Talk:of color

US One-drop rule

@-sche: I wouldn't think you necessarily meant to do this, but this change and the associated edit summary would seem to amount to a Wiktionary endorsement of the proponents of the previous century's (and earlier) “one drop rule” conception of the social construct of race. For example, this would seem to say to multi-racial Americans who consider themselves people of color, with white ancestry, and thus partly white, that they are wrong about being partly white.

As the quote referring to Charles Curtis's vice-presidency in the 1920s says, (by an American author, though I chose to link to the article in a newspaper in India) “the term's current usage emerged decades later”, so it would appear to be using a 2020 definition of “person of color”. While the article quotes early twentieth century comments that imply the “one drop rule”, I don't see any indication that the author's use of “person of color” is intended to imply the exact same thing.

So, is that the kind of thing you meant to do? --Struthious Bandersnatch (talk) 08:38, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Aha, I think see where you're coming from. I undid your edit because as far as I know (including from the citation provided), in modern use "of color" never specifically means "A mixed-race or multiheritage person" : aside from the mismatch in part of speech (this page, "of color", is an adjective, whereas "a [...] person" is the definition for a noun), I'm not aware of any recent situation in which a mixed-race person would be referred to as a person "of color" but a (completely) black (etc) person would not be. (And even when one thing [e.g. an Idahoan] is clearly within the scope of a term [e.g. "American"], putting # A person from Idaho. as a separate definition of American would not be right.) You raise a good point that someone might consider themself both partly white and also a person of color, so the current definition might be incomplete. (We are also missing one or more historical senses, as a separate matter, including one perhaps along the lines of yours, but it wouldn't be supported by the quotation about Curtis and is probably {{lb|en|obsolete}}.) Perhaps the current/main definition should say "of a race other than white, or not exclusively white"? However, it's noticeable that the one citation provided doesn't even actually refer to Curtis as both white and a person of color, it only mentions the existence of discussion of whether or not he has a claim to be a person of color. (Compare Toni Morrison calling Bill Clinton the "first black president", which doesn't change the definition of "black".) And Dictionary.com, for example, defines person of color as "A nonwhite person, such as someone of African or Native American descent", which would cover Curtis. Lexico also says "A person who is not white." It's probably valid to say that in the modern sense of the words, a person is only a person "of color" to the extent that they are not a white person, which does not preclude them being e.g. biracial and a person of color. - -sche (discuss) 00:59, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

@-sche: We could add {{n-g}}, of course.

This seems like we're delving rather deeply into race theory for purposes of editing a dictionary, but I'm okay with going there. What you're saying is still defining everything relative to whiteness, which is actually what seems to me along the lines of obsolescence, though more accurately still just “wrong side of history” at this point, as there are unquestionably many English-speakers perfectly content with defining everything relative to whiteness at this point in time. (Just try to bring up racism outside the context of insults or vandalism on an English Wikipedia talk page, for example...)

I would note that our entry on American does in fact do a nested set thing, with separate senses (as a noun) for “An inhabitant of the Americas”, “An indigenous inhabitant of the Americas”, and “Originally, a native or inhabitant of the British North American colonies; now, a person born in, or a citizen, national or inhabitant of, the United States of America.” Also, for white as an adjective, we have three separate senses relating to race: “Of or relating to Caucasians, people of European descent with light-coloured skin”, “Designated for use by Caucasians”, and “(of a person or skin) Lacking coloration (tan) from ultraviolet light; not tanned” (not sure how often I've heard, say, a Han Chinese person with that complexion referred to as “white” or even “white-skinned” in English...)—also rather antiquated language and lacking quite a few racial historical senses there as well, as well as ethnographic ones e.g. “White Huns”. (And yes, I realize it's capitalized in that instance, but it hasn't been every time I've encountered it.)

And to respond to your objection that “the one citation provided doesn't even actually refer to Curtis as both white and a person of color”, given the framing of white and person of color as exclusive—none of the citations or quotations for the USian sense of American I'm seeing here or elsewhere, for that matter, refer to a person as both American and not a resident of South America.

Finally, there's the fact that in South African English, coloured actually specifically refers to mixed-race or multiheritage people—it does not seem to me that other Englishes are going to be so distant that everything is going to boil down to a single sense. Indeed there are lots of documented cases of non-USians confusing "coloured" and "of color" in a US context and being taken to have committed an outrageous gaffe. I can dig up links if you want. --Struthious Bandersnatch (talk) 16:40, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, colored has been used in South Africa to refer to mixed-race people as contrasted with entirely black / nonwhite people. But if you want to add a sense (especially one labelled as "US") "of mixed race" to of color, and not just to colored, you need to provide citations in which of color means "mixed race" as opposed to meaning "nonwhite". There do seem to be some citations from the late 1700s and early 1800s which contrast e.g. "blacks" and "people of color" as distinct groups with the latter referring to a mixed-race group, but that sense seems to be an {{label|en|obsolete}} racial classification (or a {{label|en|historical}} one as it's still used in some books about that time period, but not as far as I have seen about the modern era). In the modern US, every reference I've looked at (other dictionaries, the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage, etc) and the citations I've seen treat it as ≈"nonwhite"/"not white". The only books that turn up when I search for e.g. google books:"whites of color" or google books:"white of color" are books that speak of "white / of color" as a dichotomy. Books that speak of google books:"blacks and people of color" are, upon inspection, discussing "blacks and other people of color" [nonwhite people, such as Native Americans, potentially including mixed-race ones], not "blacks and mixed-race people". - -sche (discuss) 22:51, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

So, again: the foremost citation we give for the sense of American “a citizen, national or inhabitant of, the United States of America.” is

2008 August 9, Chris Moss, The Guardian:

They say Americans don't walk. Well, they do in the Navajo Nation - because even if northern Arizona has gigabytes of photogenic vistas, getting out of the car is the only way to get your boots covered in desert dust and soak up the silence.

How are you able to tell from that, that it's referring to people of the United States of America rather than people of the Americas? If we can speak with confidence about how to properly interpret citations exemplifying “of color”, it seems that we should be able to answer questions like that about “American”, and that the criteria of the latter will have bearing on the former.

I'm willing to look through the other material you're referring to, I just want to settle the matters we began with first.

The sense I'm talking about documenting does not have to be labelled “US” any more than it needs to be written without the {{n-g}} template. --Struthious Bandersnatch (talk) 09:41, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Once it's established that a term has a certain sense, via citations where the sense is clear / contrastive, it's possible to interpret citations that are more ambiguous, although of course it's also possible the citation above is misplaced (the surrounding context might clarify). In this case, thanks to your bringing this up, I've dug around and found early citations where "[people/men/etc] of color" is contrasted with e.g. "black" (and "white") and clearly explained as having denoted a mixed-race category in the 17- and 1800s. I can also find some books which say things like "[people/women/etc] of color, including multiracial [people/etc]" or "[...] including biracial [people]", which might support broadening the first definition along the lines of "nonwhite, or not entirely white", but it's not clear to me that this is necessary / supportable, in part because other reference works I've seen are so uniform in defining this simply as "nonwhite", including the OED which curiously even folds citations of the historical sense under one "not white-skinned" definition: perhaps such reference works accept the view, widespread among people of colour and white people, that that category includes people who have partially white ancestry, or perhaps they are being overly narrow and we could do one better here. I've solicited broader input at Wiktionary:Tea room/2020/December#of_color. - -sche (discuss) 21:32, 12 December 2020 (UTC)