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43-422: The book centers on the experiences of women of color and emphasizes the points of what is now called intersectionality within their multiple identities, challenging white feminists who made claims to solidarity based on sisterhood . Writings in the anthology, along with works by other prominent feminists of color, call for a greater prominence within feminism for race-related subjectivities, and ultimately laid

86-513: A U.S. context". The term BIPOC does not appear to have originated in the Black and Indigenous American communities, as it had been adopted much more widely among white Democrats than among people of color in a 2021 national poll. Asian and Latino Americans have often been confused as to whether the term includes them. The centering of Black and Indigenous people in the acronym has been criticized as an unnecessary, unfounded, and divisive ranking of

129-643: A conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz. After the conference, the "proceeding" were then "collected in a 1991 special issue of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies." De Lauretis discussed the main ideas of queer theory in the issue, making an impact on the field of queer studies. She suggested that queer studies should be studied separately from lesbian and gay studies. De Lauretis states that "queer theory challenged norms" that enforce inequalities regarding "social identities" such as gender, sexuality, class, and race. Although she coined

172-415: A contributor, wrote that Black, Native American, Asian American, and Latina women "were involved in autonomous organization at the same time that we [were] beginning to find each other. Certainly This Bridge Called My Back […] has been a document of and a catalyst for these coalitions." In addition to providing the framework for new activist-based coalitions, This Bridge has had a considerable impact upon

215-698: A political act of naming themselves. In the twenty-first century, use of the term and the categorization continued to proliferate: for example, the Joint Council of Librarians of Color (JCLC), a recurring conference of the American Library Association , which uses the "of color" designation for its five ethnic affiliate associations. They include: the Black Caucus of the American Library Association ,

258-568: A political and personal positioning." Though This Bridge is referenced in many essays and books regarding the development of Third World feminism, one of the most widely recognized explorations is Norma Alarcón 's essay entitled "The Theoretical Subject(s) of This Bridge Called My Back and Anglo-American Feminism." In her essay, Alarcón discusses the importance of looking at relationships not just between gender groups but within gender groups, as highlighted in This Bridge . Through questioning

301-485: A return to "POC" for its emphasis on coalition-building, while others call for a contextual approach that names "the groups actually included and centered in the arguments themselves". The term has also been criticized for being redundant. Teresa de Lauretis Teresa de Lauretis ( Italian: [teˈrɛːza de lauˈrɛːtis] ; born 1938 in Bologna ) is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of

344-594: Is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered " white ". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the United States; however, since the 2010s, it has been adopted elsewhere in the Anglosphere (often as person of colour ), including relatively limited usage in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and Singapore. In

387-593: Is sometimes applied to other groups in Southern Africa , such as the Basters of Namibia . The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style cites usage of "people of colour" as far back as 1796. It was initially used to refer to light-skinned people of mixed African and European heritage. French colonists used the term gens de couleur ("people of color") to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry who were freed from slavery in

430-781: The American Indian Library Association , the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association , the Chinese American Librarians Association , and REFORMA: The National Association to Promote Library & Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking . According to Stephen Satris of Clemson University , in the United States there are two main racial divides . The first is the "black–white" delineation;

473-825: The History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz . Her areas of interest include semiotics , psychoanalysis , film theory , literary theory , feminism , women's studies , lesbian- and queer studies . She has also written on science fiction . Fluent in English and Italian , she writes in both languages. Additionally, her work has been translated into sixteen other languages. De Lauretis received her doctorate in Modern Languages and Literatures from Bocconi University in Milan before coming to

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516-726: The United States . She joined the History of Consciousness with Hayden White , Donna Haraway , Fredric Jameson and Angela Davis . Has held Visiting Professorships at universities worldwide including ones in Canada , Germany , Italy, Sweden , Austria , Argentina , Chile , France , Spain , Hungary , Croatia , Mexico and the Netherlands . She currently lives in San Francisco, CA , but often spends time in Italy and

559-699: The Americas. 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 ". After the American Civil War , "colored" was used as a label almost exclusively for black Americans, but the term eventually fell out of favor by the mid-20th century. Although American activist Martin Luther King Jr. used

602-452: The Latino population itself, and for this reason, some commentators have found the term misleading. The acronym BIPOC, referring to "black, indigenous, (and) people of color", first appeared around 2013. By June 2020, it was, according to Sandra Garcia of The New York Times , "ubiquitous in some corners of Twitter and Instagram", as racial justice awareness grew in the United States in

645-465: The Netherlands. De Lauretis' account of subjectivity as a product of "being subject/ed to semiosis" (i.e., making meanings and being made by them) helps to theoretically resolve and overcome the tension between the human action (agency) and structure. She makes use of Umberto Eco 's reading of C.S. Peirce in order to establish her notion of semiotics of experience. She brings corporeality back to

