people of color/person of color

these terms are acceptable when groups or individuals self-identify this way; when used to label others from without, it is problematic, masking people's individuality and diverse origins, and functioning like the ethnocentric "nonwhite." Elizam Escobar (in Prison Legal News) wonders if everybody doesn't have some color; "'people of color' has this fastidious 'picturesque' element so familiar to the vocabulary of tourism. It sounds like a color Polaroid photograph of 'nice' and 'cute' people; innocent, inoffensive, and domesticated people, where everyone is homogenized with this attribute of color. And who is this photographer who has so carefully taken this picture? A 'white' tourist with 'good intentions?' Or, in fact, is no one to be blamed but ideology itself?" On the other hand, the American Heritage Book of English Usage points out that "person of color stands nonwhite on its head, substituting a positive for a negative."