BME/BAME
BME (Black and Minority Ethnic ) – aggettivo
BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) – aggettivo
Helping BME people to progress in their careers at the same rate as their white counterparts could add £24bn to UK economy each year.
He was the first ever BAME politician to be elected to Labour’s Shadow Cabinet.
Though I may use BME/BAME, I don’t particularly like these terms. They are unwieldy and lack nuance.
‘BME’ is racist and misleading. Let’s drop it.
È risaputo che i termini con cui si descrivono etnicità e colore della pelle cambiano rapidamente, e che espressioni considerate accettabili in un dato periodo possono diventare assolutamente improponibili poco tempo dopo. Questo fenomeno è perfettamente illustrato dai termini dell’inglese britannico BME e BAME, nati con funzione descrittiva per quella parte della popolazione che non si identifica come bianca e che sono diventati oggetto di aspre polemiche perché percepiti a loro volta come razzisti.
La diffusione di termini come BME e BAME si spiega col fatto che essi rappresentano un modo conveniente e succinto per riferirsi a tematiche complicate e delicate; forse destinati a essere criticati per la loro grossolanità, o persino il loro potenziale discriminatorio, potrebbero però portare a un nuovo modo di rapportarsi con temi così sensibili.
Origini del termine
Sia BME che BAME sono entrati nel linguaggio alla fine del XX secolo attraverso il campo delle tematiche sociali e sono diventati immediatamente d’uso comune.
Traduzione di Loredana Riu
BME (Black and Minority Ethnic ) – adjective
BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) – adjective
Helping BME people to progress in their careers at the same rate as their white counterparts could add £24bn to UK economy each year.
He was the first ever BAME politician to be elected to Labour’s Shadow Cabinet.
Though I may use BME/BAME, I don’t particularly like these terms. They are unwieldy and lack nuance.
‘BME‘ is racist and misleading. Let’s drop it.
It is well-known that terms used for describing ethnicity and skin colour change rapidly, with words regarded as acceptable and unremarkable at one period becoming completely unacceptable not many years later. This phenomenon is illustrated by the British English terms BME and BAME. No sooner had they become widely used as descriptive terms for the parts of the British population that do not identify themselves as white, they started to be critiqued as unhelpful, unnecessary, even racist.
Terms like BME and BAME became very widely used because they are a convenient shorthand for talking about complicated and sensitive issues. Perhaps such terms will always be criticized as crude, lacking in nuance or even potentially racist, pushing people to find new ways of talking about these matters.
Origin
The terms BME and BAME started to be used at the very end of the 20th century by writers on social issues and started to spread immediately into official discourse. The letters are generally sounded separately, although I have heard BAME said as a word.
