Can y‘all please learn how to use “POC”?
As much as I love your stories, this is making me cringe…
I’ve read a lot of great articles lately, full of good insight and valuable contributions to the ongoing dialogue around racial justice. Yet despite the great intentions of many progressive writers, a good amount of you somehow manage to use this acronym incorrectly.
It’s not a terribly complicated acronym to use, yet I’ve seen a lot of people make mistakes like “POC women” or “POCs”. It reads like the author has recognized “POC” as a social justice buzzword and has a loose understanding of what it’s referring to, but has never actually bothered to learn what the letters mean.
POC (or PoC, I don’t care much what you do with the ‘o’) stands for “person of color” or “people of color,” depending on the context in which it’s used.
Here’s a quick rundown of how (and how not) to use it:
POC is not (usually) an adjective.
The reason “POC women” doesn’t work is that “POC” is its own noun. You wouldn’t say “people women” so don’t say “people of color women.”
It helps to say the full words in your head as you’re writing. If I were to read this essay aloud, I would be saying “people of color” each time the acronym appears. I do this when reading other people’s stories as well, which makes it disjointing to see things like “POC friends.”
Instead of attempting to turn the acronym into an adjective, other ways to get your point across include “non-white” or just replacing the acronym with the noun you want to use (e.g. “students of color”).
Instances, where POC can be used as an adjective, involve non-person nouns. For example, “POC spaces” or “POC organizations” work just fine.
POC is not the only acronym.
WOC is a common acronym meaning “woman/women of color” that is widely used. QPOC stands for “queer person/people of color.”
BIPOC is another common iteration that stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.” In the singular, it stands for “Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color.” [Note: BIPOC tends to be an exception to the non-person nouns rule; because it is a longer acronym and is verbalized as “buy pock”, it is okay to use phrases like “BIPOC writers” or “BIPOC activists.]
It’s also important to know when variations aren’t used or appropriate. Adding -OC to every noun isn’t going to be recognizable to most people. For example, it’s better to say “artists of color” than “AOC,” for obvious reasons.
POC is not a synonym for Black.
When discussing Black issues, do not substitute POC for Black. The same can be said when discussing issues specific to other racial or ethnic groups. A good rule of thumb is to be specific whenever possible. When you use POC in place of specific identifiers, it can obscure the subject that is being talked about in a way that diminishes the importance of what that specific group of people is involved in.
POC is a good term to use when you don’t know someone’s racial identity beyond the fact that they are not white. But when speaking about a person whose identity you do know, specify.
All things considered if you still aren’t certain how to properly use this acronym, just do us all a favor and spell it out.
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