You can’t talk about race being a social construct unless you’re ready to acknowledge the construct itself is built upon and reifies anti-Blackness. This is why POC is synonymous with erasure to so many Black ppl.

“I too am of color” is not alliship. It’s you marking your distance from Blackness and marking “Black” as the polar end of a stratus/spectrum that places value on distance from the ultimate “other” (Black) and proximity to ultimate personhood (white)

So, it’s complicated and because race is a construct that connotes a set of physical attributes (skin color, features), you don’t automatically share a racialized experience solely by virtue of being related to a racialized person. How you look matters here.

To people who mean well and are looking to “diversify” their work force/leadership: selecting the person with the name that sounds like it’s attached to a racialized person, or amplifying someone just because they aren’t overtly white...is not equity/diversity. It’s supremacy.

The type of ambiguity we allow in this field when it comes to race is alarming. We have roles that rely on precision and scientific methods. Our work has permanent outcomes. The term “POC” is as broad as a term like “adults”. How do you resolve disparities like this?