'People of Color' Label Lame on Every Level

We are Latinos or Hispanics, Chicanos or Tejanos. Or we are black or African-American, or we are Asian Pacifics or Asian Latinos. We've got minority divisions and subdivisions, enclaves and tiny corners. We used to talk about the melting pot, the mosaic, the rainbow. That wasn't that long ago. Now we identify ourselves, or others identify us, with easy-to-stick-on labels, ethnic and racial Post-Its.

Some of us prefer Latino to Hispanic, or the other way around; some of us may prefer African-American to black, or the other way around. Hip-hop or rap, reggaetón or salsa, who knows? More often, we are lumped together under a broad blanket label, "people of color.''

Sometimes it gets ridiculous, like a newspaper's holiday gift guide specifically targeted for "persons of color." Not long ago such segregation by color would've caused an uproar. What would happen if we had a label called "people of no color"? Absurd, no? It's impossible to talk about all of this without slipping into generalities and banalities, and so we go round and round.

Now comes a survey from the Pew Hispanic Center to muddy the waters. The survey suggests that young Latinos are beginning to identify themselves more with their parents' homeland than with labels like "Latino" or "Hispanic." The survey, "Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America,'' based on an analysis of demographic data and a telephone poll, was taken last summer and included 2,012 Latinos ages 16 to 25, a plurality of them born in the United States. When asked how they described themselves, 52 percent said by their family's homeland -- Mexican, Salvadoran, Dominican. Even fewer, 20 percent, said they identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino. Nobody mentioned "people of color."

I really don't like the phrase "people of color." It's meaningless, it's broad and inaccurate. It's a decoration, a tag, a handy label. I think the phrase sprung from people of color themselves and well-meaning advocates. The label came up in the late 1970s, I believe, but I wasn't particularly aware of it until much later, in the 1980s, in Philadelphia and New York. "People of color," however well intended to describe multiple nationalities and cultures in one catchy phrase, has too often wound up meaning "the other," "second citizen," "not quite total American." We can deny, if we wish, that those negative images exist, but they are there, right under the surface. In any case, the phrase is not descriptive. It's yet another label that too often covers up uglier labels.

Let the debate continue.