BAME - Let's stop using it

I don't like hearing acronyms used as words, so BAME has always grated. I can see how it started though, as catch-all jargon to be used in meetings or amongst professionals who will have numerous other only roughly accurate terms that everyone knows to be generalisations.

It becomes offensive when terms like this seep out into everyday usage and enter the vocabulary of people who are not using them in this way and the fact that they are generalisations and short-cuts is forgotten.

To use less contentious examples, I dislike being referred to as 'a WASPI'. There is no such word - WASPI is an acronym which is the name of a pressure group whose aims I do not share. I am a woman who was born in the 1950s and who feels that her pension situation is very unfair, but I do not define as 'a WASPI' for reasons beyond the remit of this thread, and I dislike hearing it used to refer to all women who have lost out on their pension. My age also makes me 'a Boomer', but I also resent the implication that I have coasted through life getting everything handed to me with no effort, that I must have a valuable house that cost me pennies, a massive pension and a large inheritance, or that I voted for Brexit and dislike foreigners. None of that is true, and I think the assumption is lazy and offensive.

If people who think that others 'take offence too easily' stop to think about stereotypes that are applied to them in ways they dislike, maybe they would get closer to understanding why a lot of people don't like being called BAME.

Mollygo

AmberSpyglass

If it’s getting replaced, the communities in question should get to decide what the terminology is.

It would be interesting to see if there would ever be a consensus. Think of the ‘elderly’ discussion on here.
Some of people I know at work object to BAME as an acronym because it lumps them altogether, when they are very different, just as COW (cross old women) would not fit all the posters on GN.
As they point out, they don’t all fit into the communities the acronym is used for.
Let’s not have an acronym at all. When it’s necessary to identify a group who have a particular need, use the full words.

Sorry, Mollygo, that made me giggle.

Yes, of course you're right. Many posters on GN aren't COWs.

Oldbutstilluseful

My obviously white grandson who has very tight curly hair, was approached by a stranger who happened to be black who asked him what was his heritage.

Grandson wasn’t at all offended, but it is just an illustration that almost everyone can be curious about another person regardless of colour.

How rude!

I can't imagine why any stranger would approach another and ask some about heritage. I doubt very much if this is more than anecdotal.

Alegrias I don’t need to describe my neighbour as anything in RL. .
My point was that I don’t want to upset anyone I come into contact with and it occurred to me that my quite innocent question could do that. You may think that I am being nosy and have no right to ask the question. It was just a friendly conversation. Most people are very happy to talk about themselves.
In our village a lot of us come from somewhere else especially those of us of a certain age. The chap down the road has a Lancashire accent am I not allowed to ask him whereabouts he comes from? My family are from Lancashire too and an interesting chat followed when I did ask the question.
The reason I mentioned my neighbour is white is because we are having a discussion about the BAME community and the fact that the different nationalities don’t like the acronym.
I’m not surprised, they are very diverse groups of people.

My obviously white grandson who has very tight curly hair, was approached by a stranger who happened to be black who asked him what was his heritage.

Grandson wasn’t at all offended, but it is just an illustration that almost everyone can be curious about another person regardless of colour.

AmberSpyglass

If it’s getting replaced, the communities in question should get to decide what the terminology is.

It would be interesting to see if there would ever be a consensus. Think of the ‘elderly’ discussion on here.
Some of people I know at work object to BAME as an acronym because it lumps them altogether, when they are very different, just as COW (cross old women) would not fit all the posters on GN.
As they point out, they don’t all fit into the communities the acronym is used for.
Let’s not have an acronym at all. When it’s necessary to identify a group who have a particular need, use the full words.

Lenny Henry really did have a point when he used to joke “Enoch Powell says he wants to give me £1,000 to go back to where I came from. Which is great, because it’s only 20 pence on the bus from here to Dudley.”

grandmajet I didn't claim that his parents have no input into how my daughter's partner grew up, just that their ethnic and cultural background have not affected him. I don't understand why you think they should have done. It's just not important or relevant to his life now.

His parents chose to come to the UK and understood that they needed to integrate. They are Muslims but have allowed their children to choose their own lives. My daughter's partner went to one of the most successful academic public schools in the country. If anything, I would say his education has defined him more than his family background.

Nevertheless, his genes mean that he is more susceptible to a handful of medical conditions. That's the only reason his background matters.

