Ethnicity, Race + Nationality

Articles

General

“All Mixed Up: What Do We Call People of Multiple Backgrounds?” | NPR

• The history of mixed race, multiracial, biracial, and other terms

“Awkward, Uncomfortable Conversations About Racism Worth It” | USA Today

• Tips on addressing racism with someone who was racially offensive or insensitive

“Beyond Terminology: Zooming Out to Focus on Bias” | Conscious Style Guide

“Drop the Hyphen in Asian American“ | Conscious Style Guide

“Feminism and Race: Just Who Counts as a ‘Woman of Color’?” | NPR

“Research Says There Are Ways to Reduce Racial Bias. Calling People Racist Isn’t One of Them.” | Vox

• “In 2016, researchers stumbled on a radical tactic for reducing another person’s bigotry: a frank, brief conversation.”

“What’s Wrong With the Word ‘Minority’?” | Fast Company

“Why We Confuse Race and Ethnicity: A Lexicographer’s Perspective” | Conscious Style Guide

Asian Diaspora

“After 50 Years of ‘Asian American,’ Advocates Say the Term Is ‘More Essential Than Ever'” | NBC News

“Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, a Missing Minority in Criminal Justice Data” | Urban Wire

• Categorizing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as “other” in the criminal justice system fails to acknowledge the vast disparities within the group and feeds the harmful “model minority” myth.

“Asians Are Good at Math? Why Dressing Up Racism as a Compliment Just Doesn’t Add Up” | The Conversation

• Jokes about Asians being good at math “might seem funny at first, but the underlying message is clear: Asian people aren’t seen as human beings; they are calculating machines…In other words, they are dehumanized.”

“Hapa: A Unique Case of Cultural Appropriation by Multiracial Asian Americans?” | Conscious Style Guide

“‘Open the Kimono’: 11 Assumptions Behind a Misogynist and Racist Business Phrase” | Catalyst

“What to Say When You’re Asian American and Someone Calls You ‘Exotic'” | Public Radio International

BAME, BIPOC, and POC

“Are We ‘People of Color’?” | American Indians in Children’s Literature

“#BAMEOver: A Statement for the UK” | What Next?

• “We choose not to be reduced to an inaccurate grouping. But what we have in common is that we are…’People who experience racism’. T​his​ term will require you to then articulate who you are referring to.”

“Feminism and Race: Just Who Counts as a ‘Woman of Color’?” | NPR

“We Should Stop Saying ‘People of Color’ When We Mean ‘Black People'” | Medium

“What We Get Wrong About “People of Color” | Wired

• “Broad, all-inclusive sweeps are convenient and comfortable—and sometimes, for the sake of progress, we need them—but they can also do great damage.”

“Why the Term ‘BIPOC’ Is So Complicated, Explained by Linguists” | Vox

• “When people find themselves struggling to find the best language to talk about identities, [PhD linguistics student deandre miles-hercules] argues that they should think more critically about what exactly they are trying to say.”

Black Diaspora

“Capitalizing for Equality” | Conscious Style Guide

“Is It Time to Reclaim the Word ‘Nappy’?” | Allure

“Stop Calling Black Women ‘Superheroes'” | Dame

“The Trouble With Tribe” | Learning for Justice

“What Black Women Hear When They’re Called ‘Auntie'” | The Atlantic

“Why I Don’t Refer to My Hair as ‘Dreadlocks’” | Vogue

“The Words ‘Ghetto’ and ‘Hood’ Were Once Looked Down Upon. Now, Black Chefs Are Reclaiming Them” | Today

Coded Language + Euphemisms

“AP Stylebook Update: It’s OK to Call Something Racist When It’s Racist” | Poynter

“‘Obama’s People’ and ‘the African Americans’: Using the Language of Othering | The Huffington Post

• How use of the word the before any racial group creates distance and puts them in one monolithic category

“The Racist Politics of the English Language” | Boston Review

• “Why the semantic somersaults when it comes to race? We never hear anti-Semitic rhetoric described as ‘religiously tinged.’”

