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I've gotten pushback for wanting to use QTBIPOC instead of QTPOC, primarily from white queer folks and cis/straight people of color who are stakeholders in our programs. I feel like changing with the times is important, especially as Black people in particular are continually being erased when we talk about evidence of "progress for all POC" while referring to data that shows greater strides for non-Black People of Color (NBPOC). Lumping all of us into POC obscures the differences in our struggles and the differentiated response to our struggles.
Even when it comes to Black progress, there is a discrepancy in the way we congratulate ourselves for the "first Black X" in the United States, when that tends to be an African immigrant. This is another way popular use of language obscures whether the Black people specifically disenfranchised by American Chattel Slavery are experiencing quality of life improvements, and at what rate.
I could take that further and guess from observation that the struggles and accomplishments of Indigenous Americans are not following the same trends as those of "all POC."
I often wonder how much it burdens non-Black and non-Indigenous POC to erase their particular identities into that term. The largest pushback I've received for stating that "Black" is not interchangeable with POC was from a QT Vietnamese-American who felt like I was then identifying as "anything but [them]." Living in the South, they felt a need to identify with POC because it wasn't like the Bay Area where there were plenty of Asian or Vietenamese-specific Queer events. Though I don't think they ever got past the idea that I was hurting them by not identifying with them, here's what I tried to explain: I don't have a Bay Area. I don't even have an African country to identify with and find a subset of Queer community within that. That is an oppression - an erasure of ancestry - specific to Black Descendents of American chattel slavery. When they recounted the horrors of Vietnamese-specific oppression, I felt my point was made. I knew very little of that history in part because it wasn't my story and also because the oppression of non-Black and non-Indigenous POC is even less spoken and educated about. That is an oppression specific to most "middle-minorities." I think, to be in solidarity is to understand the similarities and differences of one another's oppressions. The pressure to consolidate ourselves into an easily spoken 3-syllables reeks of white supremacy. Dismantling white supremacy, to me, means none of us is any longer *just* white or *just* Black or *just* POC. It means white people reclaiming their ethnic heritages and the sustaining cultures they've given up for white privilege. It means Indigenous people getting to identify in their specific cultures and the rest of us learning their names. It means Black descendants of slavery being SAFE to take genetic tests and travel to find their families. It means so much more that is so specific because we were once a myriad people and I think we can be those myriad people *together,* holding our boundaries and creating safety between them; working in solidarity to relinquish the hierarchies imposed on us.
Anyway, that's my TED Talk. I think QTBIPOC gets closer to acknowledging important differences while keeping us bound up together in solidarity. I will welcome the next iteration that gets us even closer to honest relationship with one another. |