As a white English person, I have to say I have always thought it was a lumpy and unhelpful phrase but I had assumed that the phrase had arisen from the communities it described. Its a many layered problem. There is a need for some kind of portmanteau words to describe groups by ethnicity for public and statistical purposes.

JenniferEccles

It most definitely is NOT easy to keep up with what we are or aren’t ‘supposed’ to say as it seems to change almost weekly.

It doesn’t change weekly.
It simply doesn’t and your post is totally inaccurate

Growstuff, I don’t understand how you think someone’s parents have no input into how they grow up. Children learn everything from their environment, they learn how to relate to the larger world and the people in it, as well as a sense of who they are. It’s not an insult to realise this. It’s the best way to understand our differences and also that within us which is the same, and rejoice in both of those aspects of being human.

There was a black lady married to a Welshman who described herself as Welsh and was criticised for it, that she couldn’t be Welsh. At first I agreed as I had a view of what being Welsh is BUT then I recalled two people I have known over the years who are very Welsh. If you research their family history and names however they are actually of Swedish extraction! Things are not always what they seem.

Perhaps someone could say why on the census a person could not describe themself as black and English, they could describe themselves as white and English or Black and Scottish or British but not English.

URMSTON GRAN,
I know exactly how you feel! I just had to go and Google bame to see what it meant.

AmberSpyglass

If it’s getting replaced, the communities in question should get to decide what the terminology is.

How about nothing, unless it's relevant?

JenniferEccles

It most definitely is NOT easy to keep up with what we are or aren’t ‘supposed’ to say as it seems to change almost weekly.

Unfortunately, people's bigotry doesn't change weekly. That's usually lifelong.

If it’s getting replaced, the communities in question should get to decide what the terminology is.

grandmajet My daughter's partner was born and grew up in the UK. His parents were born in other countries, but their background, heritage or skin colour do not define the core of his being any more than who my parents were define mine.

It most definitely is NOT easy to keep up with what we are or aren’t ‘supposed’ to say as it seems to change almost weekly.

No, it isn't easy to keep up, ^Suziewoozie* Do you spend all day updating your woke vocabulary?
There are hundreds of medical conditions with changing names, new treatments and different prognoses, hundreds of new foods which promise to improve your health by vast amounts so that if you ate them all you'd live for ever, new hazards to watch out for round every corner, new meanings to familiar words and phrases that we have been using for decades and new words for timeless conditions.

If you read all the articles and reports on all the subjects in all the media, which is the way to see all the naming updates in their context, there'd be no time to sleep.

I have no interest in the minute detail of the lives of the Royal Family, or which celeb is bonking which other celeb's wife so that is not a comparison. Neither have I had a lot of interest in Prince Harry's latest date, until she became a fiancee and then wife in a fanfare of publicity..

Urmstongran

We are now to say ‘ethnic minorities’.
I can’t keep up these days with what’s acceptable.

Agree Urmston!
I dislike ‘People of colour’ even if it’s now the ‘pc expression’, it sounds disrespectful to me. My DH has a keen ear for accents and he often asks people where are they from, they are usually white British, but otherwise I could see a problem.

Is there any reason why anyone has to describe the colour of a person ? No, there damn well isn't. They are people for God's sake.

Of course it’s easy to keep up - that’s a lazy excuse. Its all about thinking it matters. People don’t seem to have the slightest problem with keeping up with the minutiae of the tedious lives of the royal family do they?

The words defining various groups, whether they are ethnic, medical or whatever, change every few years because they get grubby and worn round the edges, and need thrown out and replaced. They start to be used more widely, to mean more than they did to start with, by people who are not familiar with the accurate medical meaning of, say, imbecile versus idiot (according to 19C censuses, an idiot is born an idiot, an imbecile becomes imbecilic with old age) or what exactly makes someone a cretin (congenital hypothyroidism, a severe deficiency of thyroid hormone in newborns, causing impaired neurological function, stunted growth, and physical deformities.)

The old words fall into opprobrium and are replaced by new ones - which are used until they too are replaced. It is not always easy to keep up with the latest terminology, there are so many subjects on which to be criticised if you miss the latest revision.

My son in law is British, born and bred in London. His father was Pakistani and lived through partition. His mother was Irish and remembers the Troubles. The core if his being is very much influenced by them and their experiences, which made them who they were. It is not irrelevant to who he is, and understanding that helped us to get to know him as a whole person.
Incidentally, is fake tan seen as cultural appropriation? Serious question.