“Tony Dungy: Some Announcers’ Biased Language Perpetuates Black QB Stereotypes” | The Undefeated

• “The position that needs the most change might be the broadcast booth. That’s where African-American quarterbacks are still described more for their physicality than intellect.”

Design + Technology

“Github Plans to Replace Racially Insensitive Terms Like ‘Master’ and ‘Whitelist’” | The Next Web

“How the Design Industry Can Confront Racist Terminology” | Architectural Digest

“Rethinking the Design of the Race and Ethnicity Question on Surveys” | UX Collective

Filipine/Filipinx/Pilipinx Diaspora

“In Defense of the X: Centering Queer, Trans, and Non-Binary Pilipina/x/os, Queer Vernacular, and the Politics of Naming” | Alon: Journal for Filipinx American and Diasporic Studies

Food + Travel

“Can La Cocina’s Food-Focused Conference Help Grow Equitable Communities?” | KQED

“Consider Ditching These 11 Words When Talking About Your Travels” | Fodor’s Travel

“To Change Racial Disparity in Food, Let’s Start With Cookbooks” | Eater

“Why We Should Examine Our Culinary Vocabulary” | Conscious Style Guide

Immigration

“‘Expat’ and the Fraught Language of Migration” | The Atlantic

“A Historically Xenophobic Metaphor Has Been Used by Trump, Limbaugh, Obama—and Us?” | Public Radio International

• When immigrants of color are described as “pouring in,” “swamping,” “flooding in,” or as “coming in ‘tides’ and ‘waves.’”

“Stop Saying This Is a Nation of Immigrants!” | CounterPunch

Israel + Palestine

“Israel-Palestine: A Glossary of Problematic Media Language” | Middle East Eye

• “Often, the target of criticism is language that appears to equivocate between unequal sides.”

“Objectivity and Palestine” | The Objective

• “To present this as an attack-and-response conflict between two sides is to actively conceal the fact that only one ‘side’ of the ‘conflict’ controls all the levers of power.”

“Study: U.S. Newspapers Are More Than Twice as Likely to Cite Israeli Sources in Headlines Than Palestinian Ones” | The Intercept

• “The firm analyzed nearly 100,000 news headlines about the conflict in the American press over the past five decades and found that the Israeli point of view was featured much more prominently than the Palestinian one, and that references to Palestinians’ experiences of being ‘refugees’ or living under ‘occupation’ have steadily declined.”

“Why Calling Israel an Apartheid State Is Not Enough” | Middle East Eye

• “The report [from B’Tselem, a leading human rights group in Israel] found that Israel meets the definition of apartheid under international law, which defines apartheid as ‘inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.'”

“Why Journalists Are Speaking Out Against Western Media Bias in Reporting on Israel-Palestine” | Unbias the News!

Journalism

“What International Coverage of Tiananmen Got Wrong” | Columbia Journalism Review

• “The reporters did not create a safe space for people to speak…This kind of journalistic practice is actually not about Tiananmen, but a conscious—and stylistic—choice that is commonly adopted to frame ignorance and silence.” —Tony Lin, video journalist, Quartz

Latine/Latinx/Latina/Latino Diaspora

“Let’s Talk About Latine” | Call Me Latine

• “The objective of the term Latine is to remove gender from the Spanish word Latino, by replacing it with the gender-neutral Spanish letter E. This idea is native to the Spanish language and can be seen in many gender-neutral words like ‘estudiante’.”

“Does Latinx Mark the Spot for a Gender-Neutral Spanish Language?” | The New School Free Press

• From Latin@ to Latinx to Latine, a look at the complexities of creating and adopting inclusive language.

