I Have Mixed Feelings About the Term ‘Women of Color’

There are some labels that often push us into a box

Photo: Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

Labels have their pros and cons. At their best, they contribute to identity-building and help us articulate how we choose to exist in society. At their worst, they create moving targets out of ordinary people, define without consent, and slowly line up around their subject, like walls that eventually turn into isolating boxes.

In the United States, labels are boxes in the most literal sense of the word. In the land of the free, you’re expected to check your box, own your label, and stay put in the identity you appear to have chosen for yourself. As if human beings weren’t organic and ever-changing.

When I came back to the U.S. after years of living in my home country, Colombia, I knew that I would have to choose a set of labels to define myself, that I’d be categorized into the stack of immigrants, Latinas, and Hispanics. I felt proud of my identity, but there was one tag I was assigned that caught me completely off guard: woman of color.