Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Glossary

A political movement to address systemic and state violence against African Americans. Per the Black Lives Matter organizers: “In 2013, three radical Black organizers—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi—created a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter. It was in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. The project is now a member-led global network of more than 40 chapters. [Black Lives Matter] members organize and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”  

Her Story. (n.d.) Black Lives Matter. Retrieved November 2020. https://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/ 

Theft of cultural elements for one’s own use, commodification, or profit — including symbols, art, language, customs, etc. — often without understanding, acknowledgement, or respect for its value in the original culture. Results from the assumption of a dominant (i.e. white) culture’s right to take other cultural elements. 

Cultural Appropriation. (n.d.) Colours of Resistance. Retrieved November 2020. http://www.coloursofresistance.org/definitions/cultural-appropriation/ 

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. (2001) A Community Builder’s Tool Kit. 

Refers to inappropriate treatment of people because of their actual or perceived group membership and may include both overt and covert behaviors, including microaggressions, or indirect or subtle behaviors (e.g., comments) that reflect negative attitudes or beliefs about a nonmajority group. 

National Association of School Psychologists. (2019). Position Statement: Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism. https://www.casponline.org/pdfs/pdfs/nasp09.pdf  

Having a variety of racial, sexual, gender, class, religious, ethnic, abled, and other social identities represented in a space, community, institution, or society. “Differences between social identity groups based on social categories such as race, gender, sexuality, class and others.”  

Adams, M et al. (2016). Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice. New York: Routledge. P. 1 

“Equity” is often conflated with the term “Equality” (meaning sameness). In fact, true equity implies that an individual may need to experience or receive something different (not equal) in order to maintain fairness and access. For example, a person with a wheelchair may need differential access to an elevator relative to someone else. (See Diversity and Inclusion) 

Morton, B. and Fasching-Varner, K. (2015). “Equity.” Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice. Vol. 1. (Ed. S. Thompson). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 303-4. 

Ethnicity denotes groups, such as Irish, Fijian, or Sioux, etc. that share a common identity-based ancestry, language, or culture. It is often based on religion, beliefs, and customs as well as memories of migration or colonization (Cornell & Hartmann, 2007). 

Cornell, S., & Hartmann, D. (2007). Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press 

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. 

Staats, C. (2013). State of the Science Implicit Bias Review. Kirwan Institute, The Ohio State University. 

The notion that an organization or system is welcoming to new populations and/or identities. This new presence is not merely tolerated, but expected to contribute meaningfully into the system in a positive, mutually beneficial way. (See Diversity and Equity) 

 Carter-Hicks, J. (2015). “Inclusive Education.” Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice. Vol. 1. (Ed. S. Thompson). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. P. 412-3. 

Institutional racism refers to the unfair policies and discriminatory practices of institutions (schools, workplaces, systems of health, etc.) that routinely produce inequitable outcomes for oppressed people and advantages for privileged people). 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 people of color.  

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. 

Lawrence, K., & Keleher, T. (Eds.). Proceedings from Race and Public Policy Conference 2004. Chronic disparity: Strong and pervasive evidence of racial inequalities. (p.1-6). Berkeley: CA. 

Potapchuk, Maggie, et al. (2005). Flipping the Script: White Privilege and Community Building. 

Beliefs about individual inferiority or superiority that are expressed as blame or hostility toward oppressed people and idealization of people with privilege. Private beliefs and biases about social identities, influenced by society. E.g., A belief that you or others are more or less hardworking, intelligent, or prone to engage in criminal activity due to racial identity. 

Lawrence, K., & Keleher, T. (Eds.). Proceedings from Race and Public Policy Conference 2004. Chronic disparity: Strong and pervasive evidence of racial inequalities. (p.1-6). Berkeley: CA.

The theory—conceptualized in the 1980s by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw—that markers of identity do not act independently of one another, but exist simultaneously, creating a complex web of privilege and oppression and “negating the possibility of a unitary or universal experience of any one manifestation of oppression” (i.e. a gay Latino man experiences male privilege differently than a gay white man AND homophobia differently than a gay white man). Examining the experiences of people who live at the intersections of two (or more) subordinated identities becomes a useful way to diagnose oppression within a system. 

Adams, M et al. (2016). Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice. New York: Routledge. P. 42. Crenshaw, K. (1991). “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color.” Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241-1299. 

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. 

Sue, Derald Wing. (2010). Microaggressions: More than Just Race. Psychology Today.

