BCTRHT: Opportunities for Growth

Term

Definition

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 marginalized groups in the struggle for justice. Allies understand it is in their interest to end all forms of oppression, even those from which they may benefit in concrete ways. Allies commit to reducing their complicity or collusion in oppression of those groups and invest in strengthening their knowledge and awareness of oppression.

Juanita Mcleod, Understanding Racial Terms and Differences, National Institutes of Health Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Anti-Racist

A person who makes a conscious choice to act to challenge the white supremacy system: including her/his own white privilege, as well as some form of oppression against people of color.

Keith Lawrence, AspenInstitute on Community Change and Terry Keleher, Applied Research Center at UC Berkeley, Chronic Disparity: Strong and Pervasive Evidence of Racial Inequalities

Belonging

The values and practices where no person is left out of our circle of concern. Belonging means more than having access, it means having a meaningful voice and the opportunity to participate in the design of political, social and cultural structures. Belonging includes the right to both contribute to and make demands upon society and political institutions.

Othering and Belonging Institute

Bias

An orientation toward something or someone. This orientation can be positive, negative or neutral. A bias can be informed by a previous experience. In other words, biases can be rational.

YWCA: Our Shared Language—a Social Justice
Glossary

Bigotry

Stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief or opinion that differs from one’s own.

National Institutes of Health Office of Equity, Diversity
and Inclusion. Advancing Racial Equity, Race
Resources: Understanding Racial Terms and Differences

Collusion

Ways members of agent and target groups think and act, often unconsciously, that support oppressive systems and maintains the status quo.

Social Justice Definitions, National Committee for Community and Justice

Colonization

When one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its language and cultural values upon another people.

Juanita Mcleod, Understanding Racial Terms and Differences, National Institutes of Health Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, What is Colonialism? National Geographic

Color-blindness and Post-Racial Thinking

Color blindness posits that the best way to end discrimination is by treating everyone as equally as possible. It ignores and denies the reality that discrimination exists, that it has structural roots and causes negative racial experiences.

Post-Racial thinking describes a theoretical environment where discrimination, bias and prejudice don’t exist. Data certainly confirms that people of color, Native and Indigenous peoples and immigrants continue to be dis- criminated against.

Psychology Today

Cultural Pluralism

Recognition of the contribution of each group to a common civilization. It encourages the maintenance and development of different lifestyles, languages and convictions. It is a commitment to deal cooperatively with common concerns. It strives to create the conditions of harmony and respect within a culturally diverse society.

Institute for Democratic
Renewal and Project Change Anti-Racism Initiative. A Community Builder’s Tool Kit.

Cultural Racism
Culture

Aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to White people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other,” different, less than, or render them invisible.

Examples of these norms include defining White skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as the great writers or composers.

Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook.
New York: Routledge.

Culture

A social system of meaning and custom that is developed by a group of people to assure its adaptation and survival. These groups are distinguished by a set of unspoken rules that shape values, beliefs, habits, patterns of thinking, behaviors and styles of communication.

Institute for Democratic Renewal and Project Change Anti-Racism Initiative. A Community Builder’s Tool Kit.

Decolonization

Dismantling colonization or freeing one sovereign from the forced control and rule of another. Decolonization ensures the right ability to practice self-determination over land, cultures, political and economic systems.

Interdependence: Global Solidarity and Local Actions

Denial

Refusal to acknowledge the societal privileges (see the term “privilege”) that are granted or denied based on an individual’s ethnicity or other grouping. Those who are in a stage of denial tend to believe, “People are people. We are all alike regardless of the color of our skin.” In this way, the existence of a hierarchical system or privileges based on ethnicity or race can be ignored.

Institute for Democratic Renewal and Project Change Anti-Racism Initiative. A Community Builder’s Tool Kit.

Discrimination

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

Institute for Democratic Renewal and Project Change Anti-Racism Initiative. A Community Builder’s Tool Kit.

Diversity

The wide range of national, ethnic, racial and other backgrounds of U.S. residents and immigrants as social groupings, co-existing in U.S. culture. The term is often used to include aspects of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class and much more.

Institute for Democratic Renewal and Project Change Anti-Racism Initiative. A Community Builder’s Tool Kit.

Empowerment

When target or oppressed group members refuse to accept the dominant ideology and their subordinate status and take actions to redistribute social power more equitably.

Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook.
New York: Routledge.

Equality and Equity

Equality refers to sameness, where everyone receives absolute equal treatment and resources. This, however, does not take into account the needs or the history of each individual or identity group and therefore equal treatment does not always result in equal outcomes. Sameness can often be used to maintain the dominant status quo. Instead, equity refers to fairness, where everyone gets what they need based on their individual needs and history.

Adapted from multiple sources by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Ethnicity

Large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic or cultural origin or background, a social construct used to categorize and characterize seemingly distinct populations.

