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TERMINOLOGY, WORDS AND MEANINGS

Coloured(s):
Long declining in acceptability especially among those of Caribbean or African background, seen as a euphemism and offensive to many. White people should really never use the term, especially if they are more comfortable with it.

Ethnic Group:
Means (fairly imprecisely) a large in-marrying group of people sharing some cultural features, typically language and religion. If they are settlers or their descendants they are likely to have some distinguishing physical features in common too, but this is a distraction from the real meaning of the term. Everyone has ethnicity, not just minorities, so very loosely the English could be called an ethnic group, more clearly so could the Welsh.

Ethnic(s) or Ethnic People:
As should be clear from the above, a completely meaningless term, though a widely used one. It denies any ethnicity to white majorities and has rather patronising nuances of simplicity and primitiveness when applied as an adjective to handbags, clothing and art. Teachers have a duty to use such a risky word accurately.

Ethnic Minority Group(s):
Technically accurate and can be used for all such groups or a particular one. Sometimes a bit of a mouthful, sometimes comes out like a euphemism. The sequence minority ethnic group is preferred by some people in the hope that it may discourage the ignorant usage above, in other words it keep the words ‘ethnic’ and ‘group’ together to stress that everyone has ethnicity, but some ethnic groups are minorities. English residents in Wales are a minority ethnic group, as are Welsh residents in England.

Black and minority ethnic:
Sometimes abbreviated to BME, an inclusive shorthand for a huge range of groups including white ones like Irish and Polish people.

Visible minorities:
A useful term to refer to minority ethnic people who may experience different treatment because of visible differences, most obviously skin colour. Tends to be more used by academics and writers than by minorities themselves.

People of Colour:
Used widely among… people of colour in the USA but has yet to catch on in Britain. It would have the advantage of including the Chinese and Vietnamese, for once, but ‘visible minorities’ does this. It may see only trivially different from ‘coloured’, but the difference lies in who coined the term: choosing it is different from having it imposed.

Black or black people:
The most accepted term in current use for people of Africa and/or Caribbean descent. Some South Asian people would describe themselves this way too. Some black people prefer the word to have a capital letter when used in the political rather than the adjectival sense. Mirroring the growth of the term ‘African-American’ in the US, ‘African’ may become more widely used in Britain to describe themselves by anyone of African descent.

Black British:
Fairly generally accepted depending on the context. It has the advantage of stressing that the people concerned are British. Most people would see it as only including people of African and Caribbean descent, whereas it is used on occasion by people of South Asian descent to signify the common experience of colour racism.

African-Caribbean:
Widely used and acceptable to almost anyone of Caribbean background with historic African roots (it has mostly replaced Afro-Caribbean probably because of the widespread use in the USA of the term African American).

West Indian:
The term most widely used in the past for African-Caribbean people and still acceptable to some, especially older people born in the Caribbean. In essence it is an old colonial term derived from Columbus‘s mistake.

Jamaican:
Fine if you know the person/people concerned are Jamaican or have roots there. It can be taken as ignorant or insulting otherwise since although amongst the original settlers from the Caribbean about half were from Jamaica, they (and Barbadians, Trinidadians, St Lucians etc) tire of the assumption that the other half did too.

African:
Fine if you know the person/people concerned are African, just like calling white people ‘European’. As mentioned above, ‘African’ or ‘British-African’ may become more widely used by anyone of African descent to describe themselves, .mirroring the growth of the term ‘African-American’ in the US

Negro/Neqress:
To be avoided, it is too close to ‘nigger’. As Portuguese for ‘black’ it was originally meant to be neutral, and in fact was campaigned for in the early 1900s by an American black activist as a replacement for ‘coloured’, but uses change.

