Image courtesy of Dorothy Marder
The world is changing around us every day. But in this never-ending pandemic year, the pace of change feels faster than ever before.
To describe and understand a changing world, we ought to change the language we use too. Language can either limit or expand our ability to see past the world that is, so we can see the world that is coming into being.
I still remember the first time I read the Combahee River Collective Statement, created by a collective of Black Feminists active on the East Coast from 1974 to 1980. In their statement they argued that the white-dominated feminist movement and the male-dominated civil rights movement were not addressing the needs of Black women and Black Lesbians. Women who opposed patriarchal oppression were rejecting the term “feminism” because it was a movement that primarily served the interests of white women. The Collective members redefined their own feminism as “Black feminism” to name their own identity and fight cis-hetero-patriarchy on their own terms. Throughout history, oppressed people have created the terms for their own identities and struggles, rather than allow ourselves to be defined by a society that is hostile to our very existence.
The term “woman of color” was coined to allow for a unified platform of demands from Black, Asian, Indigenous and Latinx women at the International Women's Year Conference in 1977. The platform was written by Black women under the name “Black Womens’ Agenda” but when women of other races wanted to join, they created the term “women of color” to represent their unity. They created a whole new term together, rather than use the term ”minority women” that had been imposed on them by a white supremacist culture that views whiteness as the default. This term was created as a purposeful political identity.
I learned this history from Loretta Ross, cofounder and national coordinator of SisterSong - Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. I encourage you to learn from her directly.
The terms “women of color” and more broadly, “people of color” have been in common use ever since that moment. But as we live through this time of great upheaval, of deepening understanding of how interconnected systems of white supremacy impact everything in our society, a new term is emerging.
“BIPOC” is a term that’s been around for a few years now, but started to be used more commonly in the Sierra Club community just last year. It stands for “Black, Indigenous and people of color.”
I’ve been using BIPOC for a while in other movement spaces. But I didn’t always employ it at Sierra Club, because it just wasn’t common. Many folks in our community wouldn't have known what I meant. But as the racial justice uprising was unfolding last summer, some staff members and volunteer leaders, including myself, started to evolve the language we were using at Sierra Club. I was seeing this term, BIPOC, which originated in social justice movements, pop up all over the place, in fairly mainstream spaces. I thought Sierra Club was ready too.
So I, along with other staff of color, started using BIPOC, rather than just people of color. Now it’s in common use across the organization, and we’re working on supporting all our members and supporters to learn about this term - hence this blog post you’re reading right now.
So why have people lifted up this new term, when the term “people of color” has been serving as a convenient catch-all for people who experience oppression on the basis of their racial identity? Well, it’s because the term “people of color” has frankly become a little too convenient. Referring to all people who aren’t white with one collective describer erases the very real differences in lived experience among people of different races.
Of course BIPOC people share some similar experiences. But systemic racism continues to oppress, invalidate, and deeply affect the lives of Black and Indigenous people in ways other people of color may not necessarily experience. Black and Indigenous individuals and communities still bear the extractive and dehumanizing impacts of slavery and genocide, in concrete ways that play out every day of our lives.
So when we say BIPOC, we strive for political unity, just like the women of color in 1977 were doing. BIPOC people are stronger and better able to defend ourselves from the attacks of a white supremacist society when we are united as a movement. But by being more specific - that’s the “Black, Indigenous, AND people of color” part - we also acknowledge that not all oppression is the same, and not all BIPOC people are impacted the same way.
BIPOC won’t be the last stop on this journey, though. Language will continue to change as our political reality and analysis change. And there are obvious flaws to the term BIPOC that we’ll have to keep growing to address. Just as we sought to end the erasure of Black and Indigenous identities by evolving from “people of color” to “BIPOC,” settling on BIPOC risks the erasure of Asian and Latinx people’s unique oppression.
I’ve been particularly aware of this as I bear witness to and rise in solidarity with the movement to stop anti-AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) hate in the U.S. Just like anti-Blackness is a unique phenomenon that operates differently than other forms of racial oppression, anti-AAPI bigotry and misogyny has its own nuances and contours that are necessary for anyone committed to the end of white supremacy to understand. To better understand how anti-AAPI racism functions, and how it intersects and connects with anti-Blackness, check out the resources below.
Why Is It So Hard to Stand with Asian Americans?
From the Front Lines webinar video
Vox: The history of tensions — and solidarity — between Black and Asian American communities, explained
#WeKeepUsSafe: APALA’s Resource Guide on Anti-Asian Violence
I’ll leave you with some wise words from another BIPOC woman I’ve learned from in my lifelong evolution: Monica Ramirez, founder and president of Justice for Migrant Women. She spoke about the emergence of the term BIPOC recently on the NPR Code Switch podcast:
“It is worth us experimenting with the terminology if there's the possibility of bringing us closer together for the purposes of building power.”