Using white skin color as the standard, colorism is the allocation of privilege and favor to lighter skin colors and disadvantage to darker skin colors. Colorism operates both within and across racial and ethnic groups.
Source: Burton, Linda M et al., “Critical Race Theories, Colorism, and the Decade’s Research on Families of Color,” Journal of Marriage and Family 72 (2010), pp. 440–459
A term referring to “Black and/or Indigenous People of Color.” While “POC” or People of Color is often used as well, BIPOC explicitly leads with Black and Indigenous identities, which helps to counter anti-Black racism and invisibilization of Native communities.
Source: Creating Cultures and Practices for Racial Equity: A Toolbox for Advancing Racial Equity for Arts and Cultural Organizations, Nayantara Sen & Terry Keleher, Race Forward (2021)
Intolerant prejudice that glorifies one’s own group and denigrates members of other groups.
Source: National Conference for Community and Justice, St. Louis Region. Unpublished handout used in the Dismantling Racism Institute program.
The belief that some traits and behaviors are innate and biological in humans rather than the effects of the culture, environment, etc.
The belief that some traits, abilities, and characteristics are innate biological differences between racial groups.
Racialized medicine is the practice and belief by the scientific and medical community that a biological notion of race is important for understanding and treating health conditions. The practice diverts attentions and resources away from social determinants of health that cause gaps in health between different racial groups.
Race is an inaccurate social and political idea about why groups of people look and act differently that was created without a modern scientific understanding of why people look or act differently.
Ethnicity is a social group a person belongs to, and either identifies with or is identified with by others, as a result of a mix of cultural and other factors including language, diet, religion, ancestry and physical features traditionally associated with race.
Racism is not legally defined. There are many types and levels of racism. In general, racism is distinguished from prejudice in that racism is prejudice and other manifestations of bias directed towards members of historically marginalized racial groups by individuals from more societally and contextually privileged racial groups.
