comment: >
  
  i will not agree with your last statement.. regarding to a certain race hate another. 
  But I will agree with you on the first then affirmitive action does negatively impact asian americans despite they are a minority and considered poc as well by today's standard.
context: /u/padorUWU (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post.
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  Maybe just a semantic point here, but generally, when a term has a suffix or prefix, it denotes that that variation is the special one.
  "Person of color" rather, would imply that "person" refers to a default, and if you're applying that to race, would be referring to a white person, would mean there is nothing remarkable or special about them.
  Adding either a prefix of colored- or a suffix of -of color to the word person, implies that there is something that distinguishes that person of a non-white race from a person who is white, who is considered mundane enough that no qualifiers are needed. >
  
  !delta
  Alright, I think you made a clear argument there. Now thinking from a different perspective it does hinted that calling someone a person of color signals someone who is white has none, and it is not necessarily something positive. Verbally, you make sense there and I can see that I may have worded poorly on my argument. >
  
  You have not worded your argument poorly. You just went off the common usage of grammar.
  Take for example the pretty internationally widespread concept that having the male grammatical gender as the unmarked default is sexist, as it implies that men are more important, since a group of 10 men and 1 women would be referred to with the male plural pronoun, or in the case of English as "guys", but a group of 10 women and 1 man would not be referred to as "gals" or with the female plural pronoun but rather the same as the male one.
  This is why you have German, for example, using the combined word form, e.g., SchauspielerIn (ActorTress), with Schauspieler (actor) being the male form and Schauspielerin (actress) the female form, so SchauspielerIn signifies that it could be either. Or in Slovenian, you have e.g. igralec/-ka or lately igralka_ec (actor/-tress or actress_tor).
  You can even take Asian languages such as Japanese or Chinese, where the kanji/hanzi for man is just a combination of power + field, while woman has its own special character.
  If the non-generic form were indeed considered the special one in real life, these arguments would neither exist nor be internationally problematized. And while I agree that non-generic forms SHOULD be treated as special ones, precisely because they are not the generic defaults, which by definition makes them special, that is not how things commonly work.
  Thus, we're right back at your white == normal, PoC == special. >
  
  I get the premise you are proposing here. Makes perfect sense. But if that were the premise then, shouldn’t that term be considered racist then? And I do mean that as a real question in the interest of calling for consistency. There are movements afloat and even universities putting out word lists for restructuring our speech in the name of reducing hate speech. And calling a group of people the generic term “guys” is being hailed as sexist because, as in the premise you stated, it declares the make form as “special”. So with that in mind, if Person of Color designated that those of color are special, while those that don’t fit that title would then be less special, then that separates and ousts a single race. Hence, a bit racist, no?
  This also goes completely against the arguments that race is a social construct while empowering said social construct. But that’s a whole other discussion. >
  
  Personally, I am completely and entirely against the idea that changing language achieves anything. Want to ban slurs with historical baggage, such as the n-word? Fine. But saying colored person is racist and person of color is not? This doesn't make any sense to me.
  What people that promote this seem to either not know, forget, or simply ignore is that words simply carry meaning, which is actually separate from the words themselves. This is why there's this continuous updating of words negro => colored => black => PoC (order probably messed up), because you can start calling the concept behind these words whatever you want, but if the concept itself is perceived negatively, the word will just take on that connotation as well.
  This is why calling someone "black" in e.g. Slovenian is perfectly fine. Because there's no negative connotation attached. 
  So, American English can change words for "someone with African/non-white ancestry" all it wants, as long as both white AND non-white Americans choose to separate each other by race, the words won't change anything, since racism isn't determined by the words used but rather by the intent and thoughts of the speaker. The entire concept of dogwhistles came about because someone (finally) realized that someone can be using perfectly acceptable language to send certain signals.
  Also, from the European perspective, the separation along racial lines, which often don't even make sense, seems weird. It's at best a heuristic for everyone to be able to exclude people as quickly as possible. Using the terminology of "white person" makes zero sense outside (and to some degree even inside) the American context, since there are historically enormous differences between Latin, Germanic, and Slavic peoples. Calling a random Slav "oppressor", when the English name for the group itself is, due to their sad history, related to the word "slave" (not to be confused with the Slavic self-identifiers, which are similar but related to slava/slovo (glory/word)) is just ridiculous, even though Slavs are considered white (by people of color) in the US, but were very much considered subhuman and not "white" in its underlying meaning at any time in history.
  So yeah, I'll always support the idea that words don't matter, the intent behind them does. And the modern obsession with politically correct speech has not and will not achieve anything beyond making its proponents look silly. >
  
  I support everything you said. So I’m sure you’d share with me in the frustration that the definition of words (within context) are no longer defined by intent as they used to, and should be; but instead are defined by the perception of others. If you meant to say humpback whale in a joke but instead said wetback whale, then I get to make a full statement of your white privileged letting you think that you are allow to joke about Mexicans while using slurs. And even if I’m not Mexican I have the self-awarded right to be offended on their behalf. This leaves you on the defending end of an accusation. And we all know that in modern social structures, it us always the accusation that gets the headlines and formulated minds, while any defense or even justified clarification after the fact carries only a fraction of the impact that the initial accusation carries.
  In short, I agree with you that words should be defined by their intent. But in contemporary times, it is the perceptions of the listener rather than the intent of the speaker, that defines words. >
  
  Agreed. That's messed up. But as an AfroSlav, I at least get to shut down pretty much anyone, if they want to engage in such nonsense, since they're either going to be (by the modern "ruleset") racist against my Slavic or my black side. >
  
  All this bullshit about putting people into boxes is the issue. >
  
  Putting ppl into boxes is indeed racist. Biologically, there are no races. This is a fact. Human traits (hair color, skin color, nose type, etc.) are clined (not clustered) and discordant (not concordant). We sort races by some traits (skin color) but not others (eye color). A white girl with brown eyes and white girl with blue eyes are the same social race. 1 same and 1 different trait.
  A Fijian population and a Kenyan population are the most genetically distinct groups in the world, yet we would call them black by appearance. Sorting into races is not biologically sound >
  
  !delta
  I just saw your argument and I do agree with you and now I changed my opinion a little bit on racial identity in general as you mentioned we only sort races by traits selectively. 
  Making generalization and putting labels onto people just because of their identity(doesn't has to be racial, also base on gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or even political identity etc.) can be unhealthy in many situations. Sometimes I see and hear how people make assumptions that people who are black are poorer simply because they are black, men are more abusive than women just because they are men etc. it makes me uncomfortable, despite that I know the intention of theirs, may be that they want to address equality or whatever. Feels like sometimes people correlate things base off stereotypes without diving deeper to understand the nature of them instead. >
  
  I’d also like to mention that collective society projects expectations to support certain causes and to behave a certain way solely due to shared traumatic history. Thereafter, people start behaving as they are expected so to be accepted into a community.
  As a first generation Mexican, I can vouch that it is tough not being “Mexican enough” for the Mexican community nor “American enough” for any other non-Mexican community. Luckily I met good individuals who support and accept me for my unconventionality but I can definitely picture a universe where I’d suppress my interests to fit more into a conventionally prescribed mold. Chronic loneliness and feelings of alienation are difficult to live with, especially as a kid.