steepholm

Thinking about it, the problem is perhaps more structural, in that the very fact that we feel the need to have a word to describe people who aren't white implies a specialness about whiteness that's not going to be erased by the choice of one term over another. Of course, many groups have words to describe people who aren't members of their own group (e.g. goy) but they tend to be used by the group themselves rather than as self-descriptors by the people to whom they're applied. Arguably it's a sign of white-normativity that people who aren't white feel the need to find a term to describe their own non-whiteness.

This comes out of a conversation with Lady_S last night in which I found myself asking what, say, a blind person, a person in a wheelchair and a person with bipolar have in common, apart from being expected to tick the 'Disabled' box on forms. Since their circumstances and the help they may require are all quite different, what is the point of grouping them under a general label, other than to reinforce the normative position of people without those conditions?

NB There may be very good answers to those questions, but I've not thought of them yet!