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AAPI stands for Asian American and Pacific Islander. It is an umbrella term for people with roots in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Pacific Islands. It is used in data, advocacy and heritage observances, though it covers dozens of very different communities.
AAVE stands for African American Vernacular English. It is a variety of English that is spoken by many Black people in the United States, and it is characterized by its own set of grammatical rules, vocabulary, and pronunciation.
Ableism is discrimination against disabled people. It can be physical barriers or negative attitudes and stereotypes. It affects education, employment, and other areas of life. Ableism is perpetuated by societal norms and impacts the quality of life and well-being of disabled people.
Abolition is the movement to end an unjust institution entirely rather than reform it. In US history, it means the fight to end slavery, won with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Today the word also describes movements to abolish prisons and policing.
An abortion desert is an area where people must travel a long distance, often defined as 100 miles or more, to reach the nearest abortion provider. Since the 2022 Dobbs decision, abortion bans have turned entire regions of the US into abortion deserts.
Accessibility refers to creating products, services, and environments in a way that is inclusive and enables disabled people to fully participate.
Adultification bias is the tendency to see Black children as older, less innocent and more responsible for their actions than white children. It leads adults to treat Black children more harshly in schools, policing and courts.
Affirmative action is a policy that helps more marginalized people have equal opportunities. It might involve hiring more people from these groups or giving them more support.
Affordable housing is housing that costs a household no more than 30 percent of its income, including rent or mortgage and utilities. The term also refers to homes kept below market rates through public programs. The US has a severe shortage, especially for the lowest-income renters.
African American is a term for Black Americans, especially descendants of people enslaved in the US. It is often used interchangeably with Black, and federal forms use the label "Black or African American." Some Black people in the US, including many immigrants, prefer other names.
Ageism is discrimination or prejudice against people based on their age. It reinforces negative stereotypes and biases about older people.
Algorithmic bias is when computer systems produce unfair results for certain groups, often because they are trained on data that reflects past discrimination. It shows up in policing, lending, hiring, health care and housing, often without the people affected ever knowing.
All Lives Matter is a slogan used in response to Black Lives Matter. Supporters say it stresses that every life has value. Critics, including Anti-Racism Daily, see it as a way to deflect from the specific problem of police violence against Black people.
Allyship is actively supporting and advocating for marginalized groups. An ally is someone who uses their privilege or power to stand up for disadvantaged groups.
Anti-Asian racism is prejudice, discrimination and violence directed at people of Asian descent. In the US, it includes exclusion laws, mass incarceration, hate crimes and stereotypes that cast Asian Americans as foreign or as a threat. It surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anti-blackness is the prejudice and discrimination against Black people. It is based on the belief that Black people are inferior to other racial groups and is often reinforced by societal norms and institutions.
Anti-fatness is bias, stigma and discrimination against fat people. It shows up in health care, hiring, pay, media and public spaces, and treats body size as a moral failing. Scholars have traced its roots in the US partly to racism against Black women's bodies.
Anti-miscegenation laws were state laws that banned marriage, and sometimes sex, between people of different races, especially between white people and people of color. They existed in the American colonies from the 1600s. The Supreme Court struck down the remaining bans in Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
Anti-racism is the active work of identifying and opposing racism in ourselves, our communities and our institutions. It goes beyond not being racist: it means changing the policies and practices that produce racial inequality.
Antisemitism is a form of prejudice or discrimination against Jews, based on the belief that Jews are a separate and inferior race, religion, or nationality. Antisemitism can take many forms, including violence, hate speech, discrimination in employment or education, and other forms of persecution.
Assimilation is the process by which a group adopts the language, customs and values of a dominant culture, often losing its own in the process. It can happen over generations or be forced through policy. In the US, forced assimilation was used against Native nations and immigrants.
Asylum is legal protection for people already in the US or at its border who fear persecution in their home country because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. People granted asylum can stay and eventually apply for a green card.
Baby bonds are publicly funded savings accounts that governments open for children at birth, usually with larger deposits for children from low-wealth families. The money grows until adulthood and can be used for things like college, a home or a business. Supporters see them as a tool to shrink the racial wealth gap.
Bail reform is the effort to reduce or end the use of cash bail so that people are not jailed before trial simply because they cannot pay. Reforms include releasing more people without money conditions and limiting who can be detained.