“Multiculturalism” is the co-existence of diverse cultures, where culture includes racial, religious, or cultural groups and is manifested in customary behaviours, cultural assumptions and values, patterns of thinking, and communicative styles. 

Multiculturalism. (2020). In International Federation of Library Associations.  

The term People of Color (POC) is widely used as an umbrella term for all people that are not considered white. BIPOC or Black, Indigenous, and People of Color is a term that gained traction after the Black Lives Matter movement and deaths of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. BIPOC is an acronym used to acknowledge that not all people of color face the same levels of injustice. BIPOC is used to highlight that black and indigenous people are severely impacted by racial injustices.  

Clark, C. (2020). BIPOC: What does it mean and where does it come from?” CBS News.  

Refers to irrational or unjustifiable negative emotions or evaluations toward persons from other social groups, and it is a primary determinant of discriminatory behavior (Friske, Gilbert, & Gardner, 2010). 

Fiske, S. T., Gilbert, D. T., & Gardner, L. (Eds.). (2010). Handbook of social psychology (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. 

The unearned social, financial, cultural, and psychological advantages that individuals receive based solely on their membership in a dominant identity group. These advantages confer social advantage over non-dominant groups, but about which its members are “meant” to remain oblivious. Akin to an invisible, weightless knapsack of special provisions readily available to dominant group members. (Not the same as “luck” because these advantages are not assigned by chance, but by identity).  

McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies. Working Paper 189. Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College. 

For many people, it comes as a surprise that racial categorization schemes were invented by scientists to support worldviews that viewed some groups of people as superior and some as inferior. There are three important concepts linked to this fact: 

• Race is a made-up social construct, and not an actual biological fact 
• Race designations have changed over time. Some groups that are considered “white” in the United States today were considered “non-white” in previous eras, in U.S. Census data and in mass media and popular culture (for example, Irish, Italian and Jewish people). 
• The way in which racial categorizations are enforced (the shape of racism) has also changed over time. For example, the racial designation of Asian American and Pacific Islander changed four times in the 19th century. That is, they were defined at times as white and at other times as not white. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, as designated groups, have been used by whites at different times in history to compete with African American labor.  

PBS, Race: Power of an Illusion 

Kivel, P. (2002). Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers (pp.141).  

Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. Racism involves one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination through the institutional policies and practices of the society and by shaping the cultural beliefs and values that support those racist policies and practices. 

What is Racism: Racism Defined. (n.d.) DrWorksBooks. Retrieved 2020. https://www.dismantlingracism.org/racism-defined.html 

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between or among racial groups. Policies are written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups. Racist policies are also express through other terms such as “structural racism” or “systemic racism”. Racism itself is institutional, structural, and systemic. 

Kendi, I. (2019). How to be an Antiracist. Random House.  

The normalization and legitimization 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. 

Examples: E.g., Poor communities have impoverished schools, reduced access to higher education and higher wage jobs and wealth. Wealthy communities have increased access to well-resourced schools, connections with high prestige colleges and higher paying jobs and wealth. Overwhelming and overrepresented number of depictions of people of color as criminals in mainstream media, which can influence how various institutions and individuals treat people of color with suspicion when traveling, shopping, seeking housing or employment. 

Lawrence, Keith et. al. (2004). Structural Racism for the Race and Public Policy Conference. Aspen Institute on Community Change and Terry Keleher, Applied Research Center. 

Potapchuk, Maggie, et al. (2005). Flipping the Script: White Privilege and Community Building.  

Lawrence, K., & Keleher, T. (Eds.). Proceedings from Race and Public Policy Conference 2004. Chronic disparity: Strong and pervasive evidence of racial inequalities. (p.1-6). Berkeley: CA. 

The state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves [in white people]. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. Racial stress results from an interruption to what is racially familiar.  

DiAngelo, R. (2011). “White Fragility.” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3(3): 54-70. 

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 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 critical race theory, 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. 

What is Racism: Racism Defined. (n.d.) DrWorksBooks. Retrieved 2020. https://www.dismantlingracism.org/racism-defined.html 

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. 

Gulati-Partee, G and Potapchuk, M. (2014). Paying Attention to White Culture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity. The Foundation Review, Vol. 6: Issue 1.  

Martinas, S. (n.d.)  Challenging White Supremacy Workshop. http://www.cwsworkshop.org/