This commentary is by Justin Mark Hideaki Salisbury of Burlington, Mi’kmaq and Passamaquoddy Indian, a graduate student in education at the University of Vermont. He has worked as a design laboratory assistant, economic research fellow, therapist, legislative aide and teacher.
Language evolves over time. Sometimes, I don’t think the change is consequential. Sometimes, language changes to promote equity, but this is not always the case. I want us to innovate and strive toward greater equality, but sometimes people with colonizer priorities hijack the evolution of rhetoric and use it to enhance colonization. They teach the young people clever but misleading ideas and tell them that they are more enlightened than their older relatives. This can divide our families, and I try my best not to bring colonization home from the ivory tower.
When I was an undergraduate student over 10 years ago, “BIPOC” meant “Black and Indigenous People of Color.” Before the pandemic, Black and Indigenous communities used the BIPOC label to unite as we worked on decolonization projects. Most of the time, we either operated specifically within monoracial groups or as People of Color (POC) collectively. When it was time to talk about taking down a Christopher Columbus statue, “BIPOC” identified a specific subgroup of POC with a special relationship to colonization. We would also use “BIPOC” while addressing violence against BIPOC folks committed by settlers, including settler POC.
Black and Indigenous people should still have agency over the BIPOC label, but the term has been co-opted — stolen — by colonizing neoliberal Whites and settler POC. Now, we are being told that BIPOC stands for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” thus including all the same people as the term “People of Color.”
The act of expanding BIPOC to include people who are not Black or Indigenous — settlers — has been an act of settler colonialism. Many people from settler cultures believe that they have expanded POC to BIPOC to “be more inclusive,” but it was already an identifier that the colonized people — both Black and Indigenous — had already been using to unite ourselves due to our special relationship with colonization. It was never meant to include settler groups, nor was it something that we would use to describe our personal identities. I cannot think of any Black or Indigenous person today who wants to be identified as “a BIPOC person,” but I know a lot of settler POC who call themselves “BIPOC.”
The closest term I know to what BIPOC once meant is “involuntary minorities.” Black and Indigenous people did not choose to enter this society where we are minorities; the society was forced upon us, and our minoritization was forced upon us. As other groups have immigrated to the United States, even if they came from terrible conditions elsewhere, they were privileged enough to make the choice to come, and they are settlers. They were able to come with dreams of improving their lives and building their own empires. Immigration policy remains a program of colonization; thus, the welcoming of immigrants depends upon their contributions to colonization. Involuntary minorities are treated as objects of colonization; voluntary minorities are treated as apprentices in colonization.
One of the greatest forces of settler colonialism is the entitlement mindset of settlers: thinking they can take things that belong to the colonized people. Settlers of any color can think this way. The BIPOC label was once the property of the colonized people, but it has been stolen by settlers who have declared themselves entitled.
Some people argue that the expansion of BIPOC centers on the experiences of Black and Indigenous people within POC circles, but I have never experienced that; frequently, settler POC who call themselves “BIPOC” are staunchly unwilling to allow any air time to the B or I.
Expanding BIPOC to include settler POC enables us to leverage the oppression of Black and Indigenous communities to justify the collection of resources and opportunities but allocate those resources and opportunities to benefit all POC, including settler POC. For example, for Black History Month or Native American Heritage Month, we now see BIPOC events that center on the experiences of me-first settler POC. Systemically, privileged settler POC have the wherewithal to extract the most benefit from those resources, leaving the Black and Indigenous POC to benefit less, if at all. These programs help the settler POC advance further beyond the colonized POC and ultimately enhance settler colonialism.
To many people who were a part of coalition building between Black and Indigenous communities prior to Covid-19, we see the co-opting of BIPOC as just another act of settler colonialism, even when well-intending people unwittingly participate in it. Settler colonialist outlets have embraced this expansion as they rewrite the narrative, and those who have been organizing for progress have found that our organizing identifier has been stolen.
Well-intending people, including colonized people, can reinforce settler colonialism. The widespread movement in our society to co-opt BIPOC has been so effective that old electronic resources have been deleted or modified, and knowledge that could support our liberation has been erased. Books like Asian Settler Colonialism are being canceled. We cannot forget that BIPOC was coined by the colonized POC for the colonized POC. We should work in coalitions with all POC at times, but we must also remember how to address the specific marginalization of Black and Indigenous People of Color.
