Wiktionary

of color

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Attested since the late 18th century,[1][2] initially in reference to a category of mixed-race (partially black, partially white) people in the Americas; compare French de couleur (attested since at least 1779 in gens de couleur),[3] Spanish de color. The phrase continued in occasional use throughout the 1800s and 1900s[3][4] and was used by e.g. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963,[5] around which time its modern meaning began to take shape.[5] Use by black activists picked up from the 1970s (e.g. black women who used "women of color" at the National Women's Conference in 1977)[6] onward, reaching wide circulation by the 1990s.[1]

Adjective

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of color (not comparable)

  1. (chiefly US) Nonwhite; of a race other than white, for example black. [from 18th c.]
    • 1932, Duff Cooper, Talleyrand, Folio Society, published 2010, page 54:
      It is to him that we owe the story that Talleyrand outraged the susceptibilities of the Philadelphians by his open admiration for a woman of colour with whom he frequently appeared in public.
    • 2010 February 18, Evan Narcisse, “Wrex in Effect, or, Deep Space and the Negro/Injun/Krogan Problem”, in The Atlantic‎[3], archived from the original on 02 September 2013, Culture‎[4]:
      But the vengeance I told myself I was getting for Wrex felt like a lie. I could win the game but he wasn't coming back. Being forced to lose my in-game comrade-who I thought of as a virtual person of color and as a brother-in-arms-affected me in a forceful way that I never expected. Mass Effect made me look at myself and think about the way races, classes and individuals bring their histories to bear.
    • 2018 January 12, Greg Landgraf, “Blazing Trails: Pioneering African-American librarians share their stories”, in American Libraries‎[5], archived from the original on 2018-01-04:
      She's also worked to help librarians forge connections through professional activities. Bell cochaired the first Joint Council of Librarians of Color (JCLC) in 2006, the first-ever shared conference among ALA's five ethnic affiliate associations: BCALA, the American Indian Library Association, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association, the Chinese American Librarians Association, and Reforma.
    • 2020 November 11, Christine Hauser, “Before Kamala Harris, This Vice President Broke a Racial Barrier”, in The Indian Express‎[6], archived from the original on 2020-11-10, World:
      ...historians and Native Americans are also revisiting the legacy of Charles Curtis, whose Kaw Nation ancestry gives him a claim as the first "person of color" to serve as vice president, although the term's current usage emerged decades later.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:of color.
  2. (historical) Belonging to a category of people with mixed black and white ancestry in the Americas in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
    • 1801 (edition; original c. 1793), Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British West Indies:
      [page 1:] Chap. 1. [...] The inhabitants of the French part of St. Domingo, as of all the West Indian Islands, were composed of three great classes: 1st, Pure whites. 2d, People of colour, and blacks of free condition. 3d, Negroes in a state of slavery. The reader is apprised that the class which, by a strange abuse of language, is called people of colour, originates from an intermixture of the whites and the blacks. The genuine offspring of a pure white with a negro is called a mulatto; but there are various casts, [...]. All these were known in St. Domingo by the term sang-melées, or gens de couleur [...]
      [page 67:] Chap. VI. Consequences in St. Domingo of the Decree of the 15th of May—Rebellion of the Negroes in the Northern Province, and Enormities committed by them—Revolt of the Mulattoes at Mirebalais—Concordat or Truce between the Inhabitants of Port au Prince and the Men of Colour of the 13th of September—Proclamation by the National Assembly of the 20th of September.
    • 1995, Kathleen Mary Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica & Barbados, 1823-1843:
      Those who owned the smaller plots were mainly poor whites, free people of color, and free blacks, none of whom had been affected by emancipation.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:of color.

Usage notes

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Placed immediately after the noun, e.g. a writer of color, students of color, communities of color. The term was popularized as an alternative to terms like nonwhite, which delineates its referents only in the negative.[7][8] Of color may be perceived as euphemistic.

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 “of color”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  2. ^ Henry Smeathman, Plan of a Settlement to be Made Near Sierra Leona, on the Grain Coast of Africa Intended More Particularly for the Service and Happy Establishment of Blacks and People of Colour, to be Shipped as Freemen Under the Direction of the Committee [...] (1786)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
  4. ^ For example: John Woodward, "Legal Right of a state to Limit the Suffrage", address (1900 October 8) before the New York Phi Delta Phi Club, printed in The Southern Law Review (1902), volume 1, page 349: "When, however, she went beyond this, and excepted from the operation of this qualification men who, with better opportunities than have fallen to the lot of the average man of color in the South, have grown up in ignorance, […] "
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 William Safire (1988 November 20) “On language: People of color”, in The New York Times‎[1], retrieved 2008-03-21
  6. ^ Wade, Lisa (2018 October 9 (last accessed)) “Loretta Ross on the Phrase "Women of Color"”, in Sociological Images‎[2]
  7. ^ Houghton Mifflin Company (2005) The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 356
  8. ^ Christine Clark, Teja Arboleda (1999) Teacher's Guide for in the Shadow of Race: Growing Up As a Multiethnic, Multicultural, and "Multiracial" American, Routledge, page 17: “The term People of Color emerged in reaction to the terms "non-white" and "minority." … The term people of color attempts to counter the condescension implied in the other two."”
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