Glossary

Affinity Group

“An affinity group is a designated ‘safe space,’ where everyone in that group shares a particular identity. This identity can be based on race, gender, sexual orientation, language, nationality, physical/mental ability, socio-economic class, family structure, religion, etc. Affinity groups can be a place for underrepresented people in a community to come together to feel less isolated and more connected. During affinity groups participants might share and talk about their experiences or focus on working towards a particular mission or goal.” Source

Ally

“Someone who makes the commitment and effort to recognize their privilege (based on gender, class, race, sexual identity, etc.) and work in solidarity with oppressed groups in the struggle for justice. Allies understand that it is in their own interest to end all forms of oppression, even those from which they may benefit in concrete ways.” Source

Antiracism

“The practice of identifying, challenging, and changing the values, structures, and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism.” Source

Antiracist

“One who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none needs developing, and is supporting policy that reduces racial inequity.”

Assimilation

“The process by which the culture of people from a non-dominant group comes to resemble the culture of the dominant group by assuming its language, values, beliefs, behaviors, religion, and more.” Source

Assimilationist

“One who is expressing the racist idea that a racial group is culturally or behaviorally inferior and is supporting cultural or behavioral enrichment programs to develop that racial group.” (Source: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi)

Circle Keeping

“Circle keeping is an Indigenous process with global origins. While there are many kinds of circles, all are connected by the following characteristics: 1. A talking piece is the primary mode of regulating the conversation, so that each person has an equal opportunity to speak; 2. Participants engage in an intentional conversation about values and a set of guidelines for how they want to be together; 3. The process opens and closes with some form of ceremony; and 4. Building relationships precedes and is treated as equally important as tackling difficult issues.” Source

Colorism

“A practice of discrimination by which those with lighter skin are treated more favorably than those with darker skin; a system of oppression in society that values lighter skin and depreciates darker skin. This form of discrimination is rooted in anti-Blackness.” Source

Cultural Competence

“Cultural competence comprises behaviors, attitudes, and policies that can come together on a continuum that will ensure that a system, agency, program, or individual can function effectively and appropriately in diverse cultural interaction and settings. It ensures an understanding, appreciation, and respect of cultural differences and similarities within, among and between groups.” Source

Cultural Humility

“A lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and critique, to redressing power imbalances . . . and to developing mutually beneficial and non-paternalistic partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations.” Source

Decolonization

“The process of deconstructing colonial ideologies of the superiority and privilege of Western thought and approaches. On the one hand, decolonization involves dismantling structures that perpetuate the status quo and addressing unbalanced power dynamics. On the other hand, decolonization involves valuing and revitalizing Indigenous knowledge and approaches and weeding out settler biases or assumptions that have impacted Indigenous ways of being. For non-Indigenous people, decolonization is the process of examining your beliefs about Indigenous Peoples and culture by learning about yourself in relationship to the communities where you live and the people with whom you interact.” Source

Discrimination

“The unequal treatment of members of various groups based on race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion and other categories.” Source

Emotional Labor

“Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions with customers, co-workers and superiors. This includes analysis and decision making in terms of the expression of emotion, whether actually felt or not, as well as its opposite: the suppression of emotions that are felt but not expressed.” Source

Equality

“The state or quality of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities.” Source

Equity

“Equity is the condition of fair and just inclusion into a society. Equity will exist when those who have been most marginalized have equal access to opportunities, power, participation and resources and all have avenues to safe, healthy, productive, and fulfilling lives. It requires restructuring deeply entrenched systems of privilege and oppression that have led to the uneven distribution of benefits and burdens over multiple generations. Society will be stronger when the promise in all of us is actualized.” Source

Ethnic Antiracism

“A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between racialized ethnic groups and are substantiated by antiracist ideas about racialized ethnic groups.” (Source: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi)

Ethnic Racism

“A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between racialized ethnic groups and are substantiated by racist ideas about racialized ethnic groups.” (Source: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi)

Gender Antiracism

“A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to equity between race-genders and are substantiated by anti-racist ideas about race-genders.”

Gender Racism

“A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between race-genders and are substantiated by racist ideas about race-genders.”

Implicit Bias

Implicit biases are unconscious attitudes and stereotypes that can manifest in the criminal justice system, workplace, school setting, and in the healthcare system. Source

Internalized Racism

As people of color are victimized by racism, we internalize it. That is, we develop ideas, beliefs, actions, and behaviors that support or collude with racism. Source

Intersectionality

“The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.” (Source: Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex, Kimberlé Crenshaw)

Inclusive

“Inclusive environments are places in which any individual or group is and feels welcomed, respected, supported, valued, and able to fully participate. An inclusive and welcoming culture embraces differences and offers respect in words and actions for all people, and fosters a diversity of thought, ideas, perspectives, and values.” Source

Jim Crow Laws

“The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. "Whites Only" and "Colored" signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order. All of these laws were enforced under the idea of "separate but equal," one which was reinforced after the Supreme Court upheld the case of Plessy v Ferguson in 1896, wherein Homer Plessy, a Black man from New Orleans, refused to vacate his seat in a "whites only" car. The Supreme Court rejected Plessy's argument that his civil rights had been violated, saying instead that a law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between white people and Black people was not unconstitutional.” Source

Justice

“Justice is specifically about dismantling systems and structures that create inequality, replacing them with systems that promote fairness, and creating opportunities for diverse groups of people to thrive together. In essence, justice is a product of creating a diverse, inclusive, and equitable society.” Source

Microaggression

“The everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.” Source

Model Minority

“A term created by sociologist William Peterson to describe the Japanese community, whom he saw as being able to overcome oppression because of their cultural values.

