Last year, freshman Arizona Republican Congresscritter Eli Crane referred, in passing, to Black people (should be "persons" but I'll get to that later) AND "colored people." (Also note, Black is capitalized, while colored isn’t.)
This prompted a "stern rebuke from the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus" according to NBC News, and Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), a Black woman, immediately (within seconds) called to have Crane's words stricken from the record for being "offensive and very inappropriate." Crane immediately (within seconds) went to amend his phrase to "people of color," but Beatty would have none of that, insisting the words as originally spoken be stricken. Crane later said he "misspoke."
Alas, the level of "misspeaking" by Congresscritters is notoriously embarrassing, as many simply lack basic skills in the use of English. For example, the plural of "person" is NOT "people," but is "persons," as in "Black persons," or "persons of color." But even here, the language has become enmeshed in an inaccurate and misleading thicket of poor choices that needs to be rectified, not just in Congress, but in society in general.
For all the umbrage and high dudgeon that Rep. Beatty harumphed, she didn't apparently hear that Crane spoke of Black people AND colored people, so he never specifically referred to HER, a Black person, or her Black colleagues, as "colored people."
(See Crane and Beatty haggle over words)
I guess when you are out to score woke "gotcha" points, it is normal to not hear what you wish to not hear. I wonder if this same umbrage ever had her insisting that the NAACP — the National Association for the Advancement of COLORED PEOPLE — change their "offensive and very inappropriate" name!
Why "colored people" should be offensive but "people of color" NOT offensive, makes zero sense. We routinely speak of tall people, smart people, or fat people (well, not as much these days, since "fat acceptance" became another woke line not to cross) but I can't recall anyone insisting we speak of "people of height," "people of smarts," or "people of fat."
And what does "OF color" even mean? Unless you are Claude Raines in "The Invisible Man," EVERY person in the world is "of" color, or, more accurately, HAS color. And NONE of the conventional "colors" applied to groups of persons, or "peoples," is really accurate... black, white, brown, yellow, red. Well, maybe brown, within certain ranges.
I recall a "black" street performer making this point. He asked for a black purse from the audience and put it next to his skin; clearly there was no way his skin was the same shade or darkness as the truly black purse. He then asked for a white object, and someone offered his white shirt. Again, he set it next to the lightest-skinned person in the crowd, and it was obvious that the person was in no way as white as the shirt. Even an albino would not be as white as the shirt, or snow, or Casper the Friendly Ghost.
Are AmerIndians (wish there were a better term) "redskins"? As in the color of tomatoes, or radishes, or the stripes on Old Glory? Hardly. I've had cases of sunburn that were closer to red than any Navaho I've ever seen.
Are Asians "yellow," as, say, mustard or cobs of corn? Hardly. Even with cases of jaundice, the skin is never a color that could be confused with a semi-ripe banana or Bart Simpson.
(Do we capitalize red, yellow, brown, or white, the same way Black is expected to be capitalized? What’s the deal with that?)
I've seen persons from southern India as dark or darker than some American Negroes. Australian aborigines can also be as dark or darker than some Negroids, though they were racially classed separately.
I recall when there was a big flap over "flesh-colored" crayons or bandages, as "flesh" meant some form of pinkish tan, whereas the actual skin "flesh" of many persons was much darker, and so, rightly, the term "flesh" had to be dropped as a color altogether. So bandages had to be produced in various shades, and dolls had to come in various shades, to reflect the actual range of skin colors that exist.
When actors and comics wore "blackface," they actually used a color from burnt cork that WAS nearly black, blacker than any actual "black" person. Even famed Negro comic Bert Williams was forced to wear blackface in the early 20th century, in order to exaggerate and over-emphasize the difference of skin color between Negroids and Caucasians (Two obsolete and misleading terms, along with Mongoloids, that deserve to be shelved).
And why should some terms be capitalized and some not? Or why should some terms involve generational origin, such as "African-American" strictly to reference Negroes? There must be Americans whose ancestors came from South Africa or Morocco, who are hardly Negroid, or as dark as someone with Nigerian roots.