Ban the box is a movement to remove the checkbox on job applications that asks about criminal records. It delays background checks until later in hiring so that people with records are judged first on their qualifications.
Banking deserts are areas with few or no bank or credit union branches. Residents must travel far to reach a bank or turn to check cashers, payday lenders and other costly services. Banking deserts are more common in low-income communities, communities of color, and rural areas.
BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color. It is an umbrella term for people who are not white, written to name Black and Indigenous people first. The goal is to highlight the specific harms of slavery and colonization on those groups.
Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866 to control the labor and movement of newly freed Black people. They made it a crime to be unemployed, required yearly labor contracts and limited where Black people could live and work. They were a bridge from slavery to Jim Crow.
Black land loss is the steep decline in land owned and farmed by Black Americans over the past century. In 1920, Black farmers made up about 14 percent of US farmers; today they are under 2 percent. Discrimination, violence, forced sales and unequal access to credit drove the loss.
Black Lives Matter is a movement against police violence and systemic racism toward Black people. It began in 2013 as a hashtag created by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi after the man who killed Trayvon Martin was acquitted. It grew into the largest protest movement in US history in 2020.
Black maternal health refers to the health and survival of Black women and birthing people during pregnancy, childbirth and the year after. In the US, Black mothers die from pregnancy-related causes at more than three times the rate of white mothers, a gap rooted in racism rather than biology.
The Black Panther Party was a Black political organization founded in Oakland, California, in October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It began by monitoring police with legally carried guns and grew to run community programs such as free breakfast for children. The FBI targeted it for destruction.
Black Power is a political slogan and movement of the 1960s and 1970s that called for Black self-determination, pride and political and economic control of Black communities. It was popularized in 1966 by Stokely Carmichael, later Kwame Ture. It shaped Black studies, politics and culture.
Blackface is the use of makeup, costumes or exaggerated features by non-Black people to imitate and mock Black people. It began in 19th-century US minstrel shows that spread racist stereotypes. It remains offensive because it reduces Black people to caricatures.
Blockbusting was a real estate tactic in which agents stoked white homeowners' fears that Black families were moving in, persuaded them to sell cheap, then resold the homes to Black buyers at inflated prices. It profited from segregation and sped up white flight. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made it illegal.
Blood quantum is a measure of a person's Native American ancestry expressed as a fraction, such as one-quarter or one-half. The federal government introduced it to define who counts as Indian. Many tribes still use it for enrollment, though they set their own rules.
Bodily autonomy is the right of each person to make decisions about their own body without coercion, including decisions about health care, sex, pregnancy and gender. It is a core principle of reproductive justice, disability justice and transgender rights.
Book bans are actions that remove books from schools or libraries, or restrict access to them, because of objections to their content. Since 2021, US book bans have surged, driven by organized groups and new state laws. Books by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ people have been targeted most.
Broken windows policing is a strategy of aggressively enforcing minor offenses, like fare evasion, loitering or graffiti, on the theory that visible disorder leads to serious crime. In practice it has meant heavy policing of low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods.
Brown v. Board of Education was a 1954 US Supreme Court decision that ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The unanimous court held that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson for public education. It was decided on May 17, 1954.
Bystander intervention is stepping in, safely, when someone is being harassed, threatened or harmed. It can mean confronting the harasser, distracting them, getting help, documenting the incident or checking on the person afterward. Training in bystander intervention spread in response to rising hate incidents.
Cancel culture is a term for public calls to withdraw support from a person or company after they say or do something seen as harmful. Supporters see it as accountability for people with power. Critics see it as punishment without due process. The word cancel comes from Black slang.
Cancer Alley is the nickname for an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana, lined with petrochemical plants and refineries. Many nearby communities are majority Black, and residents face some of the highest cancer risks from air pollution in the country.
The carceral state is the full system of government control built around punishment, including police, courts, jails, prisons, probation, parole, immigration detention and surveillance. The term shows how incarceration reaches far beyond prison walls into everyday life.
Cash bail is a system that allows people who have been arrested to be released from jail before their trial by paying a set amount of money. If they don’t go to court as required, they may lose the bail or be pursued for the full amount.