“Latina/o/x” | Inside Higher Ed

• The need for an inclusive, non-gender-conforming term for Latina and Latino
• The arguments against using an x

“Why Student Group MEChA’s Proposed Name Change Has Set Off a Fierce, Multi-Generational Debate” | Remezcla

• Chicana/Chicano/Chicanx: “These proposed shifts in language…remind us that there has never been consensus around the terms that should define our complex communities.”

Middle East and North Africa Diaspora

“Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim? What’s the Difference?!” | TeachMideast

Native/Indigenous Peoples

“Are We ‘People of Color’?” | American Indians in Children’s Literature

“Blackhorse: Do You Prefer ‘Native American’ or ‘American Indian’? 6 Prominent Voices Respond” | Indian Country Today Media Network

• Different perspectives on the terms Native, indigenous, Native American, American Indian, Indian, and First American, and the preference for tribal references.

“Hawaiian vs Californian: Why There Is a Difference. “| ‘Āina Momona

• “In Hawaii, the word Hawaiian is understood as an ethnic designation for a native person of Polynesian descent, and its use in the more general sense ‘a resident of Hawaii’ is considered an error.“

“Inuit or Eskimo: Which Name to Use?” | Alaska Native Language Center

“On the Words ‘Tribe’ and ‘Nation'” | Indian Country Today

• “We downgrade ourselves, and our status, as nations and peoples when we fail to choose the most powerful terms in English to express our political identity.”

“100 Ways to Support—Not Appropriate From—Native People” | Broadly

• On the use of powwow, squaw, “go off the reservation,” and other offensive language.

“Should Saying Someone Is ‘Off The Reservation’ Be Off-Limits?” | Code Switch

“Stop Saying This Is a Nation of Immigrants!” | CounterPunch

“Thirty Everyday Phrases That Perpetuate the Oppression of Indigenous Peoples” | Radical Copyeditor

• Phrases include bury the hatchet, chief, circle the wagons, hold down the fort, Indian style, Indian giver, long time no see, off the warpath, powwow, rain dance, savage, shaman, spirit animal, tribe, vision quest, war paint.

“What’s Tribal Sovereignty and What Does It Mean for Native Americans?” | The Journalist’s Resource

“Why Saying ‘Aborigine’ Isn’t OK: 8 Facts About Indigenous People in Australia” | Amnesty International

“Why We Use ‘Indigenous’ Instead of ‘Aboriginal'” | Animikii

Non-English Words

“Integrating Non-English Words Into Academic Writing” | University Affairs

Reclamation + Slurs

“Arabs, the N-Word and the A-Word Are the Same” | Muslim Girl

“Editorial Note: The Use of the Word Squaw” | Native Northeast Portal

• “Instead of having the term be overtaken by a weaponized colonial construction as an insult, [Abenaki scholar Marge Bruchac] advocates for reclaiming squaw‘s original meaning as a term of honor and respect towards women.”

“New Latinx Generation Embraces the Code-Switching Identity Once Derided as ‘Pocho'” | Borderzine

“Why Being ‘Gypped’ Hurts the Roma More Than It Hurts You” | NPR

• “I encounter a lot of people who tell me that they never knew the word ‘gypped’ had anything to do with gypsies, or that it’s offensive—especially when the word is heard not read. My response to them is, That’s okay. You didn’t know but now you do. So stop using it. It may mean nothing to you, but when we hear it, it still hurts.” —Ian Hancock, professor, University of Texas at Austin

White Diaspora

“Moving Beyond ‘Default’ Language in Pop-Culture Criticism” | Conscious Style Guide

“‘Ukraine,’ Not ‘the Ukraine‘: The Significance of Three Little Letters” | Time

“White People Are Still Raised to Be Racially Illiterate. If We Don’t Recognize the System, Our Inaction Will Uphold It.” | Think

“Why Do We Keep Using the Word ‘Caucasian’?” | Sapiens

• “The use of an outdated and disproven term that falsely purports to describe a separate race of people has no place in the U.S.”