Since brown, as a color, includes a vast range from a light tannish coral to a dark roasted coffee color (or, to Crayola fans, "burnt umber") one could say that most of the Earth's population is some level of "brown-ish."
Someone got the notion that lighter skin was "better" than darker, and used some arbitrary object — a manila envelope or folder, or paper bag — as the demarcation line dividing acceptable from not:
"A variety of specific cutoff tests for skin color emerged, the most famous one was the brown paper bag test.[Yes, persons were really compared to paper bag color!] If people's skins were darker than the color of a brown paper bag, they were considered "too dark." While the origin of this test is unclear, it is best attested to in 20th-century Black culture. During the time when African Americans were forced into slavery, slave owners would use the "paper bag test," which compared their skin color to a paper bag to distinguish whether their complexion was too dark to work inside of the house."
Similar "tests" were used by colonial officials in Asian countries from the 19th century onward; this was mocked even recently in an episode from "Family Guy":
(Peter Griffin imagining himself graded by a color chart)
So, I suggest we drop specific colors that are not realistic, stop capitalizing some colors but not others, reject geographical or racial terms that are meaningless, and forego any cultural terms that tend to discriminate based on irrational prejudices.
Here is one solution that fixes the above flaws in one fell swoop:
The color of one's skin is a factor of MELANIN, (/ˈmɛlənɪn/ from Ancient Greek μέλας (mélas) 'black, dark') a natural substance, a complex polymer derived from the amino acid tyrosine that is present in the skin to varying degrees. Melanin pigments are produced in a specialized group of cells known as melanocytes, formed through the oxidation and polymerization of phenolic compounds, and each person has a different amount of melanin in the skin. Without melanin, the skin would be pale with shades of pink caused by blood flow through the skin. Though sun exposure can increase melanin production to protect the skin against UV rays to some extent ("tanning"), the normal amount of melanin is genetically-based, depending on how much a group population has been exposed to the sun historically, over time.
Thus, all this "colored people/people of color" nonsense is, or SHOULD be, irrelevant to any consideration of a person's inherent worth, character, intelligence, morality, competence, etc., much as Rep. Crane's original purpose — an amendment to the annual defense spending authorization bill that he said would prevent the consideration of "race, gender, religion, or political affiliations, or any other ideological concepts as the sole basis for recruitment, training education, promotion, or retention decisions." — was to take "woke" agenda DEI culture-war obsessiveness out of questions of national security and merit.
One way to do this is to use neutral, scientific-based language with no particular historical baggage that could trigger knee-jerk reactions like that of Rep. Beatty, or could be used to perpetuate either victimizing or victimhood.
I propose three new uncapitalized terms that disregard race per se, geography, or absurd color comparisons, based on the relative level of MELANIN one normally has, independent of tan from sun exposure:
himela, memela, lomela
That is, HIGH melanin, MEDIUM melanin, or LOW melanin.
I'm sure that, as with the "paper bag test," scientists can come up with super-accurate ways to determine, precisely, the density per square inch of skin tone that would put one in a particular category.
But, more importantly, since all that these terms do is measure a degree of one's pigment polymer density, it has no more meaning than the color of one's eyes or hair, or one's height or age, on a driver's license; it may help identify one more accurately in a ID check, but that's about it.
Sure, members of one so-called "race" may likely end up more in one of the three than in the other two, but not necessarily. A so-called "black" African-American Negro may be memela, while a "white" Dravidian from India may be himela. Gary Busey will still be lomela. Michael Jackson presents a problem, but, being deceased, not much of one.
Since this takes all history, geography, or so-called race out of the equation, the notions of master races, victimhood, etc. vanish, and it removes skin color as a way to discriminate, positively or negatively. And, one can hope, terms like "colored people (or persons)" AND "people (or persons) of color" can rightly join other obsolete terms in that great dustbin of history.