Also written: POC, person of color, POCI
| Source | Year | Position |
|---|---|---|
| SEIU | 2020 | Use |
| Sierra Club | 2021 | Use with care |
| Native Governance Center | 2021 | Non-preferred |
| Diversity Style Guide | 2023 | Use with care |
| Racial Equity Tools | 2023 | Use |
“color, persons of, workers of — Never: colored persons”
SEIU's compact entry codifies two rules at once: 'persons of color' (and 'workers of' parallel construction) is acceptable; 'colored persons' is never acceptable. The order — 'color, persons of' — reflects the standard alphabetical sort by keyword. Confirms the late-2010s pre-BIPOC convention; SEIU's 2020 stylebook predates the post-Floyd BIPOC mainstreaming.
“'People of color' has in the past served as a collective term for people who are not white. A preferred term today is 'BIPOC' referring to Black, Indigenous and people of color … Either term, PoC or BIPOC, is acceptable for use at the Sierra Club … Overall, we should strive to be more specific whenever possible.”
Sierra Club treats POC and BIPOC as parallel acceptable umbrellas, with BIPOC named as the 'preferred term today' for fronting the Black-and-Indigenous structural distinction. POC remains acceptable; the specificity preference is the cross-cutting rule. Allows abbreviated 'PoC' inline.
“Use Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) rather than People of Color (POC) if referring to a group that includes Black and/or Indigenous folks. Refer to individuals by their individual racial/ethnic/cultural/political identifier, rather than using BIPOC, whenever possible.”
NGC's rule is sharper than Sierra Club's — BIPOC over POC whenever Black or Indigenous people are in the group. POC is implicitly reserved for groups that include neither. Same individual-specificity caveat applies.
“People of color is a generally acceptable term to describe people of races other than White. While it can be useful to have an inclusive umbrella term, it is also important whenever possible to identify people by their specific racial/ethnic group as each has its own distinct experience. Be aware that the term evokes strong feelings among many people and some don't like the idea of lumping people of different racial/ethnic groups together. Avoid using POC.”
DSG accepts 'people of color' as an umbrella, explicitly directs writers away from the abbreviated 'POC' (in contrast to Sierra Club's allowance of 'PoC'), and flags that the umbrella generates real pushback. Links five op-eds debating the term — The New Yorker, Slate, NPR Code Switch, WaPo, GQ — all between 2019 and 2020, marking when the live debate intensified.
“Often the preferred collective term for referring to non-White racial groups. Racial justice advocates have been using the term 'people of color' (not to be confused with the pejorative 'colored people') since the late 1970s as an inclusive and unifying frame across different racial groups that are not White, to address racial inequities. While 'people of color' can be a politically useful term, and describes people with their own attributes (as opposed to what they are not, e.g., 'non-White'), it is also important whenever possible to identify people through their own racial/ethnic group, as each has its own distinct experience and meaning and may be more appropriate.”
RET treats POC as positively framed — names people by their own attributes rather than by what they are not. Roots the term historically in late-1970s racial-justice organizing. Distinguishes sharply from 'colored people,' which is pejorative. Same specificity-preferred caveat as Sierra Club and DSG.
The colored people / people of color distinction
'Colored people' centers color as a defining characteristic and is associated with Jim Crow-era and earlier US racial vocabulary. 'People of color' is people-first construction that emerged in late-1970s racial-justice organizing as an explicit reversal.
The two phrases are NOT interchangeable — and the syntactic difference (color-first vs. people-first) is the key. NAACP retains 'Colored People' in its proper name because of its historical 1909 founding; that does not generalize as license to use the construction outside of formal organization names.
Late-2020 wave of POC debate pieces
Between June and October 2020, multiple major outlets ran pieces questioning POC: NPR Code Switch ('Is It Time To Say R.I.P. To POC,' Sept. 30); The New Yorker (E. Tammy Kim, 'The Perils of People of Color,' July 29); GQ (Damon Young, 'The Phrase People of Color Needs to Die,' Aug. 29); Slate (Rachelle Hampton, 'Which People?,' Feb. 13, 2019).
Marks the inflection point when POC criticism moved from academic and activist conversation into mainstream journalism. Most current style-guide entries on POC were written or updated in early 2021 in response.
View source →People of color is the umbrella that BIPOC partly displaced and that none of the major progressive guides have fully retired. The current corpus position: POC remains acceptable, with two qualifying rules that every guide agrees on.
Rule 1: Use a more specific identifier when one fits. Five of five guides reviewed here name the specificity preference. POC is a collective frame, not an individual identity label. The same critique that limits BIPOC applies — when you mean ‘Black voters’ or ‘Latinx organizers’ or ‘Vietnamese American small business owners,’ say so.
Rule 2: When you mean specifically to front the Black-and-Indigenous structural distinction, BIPOC is the right term. NGC’s rule is the sharpest articulation — BIPOC over POC whenever the group includes Black and/or Indigenous people. Sierra Club treats this as preference rather than requirement; NGC treats it as the rule. Both agree on the underlying logic.
Where the guides genuinely diverge is on whether POC is a positive frame or a flattening one. RET treats POC as the strongest positive umbrella — names people by their own attributes rather than by their relation to whiteness. DSG flags that ‘the term evokes strong feelings’ and curates five 2019–2020 op-eds critiquing it. The criticism takes several forms: that POC erases distinct experiences; that ‘non-white’ is what POC actually means structurally regardless of the people-first construction; that the umbrella works for white speakers as a polite reference but doesn’t fit how communities of color name themselves. The DSG-curated reading list is the best entry point to the live debate.
Abbreviation differs by house. Sierra Club allows ‘PoC’ inline (mixed-case). DSG directs writers away from ‘POC’ entirely. The safest middle: spell out on first use, abbreviate on subsequent reference, match house style.
The ‘colored people’ boundary is firm. Every guide that addresses it (SEIU explicit, RET explicit, DSG implicit) treats ‘people of color’ and ‘colored people’ as definitionally non-interchangeable. The NAACP’s retention of ‘Colored People’ in its proper name reflects its 1909 founding context and does not license generalized use.
POC predates BIPOC by roughly four decades — late-1970s racial-justice organizing — and remains the older, more-established frame. BIPOC layers an explicit Black-Indigenous front onto the same umbrella; both terms coexist in current usage and both are accepted across the corpus.
‘People of color’ entered widespread US racial-justice usage in the late 1970s as a coalitional frame distinguishing itself sharply from the 19th- and early-20th-century ‘colored people’ construction. The syntactic reversal — people first, color as modifier — was the deliberate point. The term gained mainstream institutional adoption through the 1980s and 1990s and was the dominant racial-justice umbrella until the post-2020 BIPOC mainstreaming. The 2019–2020 wave of op-eds critiquing POC, and the parallel rise of BIPOC during the same window, marks the current transition point — both terms coexist; usage is fragmenting along audience and tradition lines.