This web site emphasizes what Susanne Heine says about the importance of language. It’s also a point I’ve been trying to make for years. When you use the opposition’s vocabulary, such as “light-skinned black” or refer to all mixed ancestry folks as “people of color,” you have lost the war by accepting the enemy’s terms. I started promoting terms such as “multiracial white” to counteract “one drop” because I could see a desperate need for a new vocabulary. Americans have, until very recently, been deprived of a vocabulary to describe the mixed ancestry they see every day.
Inside the Frame
BuzzFlash
January 15, 2004
and the enemy is? One-droppers? If so, how do you account for plenty of ‘one droppers’ opposing the term ‘people of color’?
+Isn’t using the term “multiracial white” just inverting the defining terms of one-droppers? Why add a color?
Let’s focus on multiracial cultures not colors.
1/21/2004 6:14:24 PM