Yes, it's (relatively) easy to respect people's wishes as to how they wish to be referred to individually, but much harder to listen to everyone at once when referring to a group of people.
I always try to pay attention to the context and if neccesary add a disclaimer that I'm aware the language is controversial (as I did here) For example, I feel pretty unconflicted about using POC in spaces like debunkingwhite where I know most if not all the non-white people prefer that term(*), and it's the accepted terminology...unless I'm talking specifically about non-white australians :/
I have yet to personally encounter any non-white people who dislike umbrella terms on principle, but I have encountered some who think I'm oversensitive about race, and I find it tricky to disagree without invalidating their experience and POV (there's something inherently skeevy about a white person claiming to know more about racism than a non-white one!)
These are very complex issues, and there are a lot of thorny ambiguous situations they bring up. I guess the best we can do is try not to be too rigid or single minded, but instead value everyone's experiences and take their opinions into account (even if we may not agree)
(*)And see, here I am referring to them as "non-white" because that's the "right" term for the australian-centered context of this post, even though the people I'm talking about would generally prefer "POC". Hmm.
Re: Following the link from debunkingwhite
I always try to pay attention to the context and if neccesary add a disclaimer that I'm aware the language is controversial (as I did here) For example, I feel pretty unconflicted about using POC in spaces like debunkingwhite where I know most if not all the non-white people prefer that term(*), and it's the accepted terminology...unless I'm talking specifically about non-white australians :/
I have yet to personally encounter any non-white people who dislike umbrella terms on principle, but I have encountered some who think I'm oversensitive about race, and I find it tricky to disagree without invalidating their experience and POV (there's something inherently skeevy about a white person claiming to know more about racism than a non-white one!)
These are very complex issues, and there are a lot of thorny ambiguous situations they bring up. I guess the best we can do is try not to be too rigid or single minded, but instead value everyone's experiences and take their opinions into account (even if we may not agree)
(*)And see, here I am referring to them as "non-white" because that's the "right" term for the australian-centered context of this post, even though the people I'm talking about would generally prefer "POC". Hmm.