While individuals employing the Model Minority trope may think they are being complimentary, in fact the term is related to colorism and its root, anti-Blackness. The model minority myth creates an understanding of ethnic groups, including Asian Americans, as a monolith, or as a mass whose parts cannot be distinguished from each other. The model minority myth can be understood as a tool that white supremacy uses to pit people of color against each other in order to protect its status.” Source

Mutual Aid

“Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.” Source: Mutual Aid by Dean Spade

Racial Capitalism

“The process of deriving social and economic value from the racial identity of another person... in which white individuals and predominantly white institutions use nonwhite people to acquire social and economic value. Source

Racial Equity

“The condition that would be achieved if one's racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares. When we use the term, we are thinking about racial equity as one part of racial justice, and thus we also include work to address root causes of inequities, not just their manifestation. This includes elimination of policies, practices, attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race or fail to eliminate them.” Source

Racial Hierarchy

“A racial hierarchy is a system of stratification that is based on the belief that some racial groups are superior to other racial groups. At various points of history, racial hierarchies have featured in societies, often being formally instituted in law, such as in the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany.” Source

Racial Profiling

“"Racial Profiling" refers to the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Criminal profiling, generally, as practiced by police, is the reliance on a group of characteristics they believe to be associated with crime. Examples of racial profiling are the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations (commonly referred to as "driving while black or brown"), or the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for illegal contraband.” Source

Racialization

“Racialization or ethnicization is a political process of ascribing ethnic or racial identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such. Racialization or ethnicization often arises out of the interaction of a group with a group that it dominates and ascribes a racial identity for the purpose of continued domination and social exclusion; over time, the racialized and ethnicized group develop the society enforced construct that races are real, different and unequal in ways that matter to economic, political and social life. These processes have been common throughout the history of imperialism, nationalism, racial and ethnic hierarchies.” Source

Racism

“The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” Source

Redlining

“Redlining is the refusal of a loan or insurance to someone because they live in an area deemed to be a "poor financial risk." This practice was implemented to expand housing opportunities in the suburbs to white families while keeping BIPOC families, primarily Black families, in urban housing developments. The term comes from the development of the New Deal, implemented by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of maps of every metropolitan area in the country. And those maps were color-coded by first the Home Owners Loan Corp. and then the Federal Housing Administration and then adopted by the Veterans Administration. These color codes were designed to indicate where it was safe to insure mortgages. Any areas where African-Americans lived or where African-Americans lived nearby were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages.” Source

Restorative Justice

“Restorative justice is an approach to justice in which one of the responses to a crime is to organize a meeting between the victim and the offender, sometimes with representatives of the wider community. More broadly, restorative justice is an approach to healing harm through reconciliation and rehabilitation.” Source

Segregation

“Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life.” Source

Space Antiracism

“A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity between integrated and protected racialized spaces, which are substantiated by antiracist ideas about racialized spaces.” (Source: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi)

Space Racism

“A powerful collection of racist policies that lead to inequity between racialized spaces or the elimination of certain racialized spaces, which are substantiated by racist ideas about racialized spaces.” (Source: How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi)

Systemic Racism

“Systemic racism includes the complex array of antiblack practices, the unjustly gained political-economic power of whites, the continuing economic and other resource inequalities along racial lines, and the white racist ideologies and attitudes created to maintain and rationalize white privilege and power. Systemic here means that the core racist realities are manifested in each of society’s major parts [...] each major part of U.S. society--the economy, politics, education, religion, the family--reflects the fundamental reality of systemic racism.” Source

Tokenization

“Tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive, especially by recruiting people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of racial or sexual equality within a workforce.” Source

White Privilege

“Whites’ historical and contemporary advantages in access to quality education, decent jobs and liveable wages, homeownership, retirement benefits, wealth and so on. The following quotation from a publication by Peggy Macintosh can be helpful in understanding what is meant by white privilege: “As a white person I had been taught about racism that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage. . . White privilege is an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in every day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious.” Source

White Supremacy Culture

“White supremacy culture is the idea (ideology) that white people and the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of white people are superior to People of Color and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions. White supremacy culture is an artificial, historically constructed culture which expresses, justifies and binds together the United States white supremacy system. It is the glue that binds together white-controlled institutions into systems and white-controlled systems into the global white supremacy system.” Source

White Supremacy

“The definition of white supremacy is two-fold. It is both the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races; and the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Source

Virtue Signaling

“The action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.” Source

Xenophobia

“Xenophobia is fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.” Source