Juanita Mcleod, Understanding Racial Terms and Differences, National Institutes of Health Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Hierarchy of Human Value

Generally speaking, what we refer to as the hierarchy of human value is the belief that confers value to one individual over another based on socially constructed group membership—that some people and groups of people are innately more valuable than others and therefore more deserving of the rights and benefits afforded by society. There were a number of examples of the hierarchy used between the 15th and 18th century that were foundational to the current-day belief system:

In 1493, the Papal Bull “Doctrine of Discovery” was issued by Pope Alexander VI to announce that land not held by Christians was available to be “discovered,” giving title of the land to the “discoverer” and taking it from the Indigenous inhabitants. This doctrine was used by European monarchies to legitimize the colonization of lands outside of Europe and to make Christianity “supreme.” This doctrine allowed European entities to seize lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples under the guise of “discovering new land.”

In 1684, Francois Bernier published a categorization for humans based on racialized categories.

Carolus Linnaeus, 18th century botanist created a system for classifying all living things. His racialized taxonomy of the human family, conferring inferior and superior status to different groups based on immutable characteristics, became the basis of “scientific racism.”

Scientific racism, or theories advanced by scientists about a so-called natural racial hierarchy, were supported and upheld by major academic institutions in the United States and Europe well into the 20th century. They were used as scientific, logical and moral justification for genocide, enslavement and other human rights abuses.

Gilder Lehman Institute of American History,
Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The
Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.
Nathan Rutstein, The Racial Conditioning
of our Children: Ending Psychological Genocide in
Schools.

Implicit Bias

Differential treatment of people based on biases that unconsciously influence behavior towards others.

National Equity Project

Inclusion

Inclusion authentically brings traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities and decision/policy making with voice and authority.

Crossroads Charlotte Individual Initiative Scorecard for Organizations Scorecard Overview.

Individual Racism

The beliefs, attitudes and actions of individuals that support or perpetuate racism, based on conscious and unconscious prejudice. Individual racism can occur at both a conscious and unconscious level and can be both active and passive. Examples include telling a racist joke, using a racial epithet, assuming someone’s behavior is because they are a person of color or believing in the inherent superiority of Whites.

Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook.
New York: Routledge.

Institutional Racism

Institutional racism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups. The institutional policies may never mention any racial group, but their effect is to create advantages for Whites and oppression and disadvantage for people from groups classified as non-White.

Examples: Government policies that explicitly restricted the ability of people to get loans to buy or improve their homes in neighborhoods with high concentrations of African Americans (also known as “red-lining”).

City sanitation department policies that concentrate trash transfer stations and other environmental hazards disproportionately in communities of color.

Maggie Potapchuk, Sally Leiderman, Donna Bivens and Barbara Major. Flipping the Script: White Privilege and Community Building.

Internalized Oppression

Internalized racism is the situation that occurs in a racist system when a racial group oppressed by racism supports the supremacy and dominance of the dominating group by maintaining or participating in the set of attitudes, behaviors, social structures and ideologies that undergird the dominating group’s power. It involves four essential and interconnected elements:

Decision-making—Due to racism, people of color do not have the ultimate decision-making power over the decisions that control our lives and resources. As a result, on a personal level, White people may think they know more about what needs to be done for people of color than people of color do. On an interpersonal level, authority and power of people of color may not be supported—especially if it is in opposition to the dominating racial group. Structurally, there is a system in place that rewards people of color who support white supremacy and power and coerces or punishes those who do not.

Resources—Resources, broadly defined (e.g., money, time, etc.), are unequally in the hands and under the control of White people. Internalized racism is the system in place that makes it difficult for people of color to get access to resources for our own communities and to control the resources of our community. We learn to believe that serving and using resources for ourselves and our particular community is not serving “everybody.”

Standards—With internalized racism, the standards for what is appropriate or “normal” that people of color accept are White people’s or Eurocentric standards. We have difficulty naming, communicating and living up to our deepest standards and values, and holding ourselves and each other accountable to them.

Naming the problem—There is a system in place that misnames the problem of racism as a problem of or caused by people of color and blames the disease—emotional, economic, political, etc., on people of color.

With internalized racism, people of color might, for example, believe we are more violent than White people and not consider state-sanctioned political violence or the hidden or privatized violence of White people and the systems they
put in place and support.

Donna Bivens, “Internalized Racism: A Definition,” Women’s Theological Center.

ISMs and Phobias

A way of describing any attitude, action or institutional structure that subordinates (oppresses) or others a person or group because of their target group, color (racism), gender and gender identity (sexism, transphobia), economic status (classism), age (ageism), religion (e.g., anti-Semitism, Islamophobia), sexual orientation (homophobia, heterosexism), language/immigrant status (xenophobia), etc.

Donna Bivens, “Internalized Racism: A Definition,” Women’s Theological Center.

Lateral Violence/Oppression

Also framed as internalized colonialism, oppression, or horizontal violence—this is a part of a larger cycle of hurt that has its roots in colonization, intergenerational trauma, racism and discrimination. Internalized colonialism, or internalized oppression, is a concept in which an oppressed group uses the methods of the oppressor against itself. It occurs when one group perceives an inequality of human value relative to another group, and desires to be like the more highly-valued group.

Institute for Democratic Renewal and Project Change Anti-Racism Initiative. A Community Builder’s Tool Kit. Claremont, Calif.: Claremont Graduate University.

