Expanded Key Terms

Refers to special consideration for minorities and women in employment and education to compensate for the discrimination and lack of opportunities they experience in society.

Affirmative action is a term that refers to the active employment and selection of minorities and women in places of work and education to help compensate for the structural racism, discrimination, and biases that exist in society against women and minority groups. Affirmative action is a highly controversial topic among many individuals, but it is a key part of ensuring equality and equity in social systems and structures.

A personality type characterized by a disposition to treat authority figures with unquestioning obedience and respect.

An authoritarian personality is a personality type that is unquestionably obedient and respectful to authority figures, never questioning why and how things are done. Authoritarian personalities are mindless and operate under total trust that the authority they serve is completely right and just but do not apply facts and data to check the motives for their actions. Authoritarian personalities may have good intentions and may not intend to harm, but the mindless following of others can lead to harm in society by perpetuating false ideas and stereotypes of other people.

A form of racism that is based on the idea that overcoming racism means ignoring race.

Color-blind racism is a form of racism that chooses not to identify and accept the differences in individuals’ racial experiences. Color-blind racism may be an attempt to combat traditional racism in society by simply not “seeing color,” but this lack of acknowledgment of racial difference prevents individuals from understanding the obstacles and difficulties in society that minority groups need to overcome. Color-blind racism inevitably perpetuates racial mistreatment of individuals in society and also rejects the differences of various racial and cultural groups that make society diverse.

Refers to the arbitrary denial of rights, privileges, and opportunities to members of certain groups.

Discrimination is a term that refers to the denial of rights, privileges, and opportunities to different people based on their race and/or ethnicity, along with other potential factors. Discrimination is bias and prejudice put into action and is entirely unjust and unfair treatment of people based on presumed and false ideas. Discrimination can be driven by hate, lack of education, and other various emotional feelings. Despite efforts to reduce its presence in modern society, discrimination is still present in society today. Discrimination can occur consciously or unconsciously due to deeply ingrained social constructs, norms, and behaviors.

Refers to the shared social, cultural, and historical experiences, stemming from common national or regional backgrounds, that make subgroups of a population different from one another.

Ethnicity is different from race in the fact that ethnicity is the cultural, social, and historical experiences that people undergo that create different cultural identities among subgroups of the global population. Ethnicity includes different languages, religions, beliefs, and ways of life for different groups of people around the globe. Ethnicity is not biological. Ethnic groups in the U.S. include individuals who identify as Hispanic, Latin American, African American, Asian American, Alaskan Native, Indigenous People of the U.S., and more.

An unlawful act of violence motivated by prejudice or bias.

A hate crime is any unlawful act of violence against another individual or group of people motivated by prejudice and bias. Hate crimes are the most violent form of bias and prejudice turned into action and are direct links to racism and hate toward other people who are not conforming to a specific identity and way of life. Hate crimes are never justified and are always highly destructive to the larger relationships formed in our local and global societies.

Discrimination based on policies.

Institutional discrimination is discrimination in society through laws, policies, and procedures that lack explicit and clear language regarding the treatment of different racial groups. Institutional discrimination favors the group in power who, in many places, is comprised of the White, heterosexual members of society. Members of these societies may punish individuals who identify as minorities and/or not heterosexual. Institutional discrimination is a larger cause for issues, such as structural racism, that continue to plague the U.S. and many other nations and societies around the globe.

The system of legal discrimination through racialized segregation that existed in the U.S. from the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865 to the landmark civil rights legislation of the late 1960s.

Jim Crow, or the Jim Crow era in the U.S., was a system of racialized segregation through social norms and laws that existed from 1865 through the late 1960s. The Jim Crow era is most notoriously associated with the American South, where minority individuals were subject to entirely unfair, unjust, and heinous treatment by their White counterparts. The Jim Crow laws and the Jim Crow era were the continuation of racism and bias in the U.S. against Black people and other minority groups and were a pseudo-legal way to allow continued racism in the U.S. following the abolishment of slavery.

A category of people with unequal access to positions of power, prestige, and wealth in a society and who tend to be targets of prejudice and discrimination.

Minority groups are groups of people who are not the majority of the population in a given society. Minority groups are stereotypically associated with racial identifiers but also apply directly to the number of people in an area. In many areas of the globe, White people are becoming the social minority by population representation, but socially, White individuals are still unconsciously considered to be the dominant and majority group.

Refers to a set of negative attitudes, beliefs, and judgments about whole categories of people because of their perceived race and/or ethnicity as well as additional factors, such as religion and sexual orientation.

The term prejudice refers to negative attitudes, beliefs, and judgments about people based on different characteristics of people. Prejudice is stereotypically associated with race and ethnicity, and prejudice is socialized among people through observed experiences and learned social norms. Prejudice can occur to individuals with various religious identities, sexual orientations, sexual identities, and more.

Category of people who share certain inherited characteristics. 

Race is the term used to describe the social construction of an individual’s inherited characteristics. Race is a social construction; in other words, the idea of race is a concept made up and perpetuated by individuals who observed physical differences among all members of the same species — humans. Race is most often associated with skin pigmentation but extends beyond that to include hair type and texture as well as other biological characteristics. Race is different from ethnicity.

Being caricatured with exaggerated features in popular media.

Racialization is the act of overdramatizing and stereotyping racial groups in society, particularly through media and media outlets. Racialization strips individuals of the characteristics that make them unique and place them within the confines of their race. Racialization heavily relies upon stereotypes to build false identities for people based on how they may look, act, or be expected to act.

The belief that certain racial or ethnic groups are inferior to one’s own.

Racism is an ideological belief that different racial groups fit into a social hierarchy, with one group being the dominant racial identity and the others being subsequently lesser than the dominant group. Racism is a socialized ideological belief that is reinforced through observed behavior that manifests in unacceptable reactions regarding the views and ideas of different groups of races. Racism traditionally operated under the guise that a certain group of people were the “dominant” race historically compared to their peers in society for no valid reason.

Simplified, mistaken generalizations about people because of their race and/or ethnicity.

Stereotypes are generalizations about other people based on their physical, behavioral, and ideological characteristics. Stereotypes are extremely harmful due to their consistency of falsely representing people to whom they are directed. Stereotypes are little more than extensions of the biases and prejudices that people hold in their personal opinions and beliefs.

The often unseen or unacknowledged benefits that members of the majority group receive in a society unequally structured by race.

White privilege is the result of the socialized norm for White individuals to be considered the standard “norm” for behavior, appearance, and more. White privilege is often difficult to describe and identify in specific instances but is the general treatment of White individuals in a favorable way over the treatment of minority individuals who undergo the same experiences as their White counterparts. White privilege reflects the harmful, socialized norms and stereotypes society holds in mind when perceiving how non-White individuals are expected to behave. In areas of the world where White people are not the group in power setting social norms, the concept of White privilege does not apply. This concept is generally associated with the Western world.