A blog post by Merissa Brown, a BAME non-white woman of colour, of an ethnic minority.
My research explores systemic racism in healthcare, so naturally, I need a way to refer to people who endure said systemic racism. My supervisors constantly tell me that I need to find a term and I need to stick to it. However, I always get tongue-tied in this situation. Now the problem isn’t finding a term – there are many:
Black and minority ethnic (or as the streets call it, BAME).
As our folks say across the pond, people of colour (POC).
BIPOC (a remix of the above to highlight Black and indigenous communities in the US, but doesn’t apply well to our British context, no matter how much Brits insist on using it).
Ethnic minorities (in the context of the West).
Global majority.
Politically Black.
(Someone in the university even floated the term ‘BAMER’ around where the ‘R’ referred to refugees. Can you imagine?!)
And of course, the most problematic of them all (outside of South Africa), ‘coloured’.
With such a plethora of terms, one might think I’m spoilt for choice. However, the reality is far more complex.
There has always been controversy over every single one of these terms for good reason. But there’s another that is particularly unfavourable to many people both within and outside of academia, and that’s ‘non-white’. Now I’m going to be the bad guy here and explain why the term ‘non-white’ is actually the best word for me. Before you jump me, let me land.
These terms have evolved due to disillusionment and dissatisfaction with whatever the existing term was at the time. But nobody really addresses the core issue. The problem is not the individual term, it is what the word represents. They all inherently dichotomise people into ‘white’ and the ‘other people roaming the wasteland’. Whole diverse cultures, customs, races, religious values, geographical locations, etc. are all thrown into one label. We’re all expected to unite, solely based on our experiences of discrimination. But even the racism we experience is different.
That is why the mere existence of a term – whichever one we choose – is problematic. The issue does not lie in the wording, it lies in the framework of our society that necessitates these terms. Yet we argue and end up in constant cycles of renaming, which I believe obscures our real mission – dismantling a society that makes us need to have this term in the first place.
Regardless of the terminology we adopt, in the current climate, the word is needed. I need to talk about how people from diverse backgrounds experience racism in blood cancer (and health as a whole), even if it manifests differently. I need to explicitly state that I am not talking about white people. That is a very important thing to note.
And that is why I like the term non-white. Many people hate the term because it wraps our entire sense of being in a blanket of whiteness. It tells us that we are not the norm, that ourselves and our non-Western cultures are outsiders.
That is why I like it. I like it for the reasons others do not – I like the fact that it homogenises everyone who isn’t white, and centres whiteness in our identity. Because it does the job it needs to do – it makes me angry. It is infuriating that we live in a society that recognises whiteness as unique and the ‘default’, yet ‘others’ everyone else. It incenses me that despite our ongoing efforts to spotlight and appreciate one another’s cultures, my experience as a Black person, those of South Asian people and others, are all homogenised.
Even in instances of blood cancer (as per my research), we all experience terrible incidence rates and prognoses compared to our white counterparts, but not at all in the same ways or at the same rates. We are not even able to completely personally relate to each other’s unique experiences of racism and sometimes we can even be bigoted towards one another. Yet, in the eyes of society, we are the same person.
The non-white label takes no prisoners. It tells us exactly what our society is and exactly how we are viewed in it. I like that this very problematic term highlights the very problematic society in which we live. I like that it ignites a fire in me because it spurs me to want better for us. It harnesses my rage and I hope it stirs a similar fire in your belly too.
We need to stop playing around with new terms that will ultimately never reflect who we are. Continuing the endless cycle of creating a new word that we will at some point feel “icky” about is not going to stop the issue. We must confront uncomfortable truths and address the systemic biases that necessitate such labels. I honestly believe that calling things as they are can be a catalyst for meaningful change and collective action.