The term “people of color” (POC) is invoked frequently in this racially-conscious age of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. What are the social implications and connotations of the term “people of color?” What happens when the group experiences of Asians, Latinos, indigenous, and Arab Americans are conflated with black American experiences? “Respectability politics” encourages non-black racial groups to assimilate towards white American culture. Immigrants historically joined police departments to signal participation in the white political order. In Chicago, frequent negative encounters between African-Americans and Asian or Arab American business owners, and several cases of police brutality, reveal fissures between blacks and non-black POC.

Worldview host Jerome McDonnell discusses with Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, associate professor of American Culture and Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan, Justin K.H. Tse, visiting assistant professor of Asian American Studies at Northwestern University, and Ariana Brown, a black Mexican American poet, performer, and workshop facilitator.