Micro-Aggression

The everyday, subtle, intentional—and oftentimes unintentional—interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups.

The difference between microaggressions and overt discrimination, or macroaggressions, is that people who commit microaggressions might not even be aware of them. And yet, they may have big, life-changing impacts.

We R Native
Taylor Rae

Movement Building

The effort of social change agents to engage power holders and the broader society in addressing a systemic problem or injustice while promoting an alternative vision or solution. Movement building requires a range of intersecting approaches through a set of distinct stages over a long- term period of time.

Kevin Nadal

Oppression

1. A system for gaining, abusing and maintaining structural
and institutional power for the benefit of a limited dominant class.
2. The inequitable distribution of structural and institutional power.
3. A system where a select few hoard power, wealth and resources at the detriment of the many.
4. The lack of access, opportunity, safety, security and resources that Minoritized populations experience; a direct result of a vacuum created by privilege.
5. A state of being that is the opposite of social justice.

Racial Equity Tools Glossary, Maggie Potapchuk – MP Associates; Sally Leiderman and Stephanie Halbert Jones – CAPD; Shakti Butler – World Trust Educational Services

Power

1. The ability to name or define.
2. The ability to decide.
3. The ability the set the rule, standard, or policy.
4. The ability to change the rule, standard, or policy to serve your needs, wants or desires.
5. The ability to influence decision makers to make choices in favor of your cause, issue or concern.

YWCA: Our Shared Language: A Social Justice Glossary

Prejudice

A pre-judgment or unjustifiable, and usually negative, attitude of one type of individual or groups toward another group and its members. Such negative attitudes are typically based on unsupported generalizations (or stereotypes) that deny the right of individual members of certain groups to be recognized and treated as individuals with individual characteristics.

Institute for Democratic Renewal and Project Change Anti-Racism Initiative. A Community Builder’s Tool Kit. Claremont, Calif.: Claremont Graduate University.

Privilege

1. The unearned social, political, economic, and psychological benefits of membership in a group that has institutional and structural power.
2. Living and existing in a world where standards and rules are premised upon your needs, wants and desires.
3. To identify with or be identified as a member of a dominant social group (as opposed to a Minoritized group).
See the term “right” also in this glossary. See also “white privilege.”

YWCA: Our Shared Language: A Social Justice Glossary

Race

A social construct that artificially divides people into distinct groups based on characteristics such as physical appearance (particularly color), ancestral heritage, cultural affiliation, cultural history, ethnic classification, and the social, economic and political needs of a society at a given period of time. Racial categories subsume ethnic groups.

Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook.
New York: Routledge.

Racial and Ethnic Identity

An individual’s awareness and experience of being a member of a racial and ethnic group; the racial and ethnic categories that an individual chooses to describe him or herself based on such factors as biological heritage, physical appearance, cultural affiliation, early socialization and personal experience.

Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook.
New York: Routledge.

Racial Anxiety

Often, members of the White group are reluctant to talk about issues of racial bias because they fear saying or doing the wrong thing and thus being labeled as racist. This can inhibit honest and meaningful communication and therefore can make it more difficult to understand different perspectives.

Perception Institute

Racial Equity

Racial equity is the condition where people of all races and ethnicities have an equal opportunity to live in a society where a person’s racial identity would not determine how they are treated or predict life outcomes. Racial equity requites both systems transformation and
racial healing.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Racial Healing

A core component of achieving racial equity is racial healing. Racial healing is the experience shared by people when they speak openly and hear the truth about past wrongs and the negative impacts of racism, while building authentic relationships across difference while
addressing the roots and consequences of those wrongs.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Racism

Historically rooted system of power hierarchies based on race—infused in our institutions, policies and culture—that benefit White people and hurt people of color. Racism isn’t limited to individual acts of prejudice, either deliberate or accidental. Rather, the most damaging racism is built into systems and institutions that shape our lives.

Race Forward: Race Reporting Guide

Right

A resource or position that everyone has equal access or availability to regardless of their social group memberships.

National Conference for Community and Justice- St. Louis Region. Unpublished handout used in the Dismantling Racisim Institute program.

Social Justice

Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. Social justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and the society as a whole.

Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook.
New York: Routledge.

Social Power

Access to resources that enhance one’s chances of getting what one needs or influencing others in order to lead a safe, productive, fulfilling life.

Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook.
New York: Routledge.

Stereotype Threat

Research indicates that when members of communities of color feel they are representing their entire identity group, their apprehension tends to increase, and this stress may negatively affect their cognitive behavior

Claude Steele, Whistling Vivaldi. W.W. Norton and
Company.

Structural Racism

A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “Whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and
adapt over time.

Aspen Institute: “11 Terms You Should Know to Better Understand Structural Racism”

White Privilege

The unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because they are White. Generally White people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it.

Juanita Mcleod, “Understanding Racial Terms
and Differences,” National Institutes of Health Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Racial Equity Tools Glossary; Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women Studies” (1988).

White Supremacy

The false belief that the White race is inherently superior to other racial and ethnic groups and that White people should have control over people of all racial groups. This also includes the social, economic and political systems that collectively enable white supremacy to maintain power over people from other races.

Merriam Webster Dictionary

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