688-458: The United States, emphasizes common experiences of systemic racism , which some communities have faced. The term may also be used with other collective categories of people such as "communities of color", "men of color" (MOC), "women of color" (WOC), or "librarians of color". The acronym "BIPOC" refers to "black, indigenous, and other people of color" and aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people. The term " colored "

731-400: The United States, the term is involved in the various definitions of non-whiteness , including African Americans , Asian Americans , Native Americans , Pacific Islander Americans , multiracial Americans , and some Latino Americans , though members of these communities may prefer to view themselves through their cultural identities rather than color-related terminology. The term, as used in

774-777: The Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (1982) created a "shift in feminist consciousness" by making "available to all feminists the feelings, the analyses, and the political positions of feminists of color, and their critiques of white or mainstream feminism." Cherríe Moraga, Ana Castillo , and Norma Alarcón adapted this anthology into the Spanish-language Este puente, mi espalda: Voces de mujeres tercermundistas en los Estados Unidos . Moraga and Castillo served as editors, and Castillo and Alarcón translated

817-412: The anthology "has allowed her to offer global perspectives on issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and power against the now antiquated white feminists' utopian ideal of universal sisterhood." This Bridge has been hailed for providing an "easily accessible discourse, plain speaking, a return to Third World storytelling, voicing a difference in the flesh, not a disembodied subjectivity but a subject location,

860-503: The boundaries of feminist and academic discourse." Anthologists Moraga and Anzaldúa stated in the preface that they expected the book to act as a catalyst, "not as a definitive statement on Third World Feminism" in the United States. They also expressed a desire to "express to all women, especially white, middle class women, the experiences which divide us as feminists ...we want to create a definition that expands what 'feminist' means." Teresa de Lauretis noted that This Bridge and All

903-529: The center of every contemporary racial issue", other commentators have found it problematic that the ascendancy of the term coincided with the pronounced rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic . By rendering Asian Americans as an unnamed "remnant", critics argue that the acronym renders the racial discrimination they experience invisible, thereby perpetuating harmful model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes. Some critics advocate

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946-410: The discourse on the constitution of subjectivity which has been conceived mainly in the linguistic terms. Her semiotics is not just the semiotics of language but also the semiotics of visual images and non-verbal practices. Her ( Peircean ) "habit" or "habit-change" is often compared to Bourdieu 's notion of habitus . Michel Foucault ’s analysis of body excludes the consideration of the specificity of

989-462: The existence of objective "truth" as separate from human construction, and through an analysis of language that acknowledges deep contextual and historical meanings, she highlights the intentions of This Bridge to challenge the forces that put all feminists into one category, as well as the oppositional thinking that makes differences hierarchical instead of inter-related and interdependent. Barbara Smith believed that these messages are made clear within

1032-473: The female body that many feminists have criticized. Supplementing the failure, gender should be one of the effects of technology which renders the basic intelligibility of body and that turns to de Lauretis’ "technology of gender". de Lauretis coined the term " queer theory " although the way in which it is used today differs from what she originally suggested by the term. She coined the term in February 1990 at

1075-407: The foundation for third wave feminism . It is among the most cited books in feminist theory. Though other published writings by women of color existed at the time of This Bridge' s printing, many scholars and contributors to This Bridge agree that the bringing together of writing by women of color from diverse backgrounds in one anthology made This Bridge unique and influential. Barbara Smith ,

1118-579: The late 1980s and early 1990s, it was in wide circulation. Both anti-racist activists and academics sought to move the understanding of race beyond the black–white dichotomy then prevalent. The phrase "women of color" was developed and introduced for wide use by a group of black women activists at the National Women's Conference in 1977. The phrase was used as a method of communicating solidarity between non-white women that was, according to Loretta Ross , not based on "biological destiny" but instead

1161-479: The marginalization that the term was intended to counter. Other commentators state that the term "people of color" is a misnomer and an arbitrary term in which people who are white are mislabeled as people of color. People of color also encompasses various heterogeneous groups which have little in common, with some arguing that American culture as a whole does not deliberate on economic inequality or issues of class . Political scientist Angelo Falcón argues that

1204-441: The oppression faced by the communities of color. The acronym's purposeful and definitional assertion that the historical and present-day suffering experienced by Black and Indigenous people is more significant in kind or degree than that of other non-white groups has been described as casting communities of color in an oppression Olympics that obscures intersectional characteristics, similarities, and opportunities for solidarity in

1247-442: The pages of This Bridge , asserting that "more than any other single work, This Bridge has made the vision of Third World feminism real." However, even with these aforementioned impacts, many individuals contend that women of color feminisms still remain marginal within women's studies in the United States. Chela Sandoval , in her essay on third-world feminism , writes: "The publication of This Bridge Called My Back in 1981 made

