brown black and queer

At the workshop called Creating the Brown and Black LGBT Agenda, at the Creating Change conference this Saturday, a very important issue was brought to the table– halfway through our time there. What exactly do we mean by Black and Brown? What people fall under these categories? It seemed that the 40 people in the room unanimously agreed that people of African descent living in the United States and Latinos were amongst the black and the brown. One guy raised his hand and threw out a question that put the previous conversation to a standstill. What about people of Asian descent? He explained that in the API Caucus there was a dynamic and heated discussion of whether or not people of Asian descent in the U.S. were considered people of color.

So who is a person of color? Red, yellow, black and brown? Non-white? People of African descent, Latinos, people of Asian descent, American Indians? The answer must comes from an exercise in the decolonization of the mind, in terms of history. In the land of the United States, many people of all colors have occupied this space. Whites (whatever that means) have sustained oppressive power. All those who are not white have been bound to systematic discrimination. 

I think that it is imperative to understand that all peoples of color in various but similarly detrimental ways have been excluded from dominant, normalized narratives of U.S. (and world) history. We would be operating under the same *fucked up* mindset to think that people of Asian decent should be excluded from people of color struggles. The truth is that no, we don’t usually think Asian Americans are historically and systematically oppressed people. I picture all the people of Asian descent, Chinese, Japanese and Indians in particular at NYU’s Stern School of Business. They’re the model minority. But that is because we are excluding all those that have not been represented. I recently heard many statistics on the povrety of Whites, Blacks and Latinos in the U.S. But what about the people of Asian descent? We don’t even try to calculate these numbers.

Even more so, we do not recognize the indigenous people living within borders of the United States nation. These American Indians are, too, people of color, which I use as a term to describe people oppressed by systematic racism (and classism, sexism, etc.) Their lands, their sovereignty has been completely neglected (except as sites of legal gambling).

They are the invisible of the invisible. In the grand scheme of things, the larger picture, I don’t think it’s worth calculating and comparing the oppressions of different social groups. If we are working to fight for human rights, it is not necessary to divide. That is how we have always been conquered. (There is, though, something to say for prioritizing social activism to empower especially invisible populations.)

In the United States, in the past, present and most certainly the future, people of different races, ethnicities, nationalities have been intermixing.

I encourage people to define themselves the way they want. If you identify as brown/black/people of color, then great, this site is for you.