Jun 15, 2020, 8:51 PM

Yeah, I think it's mostly skin color as @Coin says. I can't say I translate 'Spanish' (from Spain) as POC as part of my American menetal construct of race, any more than I would a French person or Italian. But then again I grew up in the 80s and not on twitter, where there's an effort to make everyone POC, which, as I said before, seems very dubious because it both seems to continue to mark Anglo-Saxons as special and also erases the very different issues different groups have. The experiences of Blacks (or Native Americans) in the US are not comparable to every other vaguely darker than lily-white group. Other POCs sometimes get upset to hear that, but... oh well?

But color and other visible evidence of race is always the big factor. My neighborhood saw the Dominican population organize to (sometimes violently) defend businesses from looting: some folks quickly called this racist (against blacks). But among the Caribbean-Hispanic population (which is a mix of Spanish, African, and Native ie. Taino ancestry), Dominicans are one of the darkest skinned groups and often treated poorly by other related groups (and, edit for emphasis, by cops). They felt they were being left out of the protests, despite having the same kind of tension with police (even years before the protests, you'd hear 'Hands up!' shouted by people whenever a police car drove by the street here).

Even with the religious-oriented hate, it tends to follow those visible lines. Muslim-owned businesses are quite common in several places I've lived, but even at the height of 9/11 furor, who got targeted and who didn't was very much racial: brown Pakistanis moreso than basically white looking, well-assimilated Arabs. Jews too: I don't look it, and so I'm a generic white American if you don't see my last name on a document. But if you're more visibly Semitic, people are way more likely to comment on the heritage (even in the weird fetish-y 'friendly' way 'nice' Christians often do, which I've definitely seen happen to friends).