Whether Crane is a racist is not the issue. I don’t know Rep. Crane and I am not interested in defending him personally at this point. The issue is that too many politicians are answering their foolish colleagues according to their folly. No wonder those of us along for the ride feel as if we are going crazy on a ship of fools.
As of late, there was a scuffle in the House because Rep. Eli Crane from Arizona used the term “colored people” instead of “people of color.” Rep. Joyce Beatty (OH) responded immediately “asking for unanimous consent to take down the words of (sic) referring to me or any of my colleagues as colored people.”[1] Shortly thereafter, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett took to Twitter, “Rep. Eli Crane just referred to Black service members as ‘colored people’. You can’t make this up. This is who these people are, and who they’ve always been.” After seeing the exchange and reading about the fallout I couldn’t help but wonder why. Let me pose a simple question. Was Rep. Crane’s use of “colored” as a descriptor a moral failure?
This is not a hard question to answer. If the use of the term were a moral failure, then the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP would have changed their name long ago. Instead, they defended their use of it saying,
Times change and terms change. Racial designations go through phases; at one time Negro was accepted, at an earlier time colored and so on. This organization has been in existence for 80 years and the initials NAACP are part of the American vocabulary, firmly embedded in the national consciousness, and we feel it would not be to our benefit to change our name.[2]
Clearly, the NAACP is not so insensitive to the people they represent so as to leave a morally offensive moniker in place for the simple reason of name recognition. In other words, they might prefer to be called the NAAPC but name recognition outweighs any other concern.
But let’s ask the obvious. Why is the moniker “people of color” acceptable but “colored people” not? Let’s put our grammatical caps on for a minute. The adjective “colored” in “colored people” expresses the same relationship as the possessive in “people of color.” This is not too difficult when you think about it in relation to other examples. A moment of silence is a silent moment. An honor code is a code of honor. A battle plan is a plan of battle. So, what’s the difference? Really. What is the difference between “colored people” and “people of color?” This is not a harangue but a legitimate question. If the word is morally offensive, then by all means, let’s not use it.
Some might say that it is. For example, it might be argued that the phrase is like the N-word and therefore should not be used. Not all slang is appropriate or welcome and so the N-word has been expunged from public use, at least in some spheres.
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