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ClemenceDane's avatar

Some great food for thought here. On a side note, I still don't understand who "brown" people are. Is it literally just about what color one's skin is? And thus does "brown" include everyone from Native Americans to Latinos with indigenous blood, Malaysians, Indians, Middle Eastern people, the native tribes of the Amazon, Polynesians, Indonesians, Philippinos, etc. etc.? When they say "black and brown people" I never know who the latter actually are. Is it a coherent group?

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Steve QJ's avatar

"I still don't understand who "brown" people are. Is it literally just about what color one's skin is?"

It's really just another way of saying "people of colour." "Black" people are, of course, brown. But because we're collectively known as "black" for some reason, and because it would be REALLY ridiculous to refer to a Latino or Indian person as "black," we get this term with this strange redundancy.

So yeah, it's as coherent as "people of colour" is. Sometimes useful, sometimes not.

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Peaceful Dave's avatar

It increases the size of people "oppressed by white people" (non-white) but excludes them from the group of the most oppressed people (black). Not really about color exactly since some people who are considered to be black are lighter skinned than some actually brown skinned people.

There is probably not a generalized affinity between so called black and brown people and it is more about an anti-white political purpose.

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Steve QJ's avatar

"It increases the size of people "oppressed by white people" (non-white) but excludes them from the group of the most oppressed people (black)"

😅Have you been spending too much time on social media again Dave? This term isn't about being "anti-white" or even about affinity, just about talking about people who aren't white. This is occasionally useful in a society that is majority white.

As I said to Clemence, it basically serves the same function as "person of colour." Which isn't anti-white either. Any more than the word "woman" is anti-man or "gay" is anti-straight.

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Peaceful Dave's avatar

Yes I have. I should probably cancel my Medium account but I do find some of the authors valuable.

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Steve QJ's avatar

It's honestly such a shame what Medium has turned into. It was always very left-leaning, but it's become a total cesspit of simple-minded, zero-sum takes. As I often say, please remember that the morons don't speak, and never have spoken, for the majority on any social issue.

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PhDBiologistMom's avatar

Indeed. I’ve known several Indians (people from India, not Native Americans) whose skin is much darker than some African-Americans I know. But then they also tend to get classified as a “model minority.”

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