Accountability – In the context of racial equity work, accountability refers to the ways in which individuals and communities hold themselves to their goals and actions, and acknowledge the values and groups to which they are responsible.
Ally – Someone who makes the commitment
Accountability – In the context of racial equity work, accountability refers to the ways in which individuals and communities hold themselves to their goals and actions, and acknowledge the values and groups to which they are responsible.
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.
Anti-blackness – Behaviors, attitudes and practices of people and institutions that work to dehumanize black people in order to maintain white supremacy.
Ex. Over-questioning the direction, work or style of Black leaders
Anti-racism – The work of actively opposing racism by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life
Black Indigenous Person/People of Color (BIPOC) – A term referring to “Black and/or Indigenous People of Color.” While “POC” or People of Color is often used as well, BIPOC explicitly leads with Black and Indigenous identities, which helps to counter anti-Black racism and invisibilization of Native communities.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) – A political movement to address systemic and state violence against black people.
Colorism – Prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) – A framework developed in the US to expose racial power structures in society.
Cultural Appropriation – Theft of cultural elements—including symbols, art, language, customs, etc.—for one’s own use, commodification, or profit, often without understanding, acknowledgement,or respect for its value in the original culture.
Culture – A social system of meaning and custom that is developed by a group of people to assure its adaptation and survival.
Decolonization – The active resistance against colonial powers, and a shifting of power towards political, economic, educational, cultural, psychic independence and power that originate from a colonized nation’s own indigenous culture.
Discrimination – The unequal treatment of members of various groups based on race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion and other categories.
Diversity – Diversity includes all the ways in which people differ, and it encompasses all the different characteristics that make one individual or group different from another.
Ethnicity – A social construct that divides people into smaller social groups based on characteristics such as shared sense of group membership, values, behavioral patterns, language, political and economic interests, history, and ancestral geographical base.
Implicit Bias – Also known as unconscious or hidden bias, implicit biases are negative associations that people unknowingly hold. They are expressed automatically, without conscious awareness.
Inclusion – Authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power.
Institutional Racism – The ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups.
Internalized Racism – 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.
Intersectionality – Exposing the way one’s multiple identities can help clarify the ways in which a person can simultaneously experience privilege and oppression.
Marginalization – A social process by which individuals or groups are (intentionally or unintentionally) distanced from access to power and resources and constructed as insignificant, peripheral, or less valuable/privileged to a community or “mainstream” society.
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.
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 Minori