Person of color

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Person of color (plural: people of color, persons of color, sometimes abbreviated POC[1]) is a term used primarily in the United States to describe any person who is not white. The term encompasses all non-white groups, emphasizing common experiences of racism. The term is not equivalent in use to "colored", previously used in the US as a term for African Americans only.

People of color was introduced as a preferable replacement to both non-white and minority, which are also inclusive, because it frames the subject positively; non-white defines people in terms of what they are not (white), and minority frequently carries a subordinate connotation.[2] Style guides for writing from American Heritage,[3] the Stanford Graduate School of Business,[4] Mount Holyoke College,[5] recommend the term over these alternatives. It may also be used with other collective categories of people such as students of color, men of color and women of color. Person of color typically refers to individuals of non-European heritage.[6]

The untranslated English term has also seen some limited usage among Germans of color, especially when stressing the postcolonial perspective,[7] but so far has not found entrance into general German language and is not necessarily known by the general populace.


The term "free person of color" (f.p.c.) was used alongside "free colored" in the US census to describe people of partial or full African ancestry who were not slaves, from 1790 until 1860. In South Carolina and other parts of the deep south, this term was used to distinguish between slaves who were mostly "black" or "negro" and free people who were primarily "mulatto" or "mixed race.".[8] Though Martin Luther King, Jr. used the term "citizens of color" in 1963, the phrase in its current meaning did not catch on until the late 1970s.[9][10] Racial justice activists in the U.S. influenced by radical theorists like Frantz Fanon popularized it at this time. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was in wide circulation.[11] Both anti-racist activists and academics sought to move understandings of race beyond the black-white binary then prevalent.[12]

Political significance[edit]



See also[edit]


  4. ^ "Stanford Graduate School of Business Writing and Editing Style Guide" (PDF). Retrieved 18 September 2010. 
  8. ^ Powers, Bernard Black Charlestonians: a Social History 1822-1885. University of Arkansas Press, 1994
  13. ^ Zack, Naomi. American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity, 1995