1290-417: The phrase person of color to describe white Hispanic and Latino Americans and Spaniards has been criticized as inaccurate. The United States census denotes the term "Latino" as a pan-ethnic label, rather than a racial category, and although many Latinos may qualify as being "people of color", the indiscriminate labeling of all Latinos as "people of color" obscures the racial diversity that exists within

1333-541: The presence of U.S. third world feminism impossible to ignore on the same terms as it had been throughout the 1970s. But soon the writings and theoretical challenges of U.S. third world feminists were marginalized into the category of what Allison Jaggar characterized in 1983 as mere 'description.'" This Bridge "offered a rich and diverse account of the experience and analyses of women of color; with its collective ethos, its politics of rage and regeneration, and its mix of poetry, critique, fiction and testimony, it challenged

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1376-442: The second racial delineation is the one "between whites and everyone else", with whites being "narrowly construed" and everyone else being called "people of color". Because the term "people of color" includes vastly different people with only the common distinction of not being white, it draws attention to the perceived fundamental role of racialization in the United States. Joseph Tuman of San Francisco State University argues that

1419-538: The struggle against racism. Critics argue that the systems of oppression foundational to U.S. history were not limited to the slavery and genocide suffered by Black and Indigenous Americans, but also included the Asian American and Latino American experiences of oppression under the Chinese Exclusion Act and the doctrine of manifest destiny . Noting that "Black and Indigenous people are not at

1462-424: The term "citizens of color" in 1963, the phrase in its current meaning did not catch on until the late 1970s. In the late 20th century, the term "person of color" was introduced in the United States in order to counter the condescension implied by the terms "non-white" and " minority ", and racial justice activists in the U.S., influenced by radical theorists such as Frantz Fanon , popularized it at this time. By

1505-602: The term "people of color" is attractive because it unites disparate racial and ethnic groups into a larger collective in solidarity with one another. Use of the term "person of color", especially in the United States, is often associated with the social justice movement. Style guides from the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style, the Stanford Graduate School of Business , and Mount Holyoke College all recommend

1548-425: The term "person of color" over other alternatives. Unlike "colored", which historically referred primarily to black people and is often considered offensive , "person of color" and its variants refer inclusively to all non-European peoples—often with the notion that there is political solidarity among them—and, according to one style guide, "are virtually always considered terms of pride and respect". Many critics of

1591-402: The term, both white and non-white, object to its lack of specificity and find the phrase racially offensive. It has been argued that the term lessens the focus on individual issues facing different racial and ethnic groups, particularly African Americans. Preserving "whiteness" as an intact category while lumping every other racial group into an indiscriminate category ("of color") replicates

1634-435: The text. In 2002, AnaLouise Keating and Gloria Anzaldúa edited an anthology ( this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation ) that examined the impact of This Bridge twenty years later while trying to continue the discussion started by Anzaldúa and Moraga in 1981. Women of color The term " person of color " ( pl. : people of color or persons of color ; abbreviated POC )

1677-407: The use of broad terms like "person of color" is offensive because it aggregates diverse communities and projects "a false unity" that "obscure[s] the needs of Latinos and Asians". Citing the sensitivity of the issue, Falcón suggested that there should be "a national summit of Black, Latino and Asian community leaders" to discuss "how can the problem of the so-called 'black/white binary' be tackled in

1720-474: The wake of the murder of George Floyd . The term aims to emphasize the historic oppression of black and indigenous people, which is argued to be superlative and distinctive in U.S. history at the collective level. The BIPOC Project promotes the term in order "to highlight the unique relationship to whiteness that Indigenous and Black (African Americans) people have, which shapes the experiences of and relationship to white supremacy for all people of color within

1763-569: The way it respects the diversity it ignores and helps build the broader constituency for racial social justice that is needed in the country" and to "open the way for a perhaps much-needed resetting of relations between these historically-discriminated against communities that can lead to a more useful etymology of this relationship". Comedian George Carlin described "people of color" as "an awkward, bullshit, liberal-guilt phrase that obscures meaning rather than enhancing it", adding, "What should we call white people? 'People of no color'?" The use of

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1806-445: The world of academia for its linking of feminism, race, class, and sexuality. It also brought "an intellectual framework" of identities based on race and ethnicity to lesbian and gay studies. In this bridge we call home , the anthology published in 2002 to examine the impacts of This Bridge twenty years later, Australian anthropologist Helen Johnson details This Bridge' s effects on institutional teaching environments. She describes how

1849-665: Was originally equivalent in use to the term "person of color" in American English , but usage of the appellation "colored" in the Southern United States gradually came to be restricted to " Negroes ", and is now considered a racial pejorative. Elsewhere in the world, and in other dialects of English , the term may have entirely different connotations, however; for example, in South Africa, " Coloureds " refers to multiple multiracial ethnic groups and

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