ADEI Glossary
LEARN TERMINOLOGY for DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, and ANTIRACISM
ANTIRACISM - Antiracism is the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes so that power is redistributed and shared equitably. Antiracism is an approach to understanding race, racism, and the evolution of racial ideology that helps us understand the many ways that racism is embedded in the structures of U.S. society, including schools, health care, governments, and banks. Antiracism also helps us better understand how race, racial ideology, and racism shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
BELONGING - A sense that one's uniqueness is fully accepted which is fostered by an accumulation of day-to-day experiences that enable people to feel that they can be their authentic selves. Diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is dancing like nobody is watching because that is how free you feel to be yourself.
BIAS - Bias is a constellation of human cognitive and emotional processes that involve attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, judgments, expectations, and preferences. These processes direct how we behave toward people we perceive as different from us, and are often automatic; they can either be implicit (outside our awareness) or explicit (within our awareness).
COMPOSITIONAL DIVERSITY - Compositional diversity refers to the degree to which people vary in their racial, social, and cultural identities in an organization or institution. This variation inevitably means that different life experiences and perspectives are also represented.
EQUALITY - Equality refers to the degree to which people are treated the same to accomplish fair treatment.
EQUITY - Equity is a strategy for achieving equality through policies, practices, and processes that involves consideration of the varying needs people have to thrive and succeed.
INCLUSION - Inclusion refers to the degree to which an organization or institution welcomes all its members, encourages everyone to voice their perspectives, does things to make all members feel heard, empowers all members to influence the organization or institution, and fosters a sense of belonging among everyone.
MICROAFFIRMATION - Actions that recognize, validate, and empower people by conveying inclusion, support, and appreciation. These actions include microcompliments, microsupport, and microvalidations.
MICROAGGRESSION - Microaggressions are behavioral forms of bias that are expressed mostly during interpersonal interactions and are based on stereotypes and prejudice. They are derogatory insults and invalidations that are directed at persons from oppressed groups.
OPPRESSION - Oppression is the social act of placing severe restrictions on an individual group, or institution. Typically, a government or political organization in power places restrictions formally or covertly on oppressed groups so they may be exploited and less able to compete with other social groups. The oppressed individual or group is devalued, exploited, and deprived of privileges by the individual or group who has more power.
RACE - Race is a socially constructed classification that groups or sorts human beings into various categories based on perceived shared physical and social characteristics.
RACISM - Racism in the U.S. is a form of bias, based on prejudice, power, and white supremacy, that includes attitudes, behaviors, and systems that oppress Asian/Asian American, Black/African American, Latino/a/x, Native American, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and multiracial people and privilege White/European American people. More generally, human beings create systems and organizational structures that reinforce racism. Individual and interpersonal racism is a result of the beliefs, attitudes, and actions of people that support or perpetuate racism. It happens at both an unconscious and conscious level and can be both passive and active.
SENSE OF PLACE - The experiential and expressive ways places are known, imagined, yearned for, held, remembered, voiced, lived, contested, and struggled over (Feld & Basso, 1986). At CC, we know that a meaningful commitment to ADEI includes an understanding of the complicated and traumatic history of the land where we reside and a need to honor heritage, customs, stories, and the original inhabitants that occupied and who occupy this region.