Nigger:
It may seem bizarre to include this word as even a possibility, but I do so because of the puzzlement occasionally expressed by white people at the use of the word by black people (especially American rappers) amongst themselves and about themselves. At one time this could be described as internalised oppression in a similar way to using the word ‘coloured’. If ‘coloured’ was the polite term used by whites who understood all the negativity of ‘black’ in their language, ‘nigger’ was sometimes deliberately insulting, always demeaning, but sometimes simply patronising. But as was suggested in the Guardian once "When used by a white person addressing a black person, usually it is offensive and disparaging: used by black people among themselves, it is a racial term with undertones of warmth and goodwill – reflecting, aside from the irony, the tragicomic sensibility that is aware of black history."

More recently, most visibly in rap music but in fact more generally a part of US black language, the N word is used between peers as a generic term meaning ‘person’, as a mild insult, and (confusingly for outsiders who don’t reflect on it) as a term of pride and identification. As Webster’s dictionary puts it "[slang, Negro] originally simply a dialectal variant of ‘Negro’. The term nigger is only acceptable in black English; in all other contexts it is generally regarded as virtually taboo, because of the legacy of racial hatred that underlies the history of its use among whites, and its continuing use among a minority of speakers as a viciously hostile epithet."

Language is fearsomely complicated because it carries so much of the meanings of social life. It’s not possible to have simple rules about social use or to reasonably object to its twists and turns. That’s just the way it is. It is never just words, it is often about constructing important social meanings.

Asian:
Geographically confusing since it ought to include the Chinese, but in common usage it does not. Probably for this reason ‘South Asian’ is used increasingly to refer to those originating in the Indian sub-continent, with roots in several distinct regions in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is generally accepted by the people concerned, unless it is used in a context where the many differences between ‘Asian’ groups ought to be recognised, in which case it will be taken for ignorance at least.

British Asian:
As with black British, states an important fact, therefore a better term than simply ‘Asian’.

Pakistani/Indian/Bangladeshi:
As with ‘Jamaican’ etc fine if it is accurate. As hinted at above, where possible specific terms show more knowledge and hence respect, thus Gujarati, Punjabi, Sylheti, or Muslim, Sikh etc. ‘Pakis’ is an insulting generic term for south Asian people, not a harmless abbreviation for Pakistanis (though one may find an ironic reclaiming of the word by young British Asians).

People of -------- Background:
A term that is deliberately general and makes no pretence at distinguishing different sub-groups. It has the advantage of including their British born children. A bit of a mouthful but unlikely to sound offensive (unless the speaker is obviously trying to avoid saying ‘black’). Including a word like background, roots, descent or heritage when referring to a person or group serves the important purpose of signalling something about identity without trying to define it completely. It’s not really accurate to call a ten-year-old British born girl a Pakistani, but she is of Pakistani background/descent/heritage, she does have Pakistani roots.

Immigrants:
No longer an accurate term for the almost 50% of black and South Asian people born in Britain, nor for their school age children, 95% of whom were born here. 'Second generation immigrants’ compounds the error, implying that ‘they’ still do not belong.

Asylum seekers and refugees:
The former want long-term settlement rights and protection from the country they have fled to, the latter may be more temporary and wish to return home when (for instance) a war is over. Just as disabled people tend to prefer not to be simply described as ‘the disabled’, the phrase ‘people seeking asylum’ may serve to remind us that these are, after all, people like us.

Half-caste:
This term is widely disliked in the USA and in Britain. ‘Mixed race’ is often preferred, not in the (non)sense of being biologically half one ‘race’ and half another, but in the social sense. Other terms that will not be perceived as offensive are ‘mixed heritage’ or ‘dual heritage’. Some people of mixed parentage choose to call themselves ‘black’. This may depend on how they are treated.

Gypsy:
The word probably originated in the 1600s in the mistaken belief that the Romany nomadic people to whom it was applied were originally Egyptian (actually they were of north Indian descent). By the 20th century it was always a pejorative term but as with some others it is more recently being reclaimed. In this sense it is used as a self-description, distinguishing Gypsy Travellers (both with capitals) from Irish Travellers, New Travellers, show and fairground people and bargees. In mainland Europe Gypsies are usually called Roma (and sometimes Sinti) and seldom live a nomadic lifestyle.