Talk:Person of color

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[edit] Coloured people

I'm probably coming at this from a position of huge ignorance, but what is wrong with the term coloured poeple, which I gather has fallen out of favour. "People of colour" just sounds so clunky. As the two terms mean the same thing, why has one been replaced with the other? 86.136.31.176 (talk) 08:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

This phrase is inherently somewhat ridiculous, implying as it does that the alternative is "people of no colour", i.e. transparent or invisible people. What is really meant is presumably "people of colours other than white (which is a clumsy alternative to "non-white people"). However that precise phrase highlights the discriminatory as well as the evasive nature of the phrase "people of colour".

The cause against racism would be surely be better served by omitting reference to colour at all, excepts where it is important. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.8.118 (talk) 14:52, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you understand the point of a talk page; this isn't a form for discussing the topic generally. Please see WP:Talk page:

Article talk pages are provided for discussion of the content of articles and the views of reliable published sources. Talk pages are useful such that they may contain information that is not on the article, but such information is often unverified and thus unreliable. Talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views.

-- Irn (talk) 15:23, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

No-one's answered my question, which has relevance to the article, as African Americans used to describe themselves as 'colored' (I think there's an Association for the Advancement of Colored People or some such) and there should be a reference to this and the reasons for the change of use of 'coloured' to 'persons of colour' in the article. 86.136.31.176 (talk) 17:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

First, as the article states, people of color does not only refer to African Americans, and, thus, is not the equivalent of colored. Also, coloured is different from colored in that coloured is still used in South Africa to refer to people of mixed European and African ancestry. As for the relationship between the three terms, I don't know the history (or that people of color necessarily derives from colored, although it makes sense that it does), but if you can find a reliable source, by all means include it.--Irn (talk) 23:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC)