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Comment by hnbad | Hacker News Reader

For context for those unfamiliar with German dialects: dubbing a stereotypical Black person with a Bavarian accent in German is the cultural equivalent of dubbing them with a German or Swedish accent in English.

Of course the joke mostly works because it lampshades bigoted cultural assumptions about race in Germany: a lot of Germans in the 1990s said "Afro-Amerikaner" when they meant Black (regardless of nationality, even Germans) because they thought it was more "politically correct" and the thought a Black person might be a native citizen never occurred to them. This has improved somewhat over the years but since the film was originally released in 1980, I doubt the cultural awareness was any better at the time.

To be clear: I'm not saying the joke is bigoted, I'm saying the joke worked because it played off bigoted assumptions.

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My ex-wife is black African, and we live in the UK, and she's on a number of occasions had white British people "correct" her when she described herself as black and offer up "African American" instead. At which point she'd tell them in no uncertain terms how annoyed that made her exactly because they were either blindly parroting something without thinking about what they were saying or making assumptions about her background rather than asking (as well as, of course, implying they have a right to impose on her how she should describe herself).

Can I take the opportunity to ask how she feels about 'person of colour'?

I find it absurd, a ridiculous beat about the bush, that was never necessary growing up having friends who were 'black' and that was a fine description just like I'm 'white', what of it, and indeed closer back to (what was then at least) the out of favour/racist/not politically correct 'coloured'.

But as I said, I'm white, so it's not up to me, and if that's really what people prefer then fine - but I have the impression that it's a predominantly American (I mostly only 'hear' it online) turn of phrase, that's spilled over a bit sure, but generally not used/preferred here?

Another white person here but I think it's probably a useful term since it's more broad. Saying black is specific but person of color just means not white.

Is it used more broadly though? I've never heard it (self-describingly) from anyone of (East/West/incl. Indian subc.) Asian descent for example.

Yes, by many, if not all.

https://dailynorthwestern.com/2019/01/31/opinion/the-spectru...

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2021/03/29/opiniondiscovering-...

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/918418825

https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc/vol41/iss1/5/

Interesting, ok, thanks. I've definitely never heard that here. I'd say in my own experience 'brown' is even more common as a self-description than 'black' (per capita as applicable).

Which, sorry but, makes it a very dubious expression because it seems to be definitory of a narrow set opposed to a wealth of difference. Suppose you were Italian (a "Macedonia" of mixed blood since the ancient times, where the heterogeneity in physical traits is pretty high, but without a sense of "tribal" difference within that broad set): it would appear to make more sense to use the term "white" for the most eburneous sun-threatened Irish, than to say "white versus coloured" for people that already show very varied in their looks - in their """shades""", if you wish.

That means nothing.

Who is "white" has changed throughout history.

> Saying black is specific but person of color just means not white

Is Obama black or white?

As a father to a mixed race son, where people draw the line on whether it's "OK" for someone to self-identify or be described as black vs. white is a topic that interests me, and it's wildly inconsistent (but leaning strongly towards it taking far more white ancestry for most people to "accept" that people call themselves white than the reverse), and highly politicised, and there are absolutely no clear lines.

EDIT: I've spoken to my son about answering the inevitable "but where are you really from originally" with "Norway" for example, if he feels safe doing so (and safety is a real concern with that), since I'm Norwegian. It's just as accurate as answering Nigerian (his mother is Nigerian), which would be the answer most people asking that question would be looking for, but would hopefully make at least some people stop to think why they were asking it.

"Person of colour", in my corner of the UK, is considered as bad as "coloured", for the same reason really: it "otherises" anyone who's not white, presuming that the world is made of "whites" and "others".

But really these things are not really logical in most cases. Ad es. blacks are blacks, but then you have "asians" who are not "east-asians" nor "south-asians", "latinos" that definitely did not originate from anywhere near the Italian peninsula, "white-irish" as different from "white-british", etc etc. In the inevitable public-authority forms, these days I'm often tempted to just tick "Mixed-other" - I'm whiter than daisies, but in my blood there are probably a dozen different "types of people" who invaded Italy through the centuries (africans, germans, etc etc).

Maybe I just don't get the social or cultural context, but this always confuses me. There's plenty of occasions where referring to one's skin color is relevant.

I'm light-skinned enough to be close to ginger, for instance, and this subject has both practical, conversational and occasionally humoristic value when the subject of being outside in the sun comes up. If I'm planning any sort of trip with someone who even has southern European ancestry, not to mention Middle-Eastern or African, it's hardly an unnatural subject to show up in passing.

From that context, it seems incredibly silly that the whole subject just be taboo and remain unmentioned.

It's generally not taboo when everyone is sure of each others intentions. E.g. I could if I wanted to safely tell my ex a borderline racist joke and she'd know there was no ill will intended, but if a stranger told her the same joke she'd be wondering what the intent behind it was.

Establishing that trust can sometimes take a while, but it tends to help a lot to simply ask about which terms someone prefers etc. if unsure, because just expressing a willingness to adjust tends to be a good sign.

I don't mean to speak for GP, but I'm also in the UK and pretty sure they meant the specific phrase, not mention of skin colour at all. In my experience 'black' here is as casual, normal, and inoffensive as 'white' or 'brown'. (Assuming it is relevant of course. If you're just arbitrarily chucking the description in all the time then yeah it doesn't matter what word or phrase you call it, it's still discriminatory. It'd be just as weird to do so with 'white'.)

If you mean re 'mixed other', I think the point was just that the categories don't apply well, and 'mixed' is technically true of essentially everyone so eh why not. (I believe 'white - other' is an option though, if that's applicable.)

yep, this.

In the UK I think most people would feel weird about "person of colour" in some contexts, but ok with it in others. E.g. if it's used to specifically call out a wider shared experience, then it can be fine (but mind your audience, and "BAME" seems to be more common in the UK for that, though it's worth noting that some also dislike that term as well for various reasons, but nobody seems to agree what ought to replace it), but I would feel very uncomfortable about describing a specific person as a person of colour, if e.g. trying to point someone out in a crowd. (EDIT: At the same time: Some self describe as person of colour, and if they do simply respect their preference).

But it'll depend on background, age, and attitudes, and really the best approach is to just ask people if unsure, as some terms are wildly offensive to one group and not at all to another (prime example of that is that is how "oriental" is deeply offensive to many in the US, while it's not at all uncommon for people to describe themselves as oriental in the UK)

My sense of the term is that it is intended to be inclusive: not just black people but also Asians, South Pacific, Native American extraction, etc. so it’s not referring to the same group of people.

In some contexts PoC is appropriate because it is pretty much catch-all for "not white" (where "white" is used the same way as in "white supremacy", referring to a racial category defined by the absence of other racial identities).

In other contexts it is more precise to say Black because Black people experience a specific form of oppression by being Black, not just non-white. The same is true for other identities (like Indigenous) that are also part of the BIPoC umbrella, of course, but this is why it is often rendered as BIPoC rather than simple PoC.

I was from Europe, but not from Germany. I was also taught to call black people "afro americans". It didn't makes sense, but apparently this was thought of as the only right thing to do.

I think the unspoken assumption was that Black people only exist in the US or Africa, partially because many people would have likely seen or interacted with so few Black people in real life that their main reference frame are Hollywood movies and North American television shows.

I don't think I heard the phrase "Afrodeutsch" (Afro-German) until well into the 2000s and one of the kids in my class in the 1990s was Black. I even remember thinking he must be American because of that.

I think there was a period of general confusion in the 1980s and 1990s around what language to use as the German words "Mohr" (originally from "Mauretania") and the German equivalent of the n-word became socially unacceptable and there was a widely held belief that referencing skin color directly was also unacceptable because of a lack of understanding about the actual underlying reasons for this language change (i.e. bigotry and power structures). There's a general sense of detachment I think because this discussion is usually framed in terms of language use rather than actual oppression because Black people are rarely even acknowledged to exist.

It's a direct translation from "African-American", which is similar to Italian-American or Irish-American.

I think the latter two can also be applied to 2nd, 3rd, etc. generations, so there's no assumption about native citizen or not.

Slurs like Goombah, Kraut, Mick are also applied to later generations (according to Hollywood movies).

The point is they were Germans and called Black Germans "Afro-Amerikaner" even if none of their ancestors had ever sat foot in a US territory let alone been citizens.

The implicit assumption was that because they were Black they couldn't be German. "Afrodeutsch" ("African-German") came significantly later.

In Germany (and I know the equivalent is true for many other countries) the term "German" is racialized and often used in a way that Americans use "white". Americans are far more willing to call an African or Asian American simply "American" than Germans are to call an African or Asian German simply "German". Also nobody will care more about your distant ancestors being Italian or Norwegian than they will care about them being Swabian or Bavarian, but if you are non-white, you will always be treated as a foreigner even if you have a Bavarian accent.

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