Glossary of Equity & Inclusion Terms

Knowledge is Power: When We're Informed We're Better People

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Hey Y'all! 

Before you scoff and roll your eyes.. Hear me out.

During orientation at my new workplace, I was given a glossary of terms to become familiar with. Having not worked anywhere that gave a damn about diversity, equity, or inclusion, let alone spent time during the new employee onboarding process to convey it, I was impressed. 

The organization's vision is to be known within the community as a force that's committed to DEI. Yeah, this stuff matters, especially since the majority of the staff and clients are POC, those living with mental health issues or disabilities, veterans, seniors, or a combination of the above.

This glossary is a tool to increase your awareness (if you're not familiar with these terms) and to provide common language for us to use in conversations. 

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Ableism - The all-encompassing system of discrimination and exclusion of people who live with developmental, medical, neurological, physical and psychological disabilities. Like other forms of oppression, it functions on individual, institutional and cultural levels to advantage people who are temporarily able-bodied and disadvantage people with disabilities. 

Affirmative Action - Action taken by a government or private institution to make up for past discrimination in education, work, or promotion on the basis of age, birth, color, creed, nationality, ethnic origin, physical or mental ability, familial status, gender, language, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation. 

Ally - Agents of change: A member of a dominant group in our society who works to dismantle any form of oppression from which s/he receives the benefit. Allied behavior means taking personal responsibility for the changes we know are needed in our society, and so often ignored or left to others to deal with. Allied behavior is intentional, overt, consistent activity that challenges prevailing patterns of oppression, makes privileges that are so often invisible visible, and facilitates the empowerment of persons targeted by oppression.

Anti-Racism - Anti-Racism is defined as the work of actively opposing racism by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life. Anti-racism tends to be an individualized approach, and set up in opposition to individual racist behaviors and impacts.

BIPOC/IBPOC - Acronym for Black, Indigenous, People of Color or Indigenous, Black, People of Color. 

Compassionate Accountability - Compassionate accountability means that we actively listen and commit to self-education and behavior change when another person brings information to us about a behavior that is rooted in systems of oppression. 

• It comes from an understanding that growth is a group effort, and that giving and receiving feedback is an act of care. It also originates from an assumption that we all have the capacity to harm one another, and that this harm is usually done not from a place of malicious intent, but out of lack of knowledge and the embodied effects of the systems of oppression we all navigate. 
• Compassionate accountability also means that we challenge ourselves to speak into experiences and observations of others’ behavior that, due to ignorance, further reinforces systems of oppression, such as microaggressions. It applies to interpersonal harm (the direct impact of a behavior on an individual), as well as larger harm (in reinforcing systems of oppression, ex: stereotypes). 
• Finally, compassionate accountability means that we don’t push the responsibility of addressing harm onto others, especially those in minoritized groups, by assuming that someone else will speak about the impact of the actions/words that come from a place of embodied systems of power and privilege. 

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. It is all-inclusive and recognizes everyone and every group as part of the diversity that should be valued. A broad definition includes not only race, ethnicity, and gender — the groups that most often come to mind when the term "diversity" is used — but also age, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education, marital status, language, and physical appearance. It also involves different ideas, perspectives, and values. 

Equity - Equity In the simplest terms, it means fairness, which is not necessarily the same thing as equality. It’s not about everybody getting the same thing. It’s about everybody getting what they need in order to improve the quality of their situation.  

Genocide - The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

Homophobia - Fear, hatred, discomfort with, or mistrust of people who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Biphobia is fear, hatred, discomfort, or mistrust, specifically of people who are bisexual. Similarly, transphobia is fear, hatred, discomfort with, or mistrust of people who are transgender, genderqueer, or don’t follow traditional gender norms. Both gay and straight people can be transphobic and biphobic, and people can be transphobic without being homophobic or biphobic. 

• Homophobia can take many different forms, including negative attitudes and beliefs about, aversion to, or prejudice against bisexual, lesbian, and gay people. Homophobic people may use mean language and name-calling when they talk about lesbian and gay people. Biphobic people may tell bisexual people that it’s “just for attention,” or that they’re inherently cheaters. In its most extreme forms, homophobia and biphobia can cause people to bully, abuse, and inflict violence on lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

Indigeneity -Indigenous populations are composed of the existing descendants of the peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country wholly or partially at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world, overcame them, by conquest, settlement or other means and reduced them to a non-dominant or colonial condition; who today live more in conformity with their particular social, economic and cultural customs and traditions than with the institutions of the country of which they now form part, under a state structure which incorporates mainly national, social and cultural characteristics of other segments of the population which are predominant. (Example: Maori in territory now defined as New Zealand; Mexicans in territory now defined as Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma; Native American tribes in territory now defined as the United States). 

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. Many studies have indicated that implicit biases affect individuals’ attitudes and actions, thus creating real-world implications, even though individuals may not even be aware that those biases exist within themselves. Notably, implicit biases have been shown to trump individuals’ stated commitments to equality and fairness, thereby producing behavior that diverges from the explicit attitudes that many people profess. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is often used to measure implicit biases with regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, and other topics. 

Inclusion - A collaborative, supportive, and respectful environment that increases participation and contribution of all. True inclusion removes all barriers, discrimination, and intolerance. The active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity -- in people, in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (e.g. intellectual, social, cultural, geographic) with which individuals might connect.

