Ableism: Discrimination against people with disabilities (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ableism).
Ally: someone who stands up for, supports and encourages the people around them. It’s a term that gets used a lot in the LGBTQIA+ community. In this case it refers to someone who is heterosexual and/or cisgender, but who tries to make the world a better place for people who identify as LGBTQIA+ (https://au.reachout.com/).
Bias – Two Types:
- Explicit/Conscious Bias: attitudes and beliefs we have about a person or group on a conscious level; these biases and their expression arise as the direct result of a perceived threat (https://perception.org/research/explicit-bias/).
- Implicit/Unconscious Bias: attitudes towards people or associate stereotypes with them without our conscious knowledge (https://perception.org/research/implicit-bias/).
Cisgender: relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex (https://www.lexico.com/definition/cisgender).
Diversity: the presence of differences that may include race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, language, (dis)ability, age, religious commitment, or political perspective. Populations that have been-and remain- underrepresented among practitioners in the field and marginalized in the broader society (https://dei.extension.org/).
Equality: aims to ensure that everyone gets the same things in order to enjoy full, healthy lives; promotes fairness and justice, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same things (https://www.aecf.org/blog/racial-justice-definitions?gclid=Cj0KCQjw4uaUBhC8ARIsANUuDjWXyV8gIF4og0SApnSscImVgWqwhoFS4v8andO7U7D5DZKDmuj6sxoaAgZGEALw_wcB).
Equity: promoting justice, impartiality and fairness within the procedures, processes, and distribution of resources by institutions or systems (https://dei.extension.org/).
Ethnicity: a social group that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, etc. Ex: American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, White (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ethnicity).
Gender Expression: External appearance of one's gender identity, usually expressed through behavior, clothing, haircut or voice, and which may or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine (https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-terminology-and-definitions).
Gender Identity: One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth (https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-terminology-and-definitions).
Inclusion: an outcome to ensure those that are diverse actually feel and/or are welcomed (https://dei.extension.org/).
Intersectionality: refers to how different aspects of a person combine and create overlapping areas of privilege and oppression (https://www.atrinternational.com/2021/03/29/what-is-intersectionality-how-does-it-affect-dei-efforts/).
LGBTQIA: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual. (https://lgbtqia.ucdavis.edu/educated/glossary).
Race: a socially constructed system of categorizing humans largely based on observable physical features (phenotypes), such as skin color, and on ancestry (https://www.aecf.org/blog/racial-justice-definitions?gclid=Cj0KCQjw4uaUBhC8ARIsANUuDjWXyV8gIF4og0SApnSscImVgWqwhoFS4v8andO7U7D5DZKDmuj6sxoaAgZGEALw_wcB).
Racism: complex system of racial hierarchies and inequities; micro level of racism, or individual level, are internalized and interpersonal racism. At the macro level of racism, we look beyond the individuals to the broader dynamics, including institutional and structural racism (https://www.aecf.org/blog/racial-justice-definitions?gclid=Cj0KCQjw4uaUBhC8ARIsANUuDjWXyV8gIF4og0SApnSscImVgWqwhoFS4v8andO7U7D5DZKDmuj6sxoaAgZGEALw_wcB).
Sexual Orientation: emotional, romantic, sexual or affectional attraction or non-attraction to other people. Sexual orientation can be fluid and people use a variety of labels to describe their sexual orientation (https://lgbtqia.ucdavis.edu/educated/glossary).
Socioeconomic Status: social standing or class of an individual or group. It is often measured as a combination of education, income and occupation (https://www.apa.org/topics/socioeconomic-status).
Systemic Racism: policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization, and that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/systemic-racism).
White Privilege: a built-in advantage, separate from one’s level of income or effort; having greater access to power and resources than people of color [in the same situation] do (https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really).