Talk:Of Color

Created this as a glossary page for fanlore visitors who might not already be as familiar with fannish or SJ lingo.

Quite a few existing pages link the words "character of color" or "characters of color" or variants to the Race in Fandom page -- which I think is fine, I put the see-alsos on the "of color" page to try to get people to the "Race and Fandom" page soon but with the explicit knowledge of what the acronym and the term "chromatic" are often used for in fandom. But does anyone think it would be more (er, labor-intensively...) suitable to a) re-redirect Characters of color from Race and Fandom (where it goes now) to Of Color and/or b) to manually change existing [[Race and Fandom|character of color]] links to redirect to this page? --Sk 22:21, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Is it a fannish term at all? Wikipedia says person of color is a term used, primarily in the United States, to describe all people who are not white. Adding "of color" to "character" seems like a regular descriptive term to me that yes, needs explaining for someone who isn't American, but so do most US terms. --Doro 23:01, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

It's mainly the acronyms CoC and PoC that regularly get asked about in, ah, certain fannish spaces, but making the page "OC" instead of the spelled out version and/or only "Character of Color" when certain fans feel quite strongly that "Fans of Color" are exactly as important seemed not so useful? (Or -- drat, why didn't I think of that before -- maybe I should have made the pagename "Chromatic" and redirected the "Of Color" variants and acronyms to that instead. Ack.) --Sk 23:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

You can still change it around, if you think that would be better! A gardener would have to move the page is all, since there's stuff on the talk page. --MegR 10:45, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, maybe we should. Theoretically I have gardener permissions (I only use them to stomp weasels ban spammers, so have no idea how to go about moving a page) but I'll ask other gardeners about if yes the alt-pagename seems better and how to move. :) --Sk 22:04, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

"Of Color" just seems like a weird title for an article to me—probably because it begins with an article a preposition. (sigh) As a title, it's far from intuitive.

Am I right in assuming that you expect contributors to create internal links using their own (or their source's) euphemism-of-choice, and that this page exists so that the various words/phrases will then all be redirected to this page? In other words, given its odd title, no one other than Fanlore Gardener types (who are in the know) would ever link directly to this page.

By the way, prior to this year I had never heard "chromatic" used in this context. I agree that it badly needs glossing, since it appears in several articles without definition.

Moreover, Doro's point that "people of color" is a U.S. term is a good one. I remember Nalo Hopkinson using the phrase in her guest of honour luncheon address at the ICFA, wrapped up in a schtick about her being "ridden like a horse" by an alien from outer space, whose misunderstandings about race were thus intended to provide a perspective for the mostly white audience. I dearly wanted to tell her that "the alien riding me like a horse" thought pink was a colour, too. Aliens being funny like that, you see: they look at the whole box of crayons. (However, I only wanted to comment on her schtick, you understand, not on the issues she raised; so I never said anything, not wanting to be misunderstood.) The relevant point here is that "colour" in a racial/ethnic/geographic/cultural context may, in itself, require explanation for non-anglophones, especially since it is used in various ways.

There are many terms that have been used to try to broaden/narrow the specificity of the race topic. I quite see the difficulty in covering them all—the more so, given that most are not actually fannish terms at all, but come from the mainstream. This page is supposed to serve as a sort of redirect hub for all of them? --Greer Watson 19:27, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

"Am I right in assuming that you expect contributors to create internal links using their own (or their source's) euphemism-of-choice, and that this page exists so that the various words/phrases will then all be redirected to this page? In other words, given its odd title, no one other than Fanlore Gardener types (who are in the know) would ever link directly to this page."'

That was exactly the intent. If some bemused fan ended up at fanlore trying to find an explanation (using the search box) for the fairly commonly used in fandom acronyms "COC" or "poc" or the word "chromatic" (or whatever new synonyms start trending up) which they'd seen on other fl pages or heard bandied about in fandom without explanation, they'd be automatically redirected to this page, which was meant as a super-quick gloss and then pointer to the most relevant related pages (Race and Fandom, Dark Agenda, etc.)

But maybe making the pagename "chromatic" and just having the "POC" etc. redirects still redirect to it would indeed be better/more logical?

As for the "of color" being a U.S. term, yep. From a layperson's mostly-outside perspective, it does seem that although far from solely U.S. fans, a lot of the fannish Social Justice debates and terminology can be somewhat dominated by U.S. concepts (Cultural Imperialism in Fandom, anyone?), which although not admirable, makes it easy to fall into making them the default concepts (or glossary terms or whatever).

Re the "to aliens, pink," there was an amusing thing a year or so ago where someone poked fun at it (or of descriptors of skin color in fic?) and purplely talked about the "grublike color" or "wormlike shades" of [random white character]'s skin which got spread around. From what I very vaguely remember. In any case, yeah, I got lazy in making the quick-gloss part and used "non-white" as Q&D shorthand (hoping that maybe someone with more background in cultural comparisons on the topic would care to expand at some point?). --Sk 22:04, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

redirects and chromatic characters

Most variations on Character of Color redirected here, so I changed the one variant that redirected to Race and Fandom here for consistency. There is currently no redirect or glossary page for Chromatic Character. Do we want a separate page for Chromatic Character or Character of Color? There are multiple challenges and other fan activities related to chromatic characters documented on Fanlore that could be listed on the page along with meta. The AO3 ships statistics project also looks at the ethnicity of the characters, so that could be linked to as well. There might be some overlap with the contents of Race and Fandom, but the way the Race and Fandom page is organized is quite different and doesn't lend itself to a separate section on characters of color. --aethel (talk) 14:47, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Look, it would be interesting to have a page for a chromatic character, as it would not fit into the races and ethnicities existing on planet Earth, when our skin colors range from white to black, going through yellow, red and brown, but never people naturally green or blue, nor purple or pink flamingo or rosé, magenta or pure pink and etc. Having a page for this term would be good, as it considers that black people, Asians, Hispanics, Latinos, and the various other myriads of terrestrial peoples being compared to alien or humanoid races makes me as a black person a little uncomfortable. Even more than this page we're on puts the term chromatic character as only non-white person implying that a black person how could I be put as someone chromatic, as if there were only two colors, black or white. It scares me a little how the lack of deeper information can leave future or former users unhappy or at a loss for terms. Ellakbhesse (talk) 17:03, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I have previously thought that a glossary page for "Chromatic" by itself would be good, since I have noticed in looking into topics like Chromatic Recasting that it seems to be a fandom-only term. So, my vote would be for a page for "Chromatic", but not Chromatic Character. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 18:57, 16 July 2022 (UTC)