Anti-racism glossary

Anti-racism is the active process of acting to challenge not only one’s own biases and prejudices, but involves actively engaging in the work of dismantling racism as a system of oppression and dismantling the policies/social relations/attitudes/practices that promote and/or sustain racial inequality.

Everyday racism is a concept conceived by sociologist Philomena Essed which refers to the “mundane” elements of everyday life that are typically not recognized because these manifestations of racism have become so normalized that they are typically not identified as racism.

Everyday racism refers to tone, language, a gaze, forms of surveillance (in public spaces stores), differential treatment/service (being ignored in a store, denying the reality of a BIPOC person, or the expectation that one can speak for all members of a racialized group) and actions such as moving when an Indigenous, Black or racialized student is seated beside a person on the bus or in the classroom.

Everyday racism is multidimensional and its impact is cumulative.

Gendered racism refers to the allocation of resources along racially and ethnically ascribed understandings of masculinity and femininity as well as along gendered forms of race and ethnic discrimination.

Interpersonal racism  refers to attitudes, ideas, and behaviours that support, and therefore reinforce, racial inequality.

It is important to note that interpersonal and institutional racism function both independently and in concert.

Intersectionality is a term associated with critical legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw refers to the ways that racism, racial discrimination, harassment, and vilification are frequently linked/shaped/informed by other elements such as sex, gender, class, (dis)ability, and sexuality.

Intersectionality disrupts either/or frameworks by offering a lens to represent how different forms of inequality work together and aggravate each other by describing how the various elements of our identities result in some people experiencing multiple oppressions and inequalities simultaneously.

Race is one of the fundamental components of descriptive systems of difference in society (e.g., along with sex-gender, class, ability, and sexuality).

At its inception, race was defined as a natural or biological difference, indicated by physical features such as skin colour, hair texture and other bodily features.

The creation of race as a key system of classification was created during European imperial and colonial domination to justify hierarchies of humanity.

Despite efforts to locate differences between different groups as evidence of biological and/or genetic differences as unsound, science demonstrates that the differences within different groups are greater than the differences between the so called races. However, there remains a significant investment in identifying racial differences as natural and inevitable, as evidence of intelligence, ability, worth, and so on.

Rather, scholars and researchers recognize that race is a socio-historical and social construct.

Racial discrimination refers to beahviour that impedes and disadvantages people, by withholding benefits, opportunities due to their perceived race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, ethno-religious or national origin.

Racial harassment refers to an incident or a series of incidents having the effect of intimidating, offending or harming an individual or group because of their perceived ethnic origin, race or nationality.

This includes verbal and/or physical abuse, insults and name-calling, bullying, threatening behaviour, damage to property, displaying and/or sharing racially offensive material and encouraging others to commit racist acts.

Racial microaggressions are everyday slights, indignities, put downs and insults that BIPOC individuals experience in their day-to-day interactions with people.

They can consist of:

• Racial microassaults, which are often said privately
• Racial microinsults, comments which demean racial identity
• Racial microinvalidations, such as "I don’t see race."

Racial vilification refers to a public act that inspires or provokes others to hate, have disrespect, or ruthlessly deride a person or group of people due to their perceived race, colour, nationality, ethnicity or ethno-religious or national origin.

Racism is the differential treatment of various human racial groups by a dominant racial group rooted in the belief of the superiority of one group over the other.

Racism takes many forms, some of which include symbolic, embodied, psychological, institutional/systemic, everyday, and interpersonal.

Systemic/institutional racism refers to the arrangements and practices that maintain racial hierarchies and racial inequality.

It includes policies, behaviours and practices that are part of the social, cultural or administrative elements of an organization and which produce or maintain positions of disadvantage for racialized individuals.