Intersectionality - A prism to see the interactive effects of various forms of discrimination and disempowerment: racism, many times, interacts with patriarchy, heterosexism, classism, xenophobia — seeing that the overlapping vulnerabilities created by these systems actually create specific kinds of challenges. Seeing discrimination and disempowerment as separate and individual, sometimes will not serve particular communities who are impacted by the particular way that racism is experienced and exacerbated by heterosexism, classism etc.

Latinx - a person of Latin American origin or descent (used as a gender-neutral or nonbinary alternative to Latino or Latina).

Microaggressions - 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 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. 

Oppression - The systemic and pervasive nature of social inequality woven throughout social institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness. Oppression fuses institutional and systemic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures that saturate most aspects of life in our society. 

• Oppression denotes structural and material constraints that significantly shape a person's life chances and sense of possibility. It also signifies a hierarchical relationship in which dominant or privileged groups benefit, often in unconscious ways, from the disempowerment of subordinated or targeted groups. 
• Oppression resides not only in external social institutions and norms but also within the human psyche. Eradicating oppression ultimately requires struggle against all its forms, and that building coalitions among diverse people offers the most promising strategies for challenging oppression systematically. 

Person-first language - Person-first language emphasizes the individuality, equality and dignity of people with disabilities. Rather than defining people primarily by their disability, it conveys respect by emphasizing the fact that people with disabilities are first and foremost just that—people. Person-first language primarily places emphasis on the person rather than the disability (e.g., “person with schizophrenia” rather than “a schizophrenic”). 

Privilege - Unearned social power accorded by the formal and informal institutions of society to ALL members of a dominant group (e.g. white privilege, male privilege, etc.). Privilege is usually invisible to those who have it because we’re taught not to see it, but nevertheless it puts them at an advantage over those who do not have it.

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 group.

Racism - A system of advantage based on race and supported by institutional structures, policies and practices that create and sustain advantages for the dominant white group while systematically subordinating members of targeted racial groups. This relative advantage for Whites and subordination for people of color is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms, and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society. 

Racism = race prejudice + social and institutional power 

Racism = a system of advantages based on race 

Racism = a system of oppression based on race 

Racism = a white supremacy system 

Racial Equity - Racial equity is 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.

Sexism - A system of advantages that serves to privilege men, subordinate women, denigrate women- identified values and practices, enforce male dominance and control, and reinforce norms of masculinity that are dehumanizing and damaging to men.

Social Justice - Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth. United Nations Social justice encompasses economic justice. Social justice is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both individually and in our associations with others. Social justice also imposes on each of us a personal responsibility to work with others to design and continually perfect our institutions as tools for personal and social development. Center for Economic and Social Justice 

Structural Racism - The normalization and legitimation of an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal – that routinely advantage Whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. Structural racism encompasses the entire system of White domination, diffused and infused in all aspects of society including its history, culture, politics, economics and entire social fabric. Structural racism is more difficult to locate in a particular institution because it involves the reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms, past and present, continually reproducing old and producing new forms of racism. Structural racism is the most profound and pervasive form of racism – all other forms of racism emerge from structural racism. 

Transphobia - Transphobia is the fear, hatred, disbelief, or mistrust of people who are transgender, thought to be transgender, or whose gender expression doesn’t conform to traditional gender roles. Transphobia can prevent transgender and gender nonconforming people from living full lives free from harm. Transphobia can take many different forms, including: 

● negative attitudes and beliefs 

● aversion to and prejudice against transgender people 

● irrational fear and misunderstanding 

● disbelief or discounting preferred pronouns or gender identity 

● derogatory language and name-calling 

● bullying, abuse, and even violence 

Transphobia can create both subtle and overt forms of discrimination. For example, people who are transgender (or even just thought to be transgender) may be denied jobs, housing, or health care, just because they’re transgender. 

White Supremacy - 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. While most people associate white supremacy with extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis, white supremacy is ever present in our institutional and 7 cultural assumptions that assign value, morality, goodness, and humanity to the white group while casting people and communities of color as worthless (worth less), immoral, bad, and inhuman and "undeserving." 

Drawing from CRT, the term "white supremacy" also refers to a political or socio-economic system where white people enjoy structural advantage and rights that other racial and ethnic groups do not, both at a collective and an individual level. 

White Supremacy Culture - Refers to the dominant, unquestioned standards of behavior and ways of functioning embodied by the vast majority of institutions in the United States. These standards may be seen as mainstream, dominant cultural practices; they have evolved from the United States’ history of white supremacy. 

Because it is so normalized it can be hard to see, which only adds to its powerful hold. In many ways, it is indistinguishable from what we might call U.S. culture or norms – a focus on individuals over groups, for example, or an emphasis on the written word as a form of professional communication. But it operates in even more subtle ways, by actually defining what “normal” is – and likewise, what “professional,” “effective,” or even “good” is. In turn, white culture also defines what is not good, “at risk,” or “unsustainable.” 

White culture values some ways – ways that are more familiar and come more naturally to those from a white, western tradition – of thinking, behaving, deciding, and knowing, while devaluing or rendering invisible other ways. And it does this without ever having to explicitly say so... 

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.

EM