Chattel slavery is a system in which enslaved people are legally owned as property that can be bought, sold, inherited and mortgaged. In the United States, enslaved status passed from mother to child, so slavery was permanent and hereditary. It was legal in the US until the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was an 1882 federal law that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States. It was the first US law to bar immigrants based on race or nationality. It was extended and made permanent, and was not repealed until 1943.
Cisgender describes a person whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. The prefix comes from Latin "cis," meaning "on this side of," the opposite of "trans." It names the majority experience so that being transgender is not treated as the only status that needs a label.
Civil asset forfeiture is a legal process that lets police and prosecutors take cash, cars, homes and other property they suspect is tied to a crime, often without charging or convicting the owner. Agencies frequently keep much of what they seize.
Civil disobedience is the deliberate, public and usually nonviolent breaking of a law that people believe is unjust. Participants accept arrest or other penalties to draw attention to the injustice and build pressure for change. It is a form of direct action with a long history in US movements for racial justice.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a federal law that bans discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin in public places, employment and programs that receive federal money. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it on July 2, 1964. It ended legal segregation in hotels, restaurants and other public accommodations.
The Civil Rights Movement was the mass campaign, mainly from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, to end legal segregation and secure voting rights and equal treatment for Black Americans. It used boycotts, sit-ins, marches, lawsuits and voter registration. It won the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Climate justice is the idea that climate change is a civil and human rights issue, not only an environmental one. The people least responsible for emissions, including low-income communities and communities of color, face the greatest harm, so the response must address those inequalities.
Code-switching is changing how you speak, dress or behave depending on who you’re around. For many people of color it’s a way to get through spaces shaped by the dominant culture, and it can take a real toll.
COINTELPRO was a secret FBI program from 1956 to 1971 that surveilled, infiltrated and disrupted political groups the bureau considered threats. It heavily targeted civil rights and Black political groups, including Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panther Party. The name stands for Counterintelligence Program.
Collective liberation is the idea that people's freedom is bound together, so no group can be fully free while others are oppressed. It calls for solidarity across race, gender, class and other lines, rather than seeking freedom for one group at another's expense.
Colonialism is when one nation takes control of another people's land, resources and government, usually by force, and rules them for its own benefit. European powers colonized most of the world from the 1400s to the 1900s. Race was used to justify that rule.
Color-blindness is the belief that the best way to end racism is to ignore race. Ignoring race doesn’t make racial patterns go away; it leaves people, including children, to draw their own conclusions about the inequality they see.
Colorism is discrimination that favors people with lighter skin over people with darker skin, including within the same racial or ethnic group. The writer Alice Walker is credited with coining the term in the early 1980s.
Community care is the practice of people looking after one another's well-being through shared support, such as meals, rides, child care, check-ins and pooled money. It treats care as a collective responsibility rather than something each person must handle alone.
Community organizing is the work of bringing people together to build collective power and win changes that affect their lives. Organizers help residents name shared problems, develop leaders and pressure decision-makers through campaigns. It treats the people most affected by a problem as the ones who should lead the fight to solve it.
Confederate monuments are statues, memorials and other public symbols that honor the Confederacy and its leaders. Most were built decades after the Civil War, during the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement. Critics say they celebrate a government formed to protect slavery.
Convict leasing was a system in which Southern states rented out incarcerated people, most of them Black, to private companies as forced labor. It began after the Civil War and lasted until Alabama ended it in 1928. The Thirteenth Amendment's exception for punishment for a crime made it legal.
Criminalization of homelessness is the use of laws and policing to punish people for living without housing, such as bans on sleeping, sitting or camping in public. These laws cycle people through jails and courts without solving the lack of affordable housing.
Criminalization of poverty is how laws and policies punish people for being poor, through fines, fees, cash bail, debt-related arrests and bans on survival activities. It traps low-income people, who are disproportionately Black and Latino, in cycles of debt and incarceration.
Critical race theory is an academic framework that legal scholars including Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw developed starting in the late 1970s. It holds that racism is built into laws and institutions as well as individual bias. Opponents now use the term for a wide range of K-12 lessons on race.
The CROWN Act is a law that bans discrimination based on hair texture and protective hairstyles such as braids, locs, twists and Afros. CROWN stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. California passed the first version in 2019, and about 30 states have now adopted one.
