THREAD – The Wrong Labels

Over the years, many a label has been used to refer to people from different backgrounds. These often become etched into our minds as being acceptable - and then some bugger goes and changes them.

My understanding is that “Person of Colour” and “BAME” are the two mainly acceptable ways of referring to people of different backgrounds. Well, I absolutely HATE them both with a passion.

Person of colour - What am I? Some sort of object that got stained as a result of an accident with permanent ink?

BAME – Black and minority ethnic. So basically, black and all the rest? I’m just one of "the rest" am I?

I’m Ash Hirani. That’s MY label. IF you find yourself in a position where you need to describe my skin tone, then I’m medium brown. Otherwise, I’m just Ash. I’m not a person OF something. I’m MY OWN person.

There are two things that come to mind. The “nice” labels that are given to people – who agreed them? It sure as hell wasn’t me. And who decided which label was acceptable to any given group of people?

With all the progress in race relations that I thought we had made over the past few decades, I honestly believed that we had moved the conversation on to rooting out the last of the racism in our society. But no. We’re still stuck on the labels.

Language matters. So does context, as do both intent and effect. But if we’re still talking about the terminology, instead of focusing on the action needed to root out racism (be that in the world of sport or anywhere else), then I find that thoroughly depressing indeed.