This once again shows that people (mainly Americans and also from my experience, Canadians too) are scared to death of saying the word “black” and it shows.

Some personal examples of this weird phenomenon:

• A guy messaged me on Facebook because he read my article about me living in Taiwan. He asked, “What has your experience in Taiwan been like as a woman of color?”
• I was hanging out with some friends. One of them was talking about her Canadian friend of Trinidadian descent, and she called this friend “African American.” I asked her why she said that. She’s a Canadian national and her parents are from Trinidad. While there is the view that North and South America is one continent, there aren’t any black people from continental America [outside of the United States] that identify themselves as “African American.” Her answer to my question: she was told that it’s offensive to say “black.”
• I was watching Panama’s soccer team playing in the World Cup, and I jokingly called one of their players my cousin because he has the same last name as me. Then I talked about how he could hypothetically be related to me because many black Panamanians came from Jamaica (my family is from there). And my friend was like “Yeah it’s possible…that country has a lot of African Americans.” Me: *confused face*

I’ve been in the US for nearly my entire life. I must have missed the part when people “agreed” that African American > Black when describing people of Afro-descent. Who told people that the word “African-American” is a more “politically correct” thing to say?

“African-American” is NOT a race. It’s the name of an ethnic group that describes black people of African origins who were most likely the descendants of enslaved people in the United States. While most black people in the US are African American, that doesn’t mean every single black person you see on the street is an African American considering the number of black people from Africa, Europe, and other countries in the Americas that also live in the US.

To be honest, I think the term “People of Color” is stupid. “People of Color” is basically a rebranded version of the term “colored people” so people can once again lump all non-white people into one box.

In the most generic sense, I can see where the term POC can be justified in majority-white nations, but at the same time, I always found the term dumb for the sole fact the majority of the world isn’t white. Also, the fact that POCs can be racist to other POCs both in majority-white countries and in the countries of their origins. In non-white nations, you can also find tensions, racism/colorism, and discrimination against people of different skin tones, ethnic groups, tribes, etc. just like you would in majority-white nations.

Unless something is applicable to many types of people, be specific.