Cultural appropriation is the act of taking elements of a marginalized culture and using them without proper understanding or respect for their original context or significance.
Cultural humility is an approach to working across cultures that centers ongoing self-reflection, learning from others and addressing power imbalances. Instead of claiming to master another culture, it treats each person as the expert on their own experience. It began in medical education in 1998.
Culturally responsive teaching is an approach to education that uses students' cultures, languages and experiences as a foundation for learning. Teachers hold high expectations, connect lessons to students' lives and examine their own biases. It aims to serve students of color who have long been underserved by schools built around white, middle-class norms.
DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a federal program that protects some undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation and gives them work permits in two-year terms. It is not legal status or a path to citizenship.
Deadnaming is calling a transgender or nonbinary person by the name they used before they transitioned, rather than the name they use now. It can be accidental, but intentional deadnaming denies a person's identity and can expose them to harassment or violence.
The death penalty is the government's execution of a person as punishment for a crime. In the US, it has long been shaped by race, especially the race of the victim, and more than 200 people sentenced to death have later been exonerated.
Decarceration is the process of reducing the number of people held in prisons, jails and detention centers. It includes shorter sentences, fewer arrests and prosecutions, early release programs and community-based alternatives to incarceration, such as treatment, diversion and supportive housing.
Decolonization refers to the process of dismantling colonial systems and structures, and the restoration of self-determination and sovereignty to colonized peoples.
Defund the police is a demand to move money from police budgets into services that prevent harm, such as housing, mental health care, schools and violence prevention. It became a national rallying cry during the 2020 protests after George Floyd's murder.
DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. It refers to policies and programs that aim to increase representation of underrepresented groups, remove unfair barriers and make workplaces and schools welcoming. Since 2023, it has become a major political target, with federal and state actions to end DEI programs.
Deportation, formally called removal, is when the US government forces a noncitizen to leave the country. It can separate families, end careers and send people to countries where they face danger, and enforcement has long targeted Latino and Black immigrants.
Digital blackface is when non-Black people use images, GIFs, memes, slang or voices of Black people online to express emotions or humor. Scholars compare it to minstrel shows, because it lets non-Black people borrow Black expression as exaggerated performance without the costs of being Black.
The digital divide is the gap between people who have reliable internet access, devices and digital skills and people who do not. In the US, it follows lines of income, race, age, disability and geography. In 2023, Black and Hispanic adults were less likely than white adults to have home broadband.
Digital redlining is discrimination through technology that limits access to services or opportunities based on where people live or who they are. It includes internet providers offering worse service in poorer, less white neighborhoods and algorithms that hide housing, job or credit ads from certain groups.
Direct action is protest that confronts a problem head-on instead of relying only on lawsuits, lobbying or elections. Tactics include sit-ins, boycotts, marches, strikes and occupations. The goal is to disrupt business as usual so that people in power must respond.
Disability justice is a social justice movement that recognizes and challenges ableism, the discrimination and oppression of disabled people.
Discrimination is unfair treatment of people because of a characteristic like race, sex, religion, disability or national origin. It can be intentional or result from rules that seem neutral but harm certain groups. In the US, many forms of discrimination are illegal under federal civil rights law.
Disinformation is false information created and spread on purpose to deceive people, often to influence elections, public opinion or behavior. It is a deliberate tactic, unlike misinformation, which is shared by people who believe it is true.
Displacement is when residents are forced or pressured to leave their homes and neighborhoods. It can happen through rising rents, evictions, demolition, government takings or disasters. In the US, displacement has repeatedly fallen on Black, Latino and Indigenous communities, breaking up social networks and stripping wealth.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization is the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the federal constitutional right to abortion. It returned abortion law to the states, many of which quickly banned or sharply restricted the procedure.
Dominant culture refers to the cultural values, beliefs, and practices that are prevalent in a society and that are often associated with mainstream or dominant groups. Dominant culture is often characterized by its dominance over other cultures and its ability to shape and influence societal norms and expectations.
Double consciousness is W.E.B. Du Bois's term for the experience of Black Americans seeing themselves both through their own eyes and through the eyes of a society that looks down on them. He described it in 1903. It names the strain of holding two identities that racism keeps apart.
