Yet despite being the most receptive to other groups, blacks in general are rejected by all nonblack groups – whites, Latino/as and Asian Americans.  While some assume that whites will be closed off to anyone not white, Yancey’s research show that white respondents are more accepting of Latino/as and Asian Americans than they are of blacks.  In turn, Latino/a and Asian American respondents are fairly receptive to one another as well as whites.  Overall, Yancey’s findings reveal that whites, Latino/as and Asian Americans do not tend to reject one another as possible neighbors or their kids’ spouses, but all three groups show a general resistance to blacks in these social roles. 

That all three nonblack groups were found to be more accepting of one another in a way that they were not of blacks suggests that assimilation may be less about desiring whiteness as it is avoiding blackness. Yancey concludes, “The rejection of African Americans, rather than the acceptance of European Americans, is the best explanation of social distance in the United States.”

so while i realize that you were responding to a specific post in which it was questioned whether or not asians are considered people of color.  (which may have simply been a question of whether or not asians consider themselves to be people of color) the research shows that it is not, in general, blacks rejecting asians as it is asians engaging in anti-blackness. 

“Previous research on majority group domination tends to be built upon either the concept that white supremacy is, or was, the dominant ideology among majority group members, or the concept that dominant group members utilize notions of color blindness to protect their racial position of privilege.  Both concepts lead to an understanding of an American racial hierarchy formed by a white/nonwhite dichotomy.  In such a system all non-European groups face social rejection and theoretically all non-European groups deserve an equal amount of academic attention – even if they have not been receiving it.  Yet given the merging of nonblack racial minorities into the dominant culture, this white/nonwhite dichotomy is losing relevance.  A black/nonblack dichotomy produces more understanding about contemporary race relations.  It suggests that the informal rejection of African Americans, rather than a tendency by the majority to oppress all minority groups in a roughly equal manner, is the linchpin to the American contemporary racial hierarchy.”

so yeah, i dont think that blacks and asians are ‘natural allies’.

on a personal note, the only racialized people in the states, that i have talked to who strongly reject being called a poc, were asians/asian americans.  i used to do a lot of anti racism trainings, so ive had this convo an above average amount of times. 

with love. 

Non-black people, the bold is for you. Please read it.