Abolition: the act of abolishing a system, practice, or institution e.g. abolishing slavery. An abolitionist vision means building models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. Abolition includes practical strategies towards liberation and empowerment, which allow us all to believe that things can be different. Abolition is living this vision in our everyday lives. It is both a tool for organisation and a long-term goal.
Accomplice: An ally who directly challenges institutionalized/supremist frameworks of oppression (i.e. racism, transphobia, ableism) by actively resisting, blocking, and standing up to systemic modes of oppression on every level, and actively relinquishes their own privilege for a just society. An accomplice fights with oppressed people, and their actions are coordinated by those who are oppressed.
African Diaspora: consists of the worldwide collection of communities descended from native sub-Saharan Africans or people from sub-Saharan Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The diaspora has continued for millennia, but historically, ethnographers, historians, politicians and writers have used the term particularly to refer to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, with their largest populations in Brazil, the United States and Haiti.
Ageism: A system of oppression that works against both the young and the old. Ageist frameworks value individuals of a particular age range, however this age range is not fixed, and shifts in accordance with an individual’s race and gender (amongst other things).
Ally: A person who is a member of an intersectionally privileged social group who takes a stand against oppression through educating themselves and others so as eliminate oppressive attitudes and beliefs in themselves and their communities. Allies are willing to engage in difficult conversations, but their contributions remain local and relatively low risk. The next step for an ally is to become an accomplice.
Anti-Blackness: Anti-Blackness refers to actions or behaviors that minimize, marginalize or devalue the full participation of Black people in life. The spectrum of anti-Black actions and behaviors spans from unconscious bias to motivated acts of prejudice. They include the tolerance of or indifference to the under-representation, differential success and advancement, or experience of Black people in the community.
Anti-Racism: Anti-racism refers to a form of action against racial hatred, bias, systemic racism, and the oppression of marginalized groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions to provide equitable opportunities for all people on an individual and systemic level.
Bias: is a tendency to prefer one person or thing to another, and to favor that person or thing. To bias someone means to influence them in favor of a particular choice.
Bigotry: is the obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices: the state of mind of a bigot.
Black, Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC): An acronym originated in the US, particularly within activist circles, as a more inclusive version of the terminology ‘person of color’ that includes an acknowledgment to colonialism, and solidarity. As a rule, we should be mindful of acronyms, as they act as group bundlers, and this term is no exception.
Black, Indigenous Women of Color (BIWOC): While people of color (POC) is often used as an umbrella term, Black and Indigenous has been added to the acronym to recognize the erasure and particular hardships of Black people with darker skin as well as that of Indigenous people.
Classism: A system of oppression that includes but are not limited to institutional, cultural, societal, and individual beliefs and practices that assign value to people based in their socio-economic status. In this framework, members of more privileged socio-economic classes are seen as having greater value, which in turn affords them greater privileges.
Cultural Appropriation: A term used to describe the taking over of creative or artistic forms, themes, or practices by one cultural group from another. It is in generally used to describe Western appropriations (by the Global North) of non‐Western (Global South) or Black, Brown, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian culture and history, and carries connotations of exploitation and dominance.
Cultural Competence: The ability to effectively and empathetically work and engage with people of different cultural identities and backgrounds in order to provide safe and accountable spaces for dialogue and discourse. Cultural competence is relevant in all fields of work, education, and informal social interactions.
Discrimination: The creation of a distinction (implicitly or explicitly), based on a characteristic, or perceived characteristic that has the effect of imposing burdens, obligations or disadvantages on an individual or a class of individuals that is not imposed upon others. The distinction withholds or limits access to opportunities, benefits and advantages available to other individuals or classes of individuals in society.
Diversity: The UCI academic senate adopted in 2009 the following broad definition of diversity: – defining features of California past, present and future – refers to a variety of personal experiences, values, and worldviews that arise from differences of culture and circumstance. Such differences include race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, language, abilities/disabilities, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, geographic region and more.
Equality: Equality is about ensuring that every individual has an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents. Equality recognizes that historically certain groups of people with protected characteristics such as race, disability, sex and sexual orientation have experienced discrimination.
Equity: Differential provision according to need so as to ensure that everyone is given the resources that they need to succeed. Part of a process of actively moving everyone closer to success by “levelling the playing field.”
Implicit Bias: The unconscious attitudes, stereotypes, and unintentional actions (positive or negative) towards members of a group because of their (identified or assumed) membership of a particular group. These associations develop over the course of a lifetime beginning at a very early age through exposure to direct and indirect messages.
Institutions: Fairly stable social arrangements and practices through which collective actions are taken. Examples of institutions in the U.S. include the legal, educational, health care, social service, government, media, and criminal justice systems.
Intersectional/ intersectionality: The idea that multiple identities and injustices intersect to structure and shape people’s lives. Intersecting identities and injustices can include gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, age, mental disability, physical disability, mental illness, and physical illness as well as other forms of identity. These aspects of identity and injustice are not discrete or mutually exclusive and are inseparably interlinked.
Marginalized: marginalized people are those kept from meaningful and dignified participation in social life.
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.
Oppression: Prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control; cruel or unjust exercise of authority or power. The term is used to describe systems, relations, or behaviors which disadvantage groups or individuals through formal institutions or informal attitudes and behaviors. Oppression fuses institutional and systemic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry, and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures.
Person of Color: A person who is not white. This can include, but is not limited to, people who identify as Black, Asian, LatinX/Latino, Pacific Islander, Indigenous/Native American, African, Middle Eastern etc.
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 crude generalizations (or stereotypes) that deny the complex humanity and rights of members of certain groups to be recognized and treated as individuals with individual characteristics.
Race: A social construct of categorization attributed based on (perceived) shared physical characteristics, ancestry, genetics, and/or biology. These traits can include hair and eye color, bone and jaw structure, skin color, and more. ‘Racial differences’ are imagined, invented, reproduced and bolstered by Whites as part of White supremacy and can be malleable and disturbingly subtle.
Racism: A system of oppression based on an individual’s or group’s self-identified or perceived racial identity. Racism is not reducible to 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.
Racial Profiling: A form of stereotyping based on preconceived ideas about a person’s character.
Stereotypes: attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and assumptions about a target group that are widespread and socially sanctioned. Stereotypes support the maintenance of institutionalized oppression by seemingly validating misinformation or beliefs.
Systems of oppression: the systematic mistreatment of people within a social identity group, supported and enforced by the society and its institutions, solely based on the person’s (identified or perceived) membership in the social identity group.
Whiteness: An oppressive social framework based on the normalization and valorization of ‘white’ skin color that is key to the reproduction of white people’s dominance and control and continued racial injustices. It is a practice of power that operates across multiple levels, from interpersonal interactions to social practices, public and media representations, organizations and societal institutions.
White fragility: “A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable [for White people], triggering a range of defensive moves. 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.” Robin DiAngelo (2011)
White privilege: The unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices bestowed on people solely because of their whiteness. Generally white people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it.
White Supremacy: a racist ideology based upon the belief that white people are superior to people of other races and that therefore white people should be dominant over other races.
