Glossary of Terms

For the purposes of this compendium and essay, I will use the following terms as defined. I acknowledge that others may have different definitions of the following terms, and that these are represent the best of my personal understanding and research.

Race:

a category describing a person’s general regional origins and encompassing an aspect of their physical appearance, related closely to skin color and relying heavily on both a person’s ethnic background and the way they are perceived in the society in which they live. For our purposes, the “races” are white, Middle Eastern/North African, Black, Asian & Pacific Islander, and Indigenous American (encompassing North & South America). Hispanic/Latino may be considered a race in the sense that they are “other,” even if they appear “white.”

Mixed-Race:

a category describing a person whose heritage includes people of various “races,” but most often applies to someone whose parents are of different “races” and grows up experiencing both cultures in some way shape or form, and often appears to be a different race when compared to each parent separately.

Chicana:

a female/femme person of Mexican heritage born in the US, usually in the Southwestern states. This term originated in the political movement of American-born people of Mexican heritage (Chicano/a Movement).

Transgender:

a person whose understanding of their own gender does not match the one they were assigned at birth. May include intersex and nonbinary individuals.

Nonbinary:

a person whose experience of gender falls somewhere outside of the male-female binary. This may mean they are neither, both, in-between, sometimes one or the other, or something else entirely.

Queer:

a person whose experience of either (or both) romantic/sexual attraction or gender falls somewhere outside of the endosex, heterosexual, cisgender experience

Liminality:

The term liminal derives from the Latin, limins, and refers to the threshold passageway between two separate places. The liminal state is therefore a transitional one, the result of crossing a threshold between location, status, position, mental state, social condition, war and peace, or illness and death. (theliminalityproject.org)

Latino:

Having roots in Latin America. Latinx is an nongendered version of the term, while latine is another nongendered version, one that is pronounceable in Spanish (-x is not a suitable ending replacement for -o and -a, while -e is). Latine people can be of any race, although due to Latin America's history of being colonized, invaded, subjected to genocide, rape, and Spain's involvement in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, many Latines are of mixed European, Indigenous and/or African descent.

Hispanic:

Having cultural and or historical ties to Spain, or being from a country that has historical/cultural ties to Spain, most often as a former colony. Hispanic people can be of any race, and many who are also Latino will have a mix of European and Indigenous and/or African ancestry.