Colored People vs. People of Color?

[Boss]

Okay... I need for one of you brilliantly genius liberals to explain to me what the difference is between the term "colored people" and "people of color"?

From MY perspective, it appears to be exactly the same thing. But I know that you people are much smarter than the rest of society, so I am confident some of you can step up to the plate and explain how one is acceptable while the other is racist.

....GO!

 

[SassyIrishLass]

Same thing...judge on character ....not color

 

[yiostheoy]

They are not colored people.

They are not people of color.

They are Negroes.

 

[Boss]

They are not colored people.

They are not people of color.

They are Negroes.

Well, I usually say black or blacks. Sometimes I will say "ethnic" or "minority."

I don't use "negro" because it's too close to the N-word for me.

My grandmother, who grew up in a different era, often used the term "nigrah" but she didn't have a racist bone in her body, she loved everyone. This was just what old southern people used to call them (other than the N-word).

Now, a little backstory on her.... Way back in 1929, when we went through the crippling Great Depression, she was a "single mom" raising 7 children... her husband (my grandfather) had passed away. There was very little in the way of social welfare programs at the time, people just had to figure shit out. She raised her kids on pennies a day from picking cotton on a black sharecropper's farm. She worked right alongside he and his sons, most of the time with a few of her older kids. Her humble little shack house was on the other side of the field from the sharecropper's home. Once they had finished a long hot day in the field, they would all come to her house and she would fix a pot of beans and cornbread and everyone ate together. She never once thought anything about them being black and her being white... they were just people to her.

I know about this story because back in the early 70s, a cousin of mine had gotten into a fight at school with a black boy. He was at granny's house one day, talking about "them damn ni**ers at school!" She scolded him and told him... (only time I ever heard her use the N-word).... "If it weren't for those damn ni**ers, you wouldn't be here because your father would've starved to death!" That story has always stuck with me since I was young.

Later, I discovered, through Ancestry.com, some of my ancestors are Creole. So we have some black blood in us. We also have some Asian, Cherokee and Choctaw, as well as "Black Dutch" which is actually German peasant. I'm pretty much a mixture of races and it amuses me when someone calls me a racist because I wonder who they think I'm supposed to be racist against. I've always admired Dr. King and his message about judging content of character instead of color of skin. My mom actually had the privilege to march with Dr. King in Selma and my uncle was chief of police there for about a decade.

It disappoints me that Obama has so divided this country racially. It seems as though we have gone back 50 years in time and it's not the fault of white people... or even most black people. It's the people who cannot stop obsessing with the color of skin. We can never resolve this until we stop looking at each other through the lens of race and start realizing we are all people.