Acronyms.

Beware, animals make economies.

In an alternate universe, various animals sit around mahogany boardroom tables to discuss changes in fiscal policy and blockers to trade deals. This non-sensical sentence formed by four random words next to one another is a widely used acronym in their discussion.

Over in today’s world and in our present reality, the acronym is frequently used by individuals. media and corporations to distinguish a set of humans who derive from a specific racial background. BAME. People who are Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic.

Just hearing the word makes me feel slightly nauseous. Why has the term become so widely used, accepted and championed in today’s discourse?

All it does is further segment and shed light on a characteristic that I truly believe should not be the only one used to portray who we are as humans. I am not BAME. I would ask you to not insult me by picking me and placing me into a futile acronym for the sole sake of your eloquent speech or fancy marketing piece. Your convenience is of no concern to me.

Yes, the ongoing fight for racial justice is incredibly important and irrevocably needed, but let us be careful here. Placing ‘us’ all into one basket, based on what the colour of our skin is, is a backward step. I recently received a companywide email from the CEO of a large Fortune 500 organisation. It was a lengthy message which came as a direct response to the worldwide protests centred on the Black Lives Matter movement. Again, very appropriate and needed. Yet, in the body of this carefully constructed email going out to over 200,000 employees, there lay another one of these commonly used acronyms: POC. Person of Colour.

I was already under the impression that I am a person and not a person that belongs within a specific sect. Who knows, maybe we will look back upon these shortenings at some not too distant point in the future and shiver at their absurdness, much like we do today towards antiquated words like Half Caste, Coloureds and Oriental.

Discard, dispose and ditch these acronyms. They do not help in the slightest. They strive to offend those who are steadfast in their belief that their ethnicity is not their only overarching characteristic in making them who they are. And they also alienate those who do believe that it does. Why a proud Jamaican hailing from Kingston should be suffocated into an acronym with an equally proud Bangladeshi from Dhaka is a mystery to me.

I am Dilan. I am not BAME, nor a POC, no matter how self gratifying or easy those terms may feel to you.

DV