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Skepticality RETURNS!
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ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact Aside from putting on a united front in the lead up to the Super Saturday by-elections later this month, Malcolm Turnbull has hit back at Tony Abbott the only way he can – by getting Jesus involved. Earlier today, the Prime Minister called on the pope to sack disgraced Adelaide archbishop Philip Wilson after […]
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- jeriorlizorart ha dicho:People say the use of “PoC” is problematic but no one has ever said why
The term “PoC” isn’t completely problematic itself. It’s just used in really problematic ways.
It’s a catch-all solidarity term that denotes “people who aren’t white.” It’s a term used in solidarity because it’s supposed to be used when people who aren’t white share a common struggle due to whiteness.
It’s very important to know that “PoC” is a term that applies to a specific group of people (people who are not white in the USA) at a specific time in history (modern times, in this day). The racial dynamic of modern USA is the reason why the term was borne. This term would not have made as much sense in use even 100 years ago, and perhaps in 100 years it will not make sense to use it. Additionally, the racial stratification of the USA is such that the term “people of color” correctly describes those races that are oppressed by whiteness in the USA. This term may not be the best term to use in countries with even similar racial stratification, simply because the racial history is different and the racial plight of the respective racially oppressed people in that country need to be defined in different ways.
The term becomes problematic when people use “PoC” as a vague catch-all for a racial problem that happens to a specific group of people. For example, it isn’t “men of color” who are being funneled into the prison system nationwide—that is largely a problem for black and latino men. In general, different races of people face different racial problems that all need to be eliminated. Many people use “PoC,” however, as if all people of color face the same racial problems.
For example, when Kshama Sawant, an American woman of Indian descent, won a seat on Seattle, Washington’s City Council, many people praised her and celebrated her as making gains for “women of color” everywhere. However, Kshama’s struggle to win the seat likely doesn’t reflect the same struggle that a black, latino, or Asian woman of some other descent may face when trying to win a seat on Seattle’s City Council, especially with the model minority myth that permeates the white-controlled politics of Seattle. It isn’t fair to paint her win as a win for women of color everywhere. It also isn’t fair to other American women of Indian descent to water down the gains of their role models.
In the case of medievalpoc, PoC is used problematically because it generalizes the struggle of people who are not white in the USA by including people from almost a millennium ago when racial stratification as we know it (in the USA) did not even exist. It’s dangerous to apply the term like that because it creates a false narrative of the past—that there was whiteness and that people were divided by race—that can overwrite the real past and keeps people from exploring our history critically. Many people don’t know that the concept of race is only centuries old, which is a lot of time but barely a dent in the whole history of humanity. When we apply “PoC” to the past, people begin to see the past in terms of whiteness vs. PoC as it is in modern day USA, and that’s just not how the past was.
It’s important for us to know that it wasn’t always like this, that people of specific races were not always seen or treated as lesser than, that this white supremacist narrative isn’t right. Applying PoC to the past works against that argument.
Since this post is presumably addressed to me, since it’s in my tag and you seem to think my use of this term is problematic, let’s go ahead and discuss it.
1. You’re mistaken on several points about the term’s origin and use.
You say, “This term would not have made as much sense in use even 100 years ago”
The term "Free People of Color" has been in use in the United States since the dawn of the nation, and even before. Well over a hundred years ago. The series I did on Agostino Brunias goes into this term and the people it described, not only in its historical context, but in how we view those same people now, and the relationship between those people and people living in the United States today.
2. You say that my use of the term “People of Color” is problematic because it implies that there were racial divisions in the past that are comparable to the ones we have today.
In fact, one of the topics I probably talk about the most is that the racial categories we have today did not exist then, and how this translates into how we view that artworks that I post.
I have posted articles that specifically address the invention of whiteness, and have discussed at length how white supremacy is a relatively recent invention in human history, as well as its roots in pseudoscience and scientific racism. I also discuss in depth how academic racism affects how we view these works and the way it shapes how we interpret them.
3. I’m going to quote your last paragraph here:
It’s important for us to know that it wasn’t always like this, that people of specific races were not always seen or treated as lesser than, that this white supremacist narrative isn’t right. Applying PoC to the past works against that argument.
