Rep. Eli Crane used the derogatory phrase in describing his proposed amendment to a military bill. Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty asked that his words be stricken from the record.
Rep. Eli Crane used the derogatory phrase in describing his proposed amendment to a military bill. Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty asked that his words be stricken from the record.
not a lot of difference between “colored people” and “people of color”
That’s like saying there’s not a lot of difference between saying “me beat” or “beat me.”
Simple words aside, there’s a big difference in meaning between the two.
no, that’s not the same thing. the difference between “colored people” and “people of color” is similar to the difference between “a red apple” and “an apple that is red”. In English, an adjective can be placed before a noun or after a noun, with the latter formatted with a preposition such as “of”.
Edit: not sure why i’m being downvoted here - do you all not speak English? If you give a comparison it should be apples to apples, not apples to pineapples.
Yeah, I’m really disappointed in this comment section right now. I had no idea this was something still up for debate.
People who are colored is the final meaning of both “colored people” and “people of color”.
Me beat isn’t a sentence and beat me is a request for either battery or sexual favors. It is in no way an apt comparison.
“People of color” wasn’t a term used in the Jim Crow South. They called them “colored people” to dehumanize them. The term “colored people” has a lot of hateful baggage, while the term “people of color” is them reclaiming the term, on their own terms.
The English language does not exist in a vacuum.
There’s a difference between “I helped my uncle, Jack, off his horse” and “I helped my uncle jack off his horse”. Retard used to just be a synonym for slow, but you won’t be bleeped if you call someone slow on national television. Things like context, usage, and history matter.
I think a better example is “I’m beat” vs “beats me”. Both actually mean something (“I’m tired/exhausted” vs “I don’t know”) and both mean completely different things, despite using the exact same words in a different configuration. And they mean different things because they’re used in different ways. Just because they use the same words that doesn’t mean they’re automatically the same. And even if they referred to roughly the same thing, again, how they’re used and in what context makes a big difference. One is historically used almost exclusively by racists in a derogatory manner, the other is the one the people being referred to have said they prefer between the two.
You may be right originally, however colored people mostly means “inferior people” or “people who shouldn’t have equal rights” since that was the usage of the term. People of color has only been used to refer to people neutrally, so it doesn’t have thar context.
N***r means black, so your exact same argument can be used to justify using that word, but we all agree it’s not ok, right? (I really hope there’s no argument about it.)