Educate Yourself

Terms to Know

What follows is a list of terms you may come across in discussion or research surrounding policing, anti-racist community activism, and systems of oppression. For a more comprehensive list, one place you can visit is ABC's of Social Justice.

White Supremacy:

- - Three Pillars of White Supremacy by Andrea Smith (PDF)
  - a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture by Tema Okun (PDF)
  - White Supremacy (and white supremacy culture)
    - link to article PDF “Three Pillars of White Supremacy” by Andrea Smith: http://supportblackmesa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Three-Pillars.pdf
    - Link to pdf about how white supremacy shows up in organizing: http://supportblackmesa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/White-Supremacy-Culture-Tema-Okun2.pdf

BIPOC:

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. A relatively comprehensive acronym to use when discussing racial/ethnic groups fighting for justice. Pronounced “bye-pock”.

POC/WOC:

Person of Color/Woman of Color. A less comprehensive, but still commonly used way to refer to anybody who isn’t white. Letters pronounced individually.

Decolonizing:

The process of examining and changing one’s own views, as well as existing societal systems, through the lens of their relationship to white supremacy and an understanding that many dominating systems in the US are a relic of European colonialism.

For a deeper understanding of decolonization, consider the following links:

Decolonization is not a metaphor

Decolonization and Indigenization

What Decolonization Is, and What It Means to Me

Cultural Appropriation:

The adoption of an element or elements of one culture by members of another culture, especially when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures

For a deeper understanding of cultural appropriation, recognizing it, and how it harms, consider the following links:

Ethnocentrism:

Making judgements about another culture through the (often unintentional and subconscious) bias of one’s own culture.

Equality vs Equity:

Equality is distributing resources entirely evenly.
Equity is distributing resources proportionally, taking into account varying needs.

For a longer explanation, consider the following link:

Equity vs. Equality: What's the Difference?

Intersectionality:

An approach to activism that takes into account the ways in which identities such as gender, race, religion, sexuality, etc. overlap and how, in turn, experiences of oppression based on these intersecting identities can never be separated or partitioned off.

For more information on living and acting with intersectionality, consider the following links:

Intersectionality, explained: meet Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term

Internalized Oppression:

When people of a marginalized group turn preconceived stereotypes & myths, as well as their own experience of oppression & discrimination, inward. This results in the person (often unconsciously) viewing themselves as less worthy, capable, intelligent, beautiful, good, etc.

- - https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/culture/cultural-competence/healing-from-interalized-oppression/main

Privilege:

A set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group.

Cultural Competence:

Having the awareness of one’s own cultural identity, the ability to learn about cultural differences, developing cross-cultural skills, and doing a lot of personal work on our biases and prejudices.

Gentrification:

The process by which either upper-middle class or racially privileged people and businesses move into historically low income and/or racially oppressed neighborhoods, forcing those individuals out of their own communities.

- - https://ncrc.org/gentrification/

School-to-Prison Pipeline:

A national trend in which schools disproportionately funnel students from grade school to juvenile detention centers and prisons. This trend can be explained by children in low SES neighborhoods as well as communities of color (which intersect) having less access to resources, while being over policed and criminalized. Communities that have less access to resources such as school counselors & nurses, as well as supply shortages and the defunding of sports & arts programs, while simultaneously bringing in armed School Resource Officers, metal detectors, and “zero tolerance” policies, children are criminalized before they even graduate.

Internalized Opression

- https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/culture/cultural-competence/healing-from-interalized-oppression/main

PIC (Prison Industrial Complex)

- http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/

Late-stage Capitalism

- arguably the place the US is in currently, where the wealth gap is so wide that, for example, Joe Biden is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on campaign ads while folks he claims to care about and wants votes from are being evicted and going hungry https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/