It’s the last sentence that I think is counterintuitive.
Now, the fact that you’re conflating “generalization” with “solidarity” is actually really understandable, because of the way that it is used to erase or homogenize struggles that are particular to Black, Latin@, Asian, or Middle Eastern people, for example.
Here, Loretta Ross explains the origin of the phrase “Women of Color”, and as you can see, Black Women started the action, and other women who were Asian, or Latina, et cet, wanted to have their voices included. The problems happen when it doesn’t work the other way around, and you begin to see something I’ll call “selective solidarity”, in which all too often, Black women’s voices are silenced and marginalized even in spaces that purport to be safe for women of color. I know, I’ve seen it happen in front of me countless times. This is an absolutely legitimate and important concern, which is why I’ve addressed it in regard to myself as the blogger behind the blog.
You’ve offered a pretty nuanced view and detailed explanation. I really felt like your points can and should be addressed, and can even be discussed further and in greater detail than already have been. But to include a summary of why I think People of Color is the proper term to be used in regard to the work I’m doing here, let me say this.
Colorblind Racism is a form of racism.
Pretending to adhere to the same “Raceless” perspective as we believe those who created the works we view on medievalpoc would be a disingenuous exercise in both futility, and fostering the same illusions that so many people use to protect racist systems that affect us today.
That is precisely why the title “medievalpoc” a.k.a. Medieval People of Color is the perfect name for my blog, site, and project. In our culture, Medievalism is perceived as synonymous with both “European” and “White”, and it’s my very specific goal to explore the relationships between those three concepts, and bring them into perspective with their function in modern society at the forefront.
It’s jarring for people to see those two concepts together, and that moment of discomfort is the first step to making people think about why.
Why do we know what we know? Where did we learn it? How are we, as Americans, taught about European culture, history, and the past? Who “owns” History, and who “owns” the truth about it? Where do we fit in?
Once again, my use of the term has led to an incredibly productive and nuanced discussion of how our society works, how we are affected by the language we use to describe ourselves and others, WHO is included, who SHOULD be included, and dammit, it gets people to talk about it.
That is the opposite of silence and erasure. Discomfort is the necessary first step in questioning and changing.
You say above:
It’s dangerous to apply the term like that because it creates a false narrative of the past—that there was whiteness and that people were divided by race—that can overwrite the real past and keeps people from exploring our history critically.
The whole point of my blog is NOT that there was racism then.
It’s that the racism that exists NOW affects how we view the past. It explores the invention of race and racism, and how ideas of beauty, aesthetics, and VALUE changed drastically during an era in which White profit was contingent on genocide and enslavement of people who became, by necessity to assuage any possible guilt, “less than human”. Ugly. Undesirable. Less-Than.
It’s all well and good to pretend that we can somehow inhabit the spirit of a pre-racism age, and view these images with eyes wiped clean of hundreds of years’ worth of horrors, bloodshed, dehumanization, and utterly unaffected by the stereotypes we are fed every single day by popular media.
I *could* do that.
But I’d much rather people question WHY almost every single image of the Black Magus, Balthazar, from hundreds, perhaps thousands of European15th and 16th Century Adoration of the Magi paintings, have at least one person commenting like so:
THESE WORKS DO NOT EXIST IN A VACUUM.
EVERYONE VIEWING THESE WORKS RIGHT NOW HAS A BELLYFUL OF ASSUMPTIONS, STEREOTYPES, AND ASSOCIATIONS THEY ARE GOING TO BE MAKING ABOUT THE ART THEY SEE.
Now, we could IGNORE THAT.
We could just pretend we live in a world where we can dismiss this and say, “oh, well the ARTIST did not mean to depict this Black man as a “pimp” out of a 70’s Blaxsploitation film, so we can just pretend like no one is thinking that”.
Or we can face it head-on. We can discuss it. We can say, “we can trace this stereotype back to its roots and make a conscious decision on how that affects the value we place on people of color”.
I do not plan to support the illusion that we can view these works with innocent eyes.