Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Updated Sept 3, 2020

It’s helpful to share language as we all try to learn from each other’s experiences and build a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable community. By reviewing this list, you enhance or build your own multicultural competency, which allows you to better understand how others live in and organize the world—and that can only lead to more productive interactions and sharing of knowledge as we all go about our lives and work. Learning and embracing these terms isn't just about making everyone feel included...it's also part of improving the world for everyone. 

Below you’ll find some key words and phrases (and their definitions) compiled by DEI Task Force members and DEI Intern Jade Hall ’22. If you have any questions about these terms, or would like to suggest others we can add to Brewster’s DEI glossary, please reach out to Interim DEI Directors Amy Hill or Alicia Childers. 

• Affinity groups: Individuals who identify as members of a common group and can speak to the experience of being a member of the group from the “I” perspective.
• Affinity space: A bringing together of people from an affinity group—people who have an identifier in common, e.g. race, gender, religion, family status, etc. 
• Ally: Someone who supports a group other than one’s own (in terms of multiple identities such as race, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc.). An ally acknowledges oppression and actively commits to reducing their own complicity, investing in strengthening their own knowledge and awareness of oppression.
• Bias: A form of prejudice that results from our tendency and need to classify individuals into categories.
• BIPOC: Acronym for Black, Indigenous, People of Color. To avoid an umbrella term which implies that groups within “People of Color” are experiencing life in the same way, BIPOC has emerged to recognize Black and Indigenous groups as having different experiences from others who identify as People of Color (Asian, Latinx, etc). The term BIPOC emerged as a way to counter Native American invisibility and anti-Blackness, and is meant to build authentic and lasting solidarity within the group as a whole.
• Black: Refers to a person of African, Caribbean, or Australian Aboriginal descent. Special note: The Associated Press recently updated its editorial style book to capitalize Black when referring to a person’s race. 
• Color blind: The belief that everyone should be treated “equally” without respect to societal, economic, historical, racial, or other differences. No differences are seen or acknowledged; the belief that skin color doesn’t matter and that everyone is the same. Once this term was widely used, but it is now viewed as a problematic and potentially damaging phrase, because to insist on “colorblindness” is to not truly see a person and all parts of their identity.
• Cultural appropriation: The non-consensual/misappropriation use of cultural elements for commodification or profit purposes—including symbols, art, language, customs, dress, etc.—often without understanding, acknowledgment, or respect for its value in the original culture. An example of cultural appropriation is a non-Indigineous person donning a Native American costume for Halloween that plays up stereotypes. Or the common practice of white musical artists in the 1950s and 60s re-recording the hits of African-American artists to make them more palatable to white audiences at a time when so-called “Negro music” was deemed unacceptable for teens and kids. 
• Decolonize: The active and intentional process of unlearning values, beliefs, and conceptions that have caused physical, emotional, or mental harm to people through colonization. It requires a recognition of systems of oppression.
• Disability: Physical or mental impairment that affects a person’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities. It is preferred now to refer to someone as “a person with a disability” rather than “a disabled person,” because that defines them wholly by their impairment. For example, “Joe lives with diabetes” vs. “Joe is a diabetic.” Or, “She uses a wheelchair” vs. “She is wheelchair bound.” 
• Diversity: Socially, it refers to the wide range of identities. A broad scope of identities includes race, ethnicity, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education, marital status, language, body shape, veteran status, physical appearance, etc. It also involves different ideas, perspectives, and values. At Brewster, we also refer to “diverse thinkers,” which acknowledges that people learn in many different ways. 
• Discrimination: The unequal treatment of members of various groups, based on conscious or unconscious prejudice, which favor one group over others on differences of race, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion, language, age, national identity, religion, and other categories.
• Equality: Not to be confused with “equity,” equality has to do with giving everyone the exact same resources, whereas equity involves distributing resources based on the needs of the recipients. 
• Equity: The fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all people, while at the same time striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups. The principle of equity acknowledges that there are historically underserved and underrepresented populations and that fairness regarding these unbalanced conditions is needed to assist in the provision of adequate opportunities to all groups. For an example, see “equality.”

