Talk:Brown people

A word on the supposed "debilitating blindness caused by racist tendencies": If this refers to what I think it refers to, then it may not be actually caused by prejudice or bigotry, but rather by a psychological phenomenon known as the cross-race effect, a subset of the more general out-group homogeneity effect. The One They Call Mars (talk) 18:02, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

The heck is going on here?

I've never heard this phrase used in any context but this: mocking racist plans with arbitrarily bad "non-racist" justifications, pointing out how racist motivations make a much more believable motive. I've never actually heard it used by racists. Ikanreed (talk) 19:02, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I have. Some of the smaller cities in the Greater Toronto Area (especially Brampton) have relatively large proportions of immigrants from the Middle East, Iran, India, etc., and it's not at all uncommon to hear "brown people" bandied about on a fairly regular basis by the racists in the area. This same method of thinking has led to several pejorative alternate names for Brampton, including things like "Bramladesh" and "Brown-town". It's an unpleasant reality, but in the predominantly white, Christian, middle class cities lying just outside the GTA belt, this method of thinking is not uncommon. - Grant (Talk) 19:11, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I knew someone who moved to my very white, rural area from the industrial Midlands because of (in his exact words) "too many brown people." This was about 9 years ago so the phrase has been around for a while. Sophie^Wilder 19:29, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I have heard the term as an epithet, as an ironic self-descriptor, and as a serious self-descriptor in 6 countries. PowderSmokeAndLeather (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

What are the politically correct words?

OK, so I guess that we should call people with black skin "black" - is that right?

"Coloured" is incorrect as I understand it.

But not everybody is really "black". What are the politically correct words which can be used in different situations, skin tones and countries?--Coffee (talk) 19:32, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

The common term, at least in American academic circles these days, is "people of colour." I'm also reading this right now, which might be a term with some circulation. Of course, "people of color" might lead to this situation. (image disappears when scrolled over....) PowderSmokeAndLeather (talk) 20:18, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

People of colour? As if pale with a hint of rose isn't a colour! I am appalled by the discrimination!

Seriously, though. This whole obsession with colour smells to me of simplification. Two Nigerians may not have the same shade of "black", even if they are similar. Just call 'em by their national/immigrant/ethnic background, like "Mexican", "Saudi immigrant", "Egyptian", "American Indian/African American joint descendant", etc. . Nullahnung (talk) 20:29, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Aren't you being a little Americocentric there? --Coffee (talk) 20:36, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and I was ranting at "American academic circles", so that's a good fit, I would say. I was also going to write that this obsession with colour is largely the doing of those boorish Americans again, and therefore by nature Americocentric, but I thought better of it (after all, you can find obsession with colour pretty much everywhere). Nullahnung (talk) 20:46, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I think you'll find the "obsession with colour" has as much to do with the lived outcomes and experiences of people who get treated in a particular way because of their color as it does with the work of academics. PowderSmokeAndLeather (talk) 20:49, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

True, I am not being fair. It's a deeper societal problem that won't ever get fixed as long as eye sight is part of the human sensory repertoire. Nullahnung (talk) 20:52, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

You mean for people who are not exactly "black" or for everyone who is not .... errrr .... "pink"?--Coffee (talk) 20:23, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Both, actually. In the second sense, often in terms of a shared ""post-colonial" identity. PowderSmokeAndLeather (talk) 20:25, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

In some novel set in South Africa (cops & robbers? I forget) one of the characters wondered how it was possible to trust people of European stock, when they changed color with the seasons. This was a character whose parents' language had a myriad of words for the different colors of cattle. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 20:34, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Americocentric

Re concerns about "Americocentricity" raised above, clearly this article is already Americocentric (or whatever the proper term is). Anywhere else in the world, the juxtaposition of "humans who aren't Asian" and "individuals whose cultural heritage originate in India" in the same category would be baffling. But in North America, "Asian" apparently still means "yellow-skin man" & some other arbitrary patronising term has to be applied to "brown-skin" peoples. This digression aside, I suggest we delete this junk, unless there are plans to expand it into anything useful. As is, it's a bit of an oddball entry, with no context or examples & barely anything linking to it or likely to. Wěǎšěǐǒǐď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 00:32, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

As currently written, there's no reason for RW to have this article. (And don't anyone kid themselves about it being rewritten.) Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 01:20, 4 February 2014 (UTC)