A shared vocabulary helps foster a shared understanding. This glossary is based on those found at Generocity, the Racial Equity Tools Glossary, and other sources.

Ally
Someone who makes the commitment and effort to recognize their privilege (based on gender, class, race, sexual identity, etc.) and work in solidarity with oppressed groups in the struggle for justice. Allies understand that it is in their own interest to end all forms of oppression, even those from which they may benefit in concrete ways. Allies commit to reducing their own complicity or collusion in oppression of those groups and invest in strengthening their own knowledge and awareness of oppression. Pop wisdom: The social group of less privilege that you work with might label you “an ally,” but it is bad form for you to claim the label for yourself.

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.

Cultural competence
Used most frequently in the context of healthcare and education, cultural competence is loosely defined as organizational practices that are responsive to the cultural beliefs, language, interpersonal styles, etc., of those receiving services as well as of those providing them.

Diversity
A multiplicity of races, genders, sexual orientations, classes, ages, countries of origin, educational status, religions, physical, or cognitive abilities, documentation status, etc. within a community, organization or grouping of some kind. Pop wisdom: Achieving diversity is not the same thing as achieving inclusion or equity.

Equity
Fairness and justice in policy, practice, and opportunity consciously designed to address the distinct challenges of non-dominant social groups, with an eye to equitable outcomes. See also: Racial equity.

Gatekeeper
Anyone in a position of power that can grant or deny access to institutional resources.

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. 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
Authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power.

Institutional ableism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices based on the idea that disabled people have less value create different outcomes for this group. Disability is intersectional with significant overlap between systemic ableism and systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. People with disabilities who are also part of other marginalized groups can face compounded stigmas creating advantages for non-disabled people and reinforced disadvantages for people with disabilities resulting in further oppression.

Institutional racism
Institutional racism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups. The institutional policies may never mention any racial group, but their effect is to create advantages for whites and oppression and disadvantage for people of color.

Examples: Government policies, known as red-lining, that explicitly restricted the ability of people to get loans to buy or improve their homes in neighborhoods with high concentrations of African Americans. City sanitation department policies that concentrate trash transfer stations and other environmental hazards disproportionately in communities of color.

Intersectionality
A term coined by Black lawyer and scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw to describe how race, class, gender, age and other aspects of identity intersect and inform the experience of individuals or groups of people. For example, a Black woman in America does not experience gender inequalities in the same way as a white woman, nor racial oppression in the same way as does a Black man. Each intersection produces a distinct life experience.

Microaggression
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.

People of Color
Often the preferred collective term for referring to non-white racial groups. Racial justice advocates have been using the term “people of color” (not to be confused with the pejorative “colored people”) since the late 1970s as a unifying frame across different racial groups that are not White, to address racial inequities. While “people of color” can be a politically useful term, it is also important whenever possible to identify people through their own racial/ethnic group, as each has its own distinct experience and meaning and may be more appropriate.

Power (institutional)
Social, political and economic access to resources and decision makers, and the ability to influence others via this access. Pop wisdom: Social media, for all its ills, has somewhat reshaped the ability to influence. Black Twitter, for example, was initially driven by Black women scholars who didn’t necessarily have institutional power in academia but became widely and hugely influential on social media.

Privilege
Advantages and benefits systemically accorded, often by default, to a person or group. Privilege is best understood intersectionally because colorism, documentation status, economic class, and education, can all accord distinct privilege within racial and ethnic groups. See also: White privilege.

Racial equity (City of San José definition approved by City Council on February 1, 2022)

Both a process and an outcome, racial equity is designed to center anti-racism, eliminate systemic racial inequities, and acknowledge the historical and existing practices that have led to discrimination and injustices to Black, Indigenous, Latino/a/x, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities.

The racial equity process explicitly prioritizes communities that have been economically deprived and underserved, and establishes a practice for creating psychologically safe spaces for racial groups that have been most negatively impacted by policies and practices. It is action that prioritizes liberation and measurable change, and focuses on lived experiences of all impacted racial groups. It requires the setting of goals and measures to track progress, with the recognition that strategies must be targeted to close the gaps.

As an outcome, racial equity is achieved when race can no longer be used to predict life outcomes, and everyone can prosper and thrive.

Racial and Social Equity. The condition that would be achieved if one’s group identity – based on categorizations that have experienced discrimination including race/ethnicity, color, disability, neurodivergence, religion, age, citizenship/immigration status, gender expression, sexuality – no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fared in society. Racial and Social Equity explicitly prioritizes communities that have been economically deprived and underserved and establishes a practice for creating psychologically safe spaces for not only racial groups, but other groups that have been most negatively impacted by policies and practices. 

It is action that prioritizes liberation and measurable change and focuses on lived experiences of all impacted groups. It requires the setting of goals and measures to track progress, with the recognition that strategies must be targeted to close the gaps. 

As an outcome, racial and social equity is achieved when race/ethnicity, color, disability, neurodivergence, age, language, citizenship/immigration status, gender expression, sexuality, and income can no longer be used to predict life outcomes and everyone can prosper and thrive.

Racial justice
The systematic and proactive fair treatment of people of all races, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all. Racial justice—or racial equity—goes beyond anti-racism. It is not just the absence of discrimination and inequities, but also the presence of deliberate systems and supports to achieve and sustain racial equity.

Structural racism
The normalization and legitimization of processes and dynamics that provide advantage to whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. Structural racism may be difficult to locate in an institution because it involves the reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms.

Examples: We can see structural racism in the many institutional, cultural and structural factors that contribute to lower life expectancy for African American and Native American men, compared to white men. These include higher exposure to environmental toxins, dangerous jobs, and unhealthy housing stock; higher exposure to and more lethal consequences for reacting to violence, stress and racism; lower rates of health care coverage, access and quality of care; and systematic refusal by the nation to fix these things.

White privilege
White privilege is the unearned advantages that enable white people to collectively have easier and better access to quality healthcare and education, wealth-building opportunities, political power, etc. “White privilege is an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in every day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious.” (Peggy Macintosh, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack). Structural white privilege is the system of white domination that creates and maintains belief systems that make current racial advantages and disadvantages seem normal. The system includes powerful incentives for maintaining white privilege and its consequences, and powerful negative consequences for trying to interrupt white privilege or reduce its consequences in meaningful ways.