Move over LGBTQ, here comes the BIPOC

That’s Black, Indigenous, and People Of Colour, in case you’re not up on the latest jargon. Apparently there is a black, native, and people of colour coalition coalescing as I type these words.

I’m not sure how this will work out. “People of colour” is a pretty big basket. Asian’s are racialized people of colour, aren’t they? How much does an Asian-Canadian kid have in common with a black kid from Jane Finch? And how much do either of them have in common with a native kid in Attawpiskat?

Seems to me this “BIPOC” label is intended to mean “non-white.” Who is white and who is not, is oddly enough, something that changes over time. For example, when Greeks were first getting off the boat in significant numbers, they suffered all kinds of discrimination because, like other Mediterranean people, they weren’t considered “white.” That’s why a lot of your early Greek immigrants opened restaurants. Like the Chinese, it was a niche that was open to them.

Believe it or not, there was a time when Irish immigrants weren’t considered “white.”

The Irish are a special case, of course. In their old country they had a civil war that dragged on forever, between the white Catholics and the equally white Protestants. It’s kind of tough to get your head around, because they’re all white and they all love Jesus, but they merrily murdered one another for generations.

I’ve always found great optimism in the fact that when we take the occasional visit to the big city, you see all sorts of folks fraternising with people who don’t look like them. Give it a couple of generations, I thought, and everybody will be some shade of beige.

Sadly, we seem to be heading in the opposite direction.