Language of Color

After centuries of racial pejoratives and terms focusing on the absence of whiteness, the commonly standard term describe those whose ethnicities can be described as something other than white is “person(s) of color.” This is leaps and bounds better than more archaic terms which were used, with “colored” being similar linguistically but becoming pejorative socially and “negro” being a word borrowed from a language other than English, thereby further emphasizing the “otherness” of people of …

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Monochromatic Colorblind Casting

In the performance world of theater, television, and film, casting without regard to actors’ race or the race of the characters they’ll be portraying is known as “colorblind casting.” It’s a common practice now on Broadway, with Filipina Lea Salonga portraying white French character of Éponine in ?Les Misérables? and Puerto Rican Lin-Manuel Miranda portraying the white founding father Alexander Hamilton, among many other people of color being cast to portray traditionally white roles. The …

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