This graphic is helpful in illustrating the difference between equity and equality: 

• Ethnicity: The learned aspects of a person in relation to large groups of people who are classified by a common national, tribal, religious, or cultural background. For example, a person’s race can be white, but they are ethnically Cuban because they were raised in Cuba. (Sometimes confused with race.)
• Gender expression: The way a person publicly expresses their gender, whether socially or physically. These expressions can be through clothing, hair and makeup, or names and pronouns. Some examples of gender expression are feminine, masculine, and androgynous.
• Gender fluid: When a person’s gender identity and expression shifts between masculine and feminine.  
• Gender identity: The way one perceives or identifies themselves, usually referring to their sense of self as a male, female, both, or neither. Gender identity can be expressed through physical appearance or social behaviors. 
• Gender pronouns: Pronouns are the words you want others to use for you in place of your proper name. Some examples include “she/her” or “he/him” or gender-neutral pronouns, such as “ze/hir,” [pronounced: zee/heer] or “they/them.” Some people use specific pronouns, any pronouns, or none at all. Here is an example of using “they/them” in a sentence: John is substituting for me today and they are an incredible mathematician. You may have noticed that people are sharing their pronouns in introductions, on name tags, and at the beginning of meetings. This gives everyone in the room the opportunity to self identify instead of assuming someone’s identity or which pronouns they use. Including pronouns is a first step toward respecting people’s identity and creating a more welcoming space for people of all genders.
• Harassment: The use of comments or actions that can be offensive, embarrassing, humiliating, demeaning, and unwelcome.
• Hispanic: Refers to someone who is a native of a Spanish-speaking country, especially Spain. (Sometimes confused with Latino/Latina/Latinx.)
• Implicit bias: Negative associations expressed automatically that people unknowingly hold and that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions; also known as unconscious or hidden bias. For example, if all our lives, we have been exposed to an abundance of images connecting Black males to violence, we develop (sometimes without our conscious knowledge) the bias that Black males are violent. 
• Inclusion: The act of creating environments in which any individual or group can be and feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued as a fully participating member. An inclusive and welcoming climate embraces differences and offers respect in words and actions for all people.
• Indigenous: Refers to peoples who are the descendants of inhabitants of a specific region before people of different cultural and ethnic origins arrived and dominated the pre-colonial societies through conquest and settlement.
• Institutional racism: Institutional racism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes and opportunities for different groups based on racial discrimination. An example of this is redlining, the discriminatory practice of putting services (financial and otherwise) out of reach for residents of certain neighborhoods based on race or ethnicity.
• Intersectionality: A social construct first defined by Kimberle Crenshaw that recognized the fluid and intersectional diversity of identities that a person can hold such as gender, race, class, religion, professional status, marital status, socioeconomic status, etc.
• “Isms”: A way of describing any attitude, action, or institutional structure that subordinates (oppresses) a person or group because of their target group. For example, color (racism), gender (sexism), economic status (classism), older age (ageism), religion (e.g., anti-Semitism), sexual orientation (heterosexism), language/immigrant status (xenophobism), etc.
• Latino/Latina/Latinx: Refers to people who are natives of or who descend from Latin American countries, both Central and South American. (Sometimes confused with Hispanic.)
• LGBTQIA+: An inclusive term for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual. The plus is widely taken as a symbol to represent self-identifying members of the community who are not included in the LGBTQIA acronym. 
• Microaggression: The verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, insults, or belittlement, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon discriminatory belief systems. Examples of microaggressions include failing to learn to pronounce or continuing to mispronounce the names of persons after they have corrected you, scheduling tests and project due dates on religious or cultural holidays, or asking a student of color exclusively about their opinion on matters of race, thereby singling them out and expecting them to represent their entire race. You can view a video explaining microaggressions by Brewster student Jade Knowles ‘21 here. 
• Misgendering: Misgendering refers to the experience of being labeled by others as a gender other than one that a person identifies with. Because many (not all) associate their pronouns with their gender identity, using the wrong pronouns intentionally or unintentionally is a form of misgendering. If you accidentally use the wrong pronoun when identifying someone, it is appropriate to apologize or say “thank you for correcting me,” and immediately use the right pronoun.
• Multicultural competency: A process of embracing diversity and learning about people from other cultural backgrounds. The key element to becoming more culturally competent is having respect for the ways that others live in and organize the world, and an openness to learn from them.
• Oppression: The systemic and pervasive nature of social inequality woven throughout social institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness. Oppression fuses institutional and systemic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry, and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures.
• Patriarchy: Actions and beliefs that prioritizes masculinity. Patriarchy is practiced systemically in the ways and methods through which power is distributed in society (jobs and positions of power given to men in government, policy, criminal justice, etc.), while also influencing how we interact with one another interpersonally (gender expectations, sexual dynamics, space taking, etc.).
• People of Color: A collective term for men and women of Asian, African, Latin, and Native American backgrounds; as opposed to the collective “White.” Take care to recognize that within the umbrella term “people of color,” there are many varied cultures and ethnicities.
• Prejudice: An inclination or preference, especially one that interferes with impartial judgment and can be rooted in stereotypes that deny the right of individual members of certain groups to be recognized and treated as individuals with individual characteristics.
• Privilege: Having an advantage over others that has nothing to do with your own efforts or skills...in other words, a “leg up” based on your inherent status. Often used with the term “white privilege.” Example: Two runners are in a race. One runner’s lane is perfectly clear. The second runner’s lane has hurdles. They are both expected to complete the race and the winner will get a prize, but the first runner has it much easier. This doesn’t mean he isn’t talented, but the race is set up for him to win. 
• Queer: An umbrella term that can refer to anyone who finds fluidity within society’s view of gender or sexuality. Once used in a derogatory manner, it is now widely reclaimed and accepted among the LGBTQIA+ community. The fluidity of the word Queer’s definition—its elasticity—is one of its constituent characteristics. The word represents a zone of possibilities.
• Race: A way that society divides people into groups based on their skin color, ancestral heritage, cultural affiliation, cultural history, or ethnic classification.
• Safe space: Refers to an environment in which everyone feels comfortable in expressing themselves and participating fully, without fear of attack, judgement, ridicule, or denial of experience.
• Social justice: Social justice constitutes a form of activism based on principles of equity and inclusion that encompasses a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. Social justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and society as a whole.
• System of oppression: Conscious and unconscious, non-random, and organized harassment, discrimination, exploitation, discrimination, prejudice, and other forms of unequal treatment that impact different groups.
• Stereotype: A form of generalization rooted in blanket beliefs and false assumptions, a product of processes of categorization that can result in a prejudiced attitude, uncritical judgment, and intentional or unintentional discrimination. Stereotypes are typically negative, based on little information that does not recognize individualism and personal agency.
• Stereotype threat refers to the risk of confirming negative stereotypes about an individual’s racial, ethnic, gender, or cultural group. The term was coined by the researchers Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, who performed experiments that showed that Black college students performed worse on standardized tests than their white peers when they were reminded, before taking the tests, that their racial group tends to do poorly on such exams. When their race was not emphasized, however, Black students performed similarly to their white peers.
• Tokenism: Presence without meaningful participation. For example, a superficial invitation for the participation of members of a certain socially oppressed group, who are expected to speak for the whole group without giving this person a real opportunity to speak for themselves.
• White privilege: The unearned, mostly unacknowledged social advantage white people have over other racial groups. For many, white privilege was an invisible force that white people needed to recognize. It was being able to walk into a store and find that the main displays of shampoo and panty hose were catered toward your hair type and skin tone. It was being able to turn on the television and see people of your race widely represented. It was being able to move through life without being racially profiled or unfairly stereotyped (Teaching Tolerance). 
• White supremacy: A power system structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; and who feel superior to those of other racial/ethnic identities. White supremacy is also another way to see normative culture as white dominant; this is how it is subconsciously perpetuated. Race scholar Frances Lee Ansley further defines this term: “By ‘white supremacy’ I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.”

