Asian has a surprisingly complex history. In the 1930s it began to replace the term Asiatic to describe people and customs from the continent of Asia. As the OED makes clear, the word asiatic was seen as derogatory by the people it described.
White
In discussing this project, certain of my interlocutors – when I mentioned this entry – felt it was unnecessary, that…
Race & Racialisation
Thinking about race is complex and evolving; it brings together work in the natural sciences with cultural theory and history.…
Multicultural & Multiculturalism
Multicultural is a Twentieth Century term originally coined in Canada to denote the phenomenon of people from a range of…
Identity
To talk about destabilised and multifarious or fractured identities became the cliched preserve of academic campuses across (but not limited…
Ethnic & Ethnicity
The usage of ethnic and ethnicity is perhaps more slippery and politically charged than even the term culture. Famously, the…
Diversity
The BFI diversity standards leaflet says “Our definition of diversity is to recognise the quality and value of difference.” In…
Culture
John Holden in Cultural Value and the Crisis of Legitimacy writes, “No one would suggest that defining culture is easy……
Coloured & Of Colour
In 2015, Benedict Cumberbatch fell into the unenviable trap of referring to “coloured” (by which he meant black) actors.31 The…
BAME & BME
These two acronyms stand for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic and Black and Minority Ethnic respectively. While the term BAME…
Black
This is a word with a great and complex history, used in everyday language as distinct from its racial and…
