People of Color

Historical Contexts

Historically, people of color had been connected to people of African descent during the days of enslavement in the early-17th-century Americas. The categorization “free people of color” often referred to people with full or partial African descent who had not been enslaved during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In general, the free people of color living in the upper South of the United States (Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky) were more independent than those in the lower South, except for New Orleans. In the lower South (South Carolina, Georgia, and the Gulf states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas) free people of color tended to have closer ties to former White owners and usually lived under the protection and supervision of White guardians. Given the shared common experiences of exploitation and subordination by the White majority (removal and relocation of American Indians to reservations, military conquests of Spanish-held and Mexican territories, and ambivalent immigration policies toward Latinos, Japanese internment during World War II, and racist immigration policies toward Asians), the term people of color is used inclusively to describe all non-Whites or those of non-European decent who have been oppressed and not received the “white-skin” privileges bestowed by the hegemonic institutions of society.

Controversial Contexts

Some have come to believe that the use of the phrase people of color has created a standard pluralization of the ethnic diversity and racial diversity of people. The discussions around the many shifts of categorizations have been seen through the lens of racial segregation, discrimination, prejudice, and oppression. These societal-level phenomena continue to influence and shift language usage, especially categorical labeling of the other. An example of this influence was seen in the shift in usage from “negro” to “colored” to “black” (or later “Black”) to “Afro-American” to “African American,” all to identify the same ethnic group. Some people resist using the categorization of people of color and view its use as an act of political correctness or language policing.

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