Some of the terms contained in this glossary have been reproduced from the following resources:

1. University of Washington  - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Glossary. 
2. GLSEN Pronouns Guide. 
3. Anti-Violence Project. Glossary. University of Victoria
4. Colors of Resistance. Definitions for the Revolution
5. Cram, R. H. (2002). Teaching for diversity and social justice: A sourcebook
6. Equity and Inclusion. Glossary. UC Davis
7. Potapchuk, M., Leiderman, S., et al. (2009). Glossary. Center for Assessment and Policy Development
8. Center for Diversity & Inclusion. Glossary of Bias Terms. Washington University in St. Louis
9. Ontario Human Rights Commission. Glossary of human rights terms
10. W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Racial Resource Guide

• ASCD Racial Equity and Justice Resources
• Affirming Black Lives in Schools 
• Teaching Tolerance
• Anti-Asian Racism & the Corona Virus 
• Brewster’s 21-Day Equity Bootcamp (based on Dr. Moore / Debby Irving’s original challenge) created by Melissa Lawlor. It is scaffolded for beginners in this journey: https://padlet.com/melawlor/6oih57u7pbe7
• CDC - LGBTQ+ Youth Resource Page
• GLSEN
• Glaad
• Trans Youth Equality Foundation
• Harvard’s Resources for Girls Equity and Empowerment

• How White Parents Can Talk To Their Kids About Race | NPR
• Teaching Your Child About Black History Month | PBS
• 16 Ways to Help Children Become Thoughtful, Informed, and BRAVE About Race
• Your Kids Aren't Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Roundup from Pretty Good
• The 1619 Project | The New York Times Magazine
• Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack | Peggy McIntosh
• National Geographic: How Science is Helping Us Understand Gender Identity
• Nice White Parents (podcast)
• Code Switch (podcast)
• Revisionist History (podcast)

Recommended Reading List

• How to Be an Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
• So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
• Stamped from the Beginning by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi 
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting in the Cafeteria? By Bevely Daniel Tatum
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 
• The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

Video/Film Recommendations

• Growing Up Trans
• An American Promise
• Dena Simmons Ted Talk: How Students of Color Handle Imposter Syndrome
• PBS: Civil Rights: Then and Now
• Kids Guide to Gender
• The Mask You Live In
• Miss Representation
• Love, Simon