>Nicole Miners, 24, said: “Being a British East Asian actor, or just a person, this was something that really aggravated me.
>”The ‘A’ in ‘BAME’ means Asian, which, in itself, is a very broad term. Does it mean ‘South Asian’, ‘East Asian’, ‘South East Asian’, ‘Indian’, ‘Pakistani’, ‘Chinese’, ‘Thai’, ‘Vietnamese’? The list goes on.
So we’ve come full circle. Now we need to ask “no, where are you really from?”.
I’m glad to see the back of this terminology.
Importing this type of language from American academic circles was always going to be rife with issues.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with the use of ‘minority’ as a noun for a person, as the negative connotations are obvious.
I’ve found it a little odd how ‘brown people’ has started to gain favour, as this was definitely bordering on a slur when I was growing up in the late 90s/early 00s (it’s referenced as such in the second series of I’m Alan Partridge – Alan mocks Lynn’s late mother for referring to her Pakistani neighbours as ‘brown people’)
While I can see the positive of ‘person of colour’ putting the emphasis on ‘person’ – the grouping of people into ‘white’ or ‘not white’ is rather reductive, and ignores the complexities and differences between groups in favour of an an extremely simplistic view of ethnicity/race.
From personal experience, the woman who mentions the issues with ‘Asian’ is very right. Grouping Indians together with Japanese and Philippinos doesn’t really make much sense. Even ‘East Asians’ as a group is bordering on a colonialist mindset. Certainly people in Japan, China and Korea don’t see themselves as part of a homogenous or unified group, they always tend towards pointing out the vast differences in the cultures. (And historically they haven’t really got on well either)
2 comments
>Nicole Miners, 24, said: “Being a British East Asian actor, or just a person, this was something that really aggravated me.
>”The ‘A’ in ‘BAME’ means Asian, which, in itself, is a very broad term. Does it mean ‘South Asian’, ‘East Asian’, ‘South East Asian’, ‘Indian’, ‘Pakistani’, ‘Chinese’, ‘Thai’, ‘Vietnamese’? The list goes on.
So we’ve come full circle. Now we need to ask “no, where are you really from?”.
I’m glad to see the back of this terminology.
Importing this type of language from American academic circles was always going to be rife with issues.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with the use of ‘minority’ as a noun for a person, as the negative connotations are obvious.
I’ve found it a little odd how ‘brown people’ has started to gain favour, as this was definitely bordering on a slur when I was growing up in the late 90s/early 00s (it’s referenced as such in the second series of I’m Alan Partridge – Alan mocks Lynn’s late mother for referring to her Pakistani neighbours as ‘brown people’)
While I can see the positive of ‘person of colour’ putting the emphasis on ‘person’ – the grouping of people into ‘white’ or ‘not white’ is rather reductive, and ignores the complexities and differences between groups in favour of an an extremely simplistic view of ethnicity/race.
From personal experience, the woman who mentions the issues with ‘Asian’ is very right. Grouping Indians together with Japanese and Philippinos doesn’t really make much sense. Even ‘East Asians’ as a group is bordering on a colonialist mindset. Certainly people in Japan, China and Korea don’t see themselves as part of a homogenous or unified group, they always tend towards pointing out the vast differences in the cultures. (And historically they haven’t really got on well either)