Driving while Black is a phrase for the racial profiling of Black drivers, who are stopped, questioned and searched by police more often than white drivers. The phrase plays on "driving while intoxicated" to describe a stop driven by the driver's race.
Economic justice is the idea that everyone deserves fair access to good jobs, wages, housing, health care and wealth, and that the economy should be built to provide it. In the US, it focuses on undoing laws and practices that have kept Black, Indigenous and other people of color out of economic security.
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring enslaved people in Confederate states in rebellion to be free. It did not apply to border states that stayed in the Union. It also allowed Black men to serve in the Union Army.
Eminent domain is the government's power to take private property for public use, as long as it pays fair compensation. The Fifth Amendment allows it. In practice, governments have used it disproportionately to take homes, businesses and churches in Black and low-income neighborhoods for highways, urban renewal and development.
Environmental justice is the principle that all people deserve equal protection from pollution and an equal voice in decisions about the land, air and water where they live.
Environmental racism is the set of policies and practices that expose communities of color to more pollution and environmental hazards than white communities, whether or not anyone intended that result.
Equity is fairness that accounts for different starting points. Equality gives everyone the same thing; equity gives people what they need to reach the same outcomes. It means changing systems that create unequal conditions, not only offering equal treatment inside them.
Ethnic studies is the academic study of race and ethnicity, centered on the histories, cultures and struggles of Black, Latino, Asian American, Pacific Islander and Indigenous peoples in the US. It grew out of student protests in the late 1960s demanding that schools teach the experiences of communities of color.
Ethnicity is a social and cultural concept that refers to a group of people who share a common identity based on shared cultural characteristics, such as language, religion, traditions, and ancestry.
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own culture or group is superior to others and that the practices and beliefs of one’s own group should be the standard by which all other cultures are judged.
Eugenics is the false belief that society can be improved by controlling who has children, encouraging reproduction among people seen as fit and preventing it among those labeled unfit. In the US, it drove forced sterilization laws and immigration limits in the 1900s. It targeted disabled, poor, immigrant, Black, Latina and Native people.
Eviction is the legal process a landlord uses to remove a tenant from a home. It can follow missed rent, a lease violation or the end of a lease. Black renters, especially Black women, face eviction filings at far higher rates than white renters, and an eviction can lead to job loss, homelessness and poor health.
Exclusionary zoning is the use of local land-use rules to keep lower-income people, and often people of color, out of a community. Common tools include banning apartments, requiring large lots and capping building heights. The rules raise housing costs and preserve segregation without naming race.
Expungement is a legal process that erases or seals a criminal record so it no longer appears on most background checks. It helps people with past arrests or convictions find jobs and housing, but most people who qualify never get it.
Facial recognition is technology that identifies or verifies people by analyzing images of their faces. Police use it to find suspects, but studies show many systems misidentify Black and Asian faces at higher rates, which has led to wrongful arrests.
The Fair Housing Act is a 1968 federal law that bans discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, color, religion and national origin. Sex was added in 1974, and disability and family status in 1988. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it on April 11, 1968, one week after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.
What is the Fair Housing Act? →
Family separation is the forced splitting of children from their parents by the government. The term most often refers to the 2018 US border policy that took thousands of migrant children from their parents, but the practice has a long history in the US.
Felony disenfranchisement is the set of laws that take away the right to vote from people convicted of felonies. Rules range from no restrictions in Maine and Vermont to lifetime bans for some crimes in other states.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution bars federal and state governments from denying the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude. It was ratified on February 3, 1870. Southern states evaded it for almost a century through poll taxes, literacy tests and violence.
Food apartheid is a term for the racial and economic segregation of access to healthy food. It names unequal food access as the result of policies such as redlining, disinvestment and zoning, not a natural condition. Many organizers use it in place of food desert.
A food desert is a neighborhood where residents have little access to affordable, healthy food, usually because there is no full-service grocery store nearby. In the US, food deserts are concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color, both urban and rural.
Food justice is the movement for a food system in which everyone can grow, buy and eat healthy, culturally meaningful food, and in which farmworkers and food workers are treated fairly. It treats hunger and poor food access as products of racism and economic inequality.
Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy, culturally appropriate food and to define their own food and farming systems. It centers community control over land, seeds and water instead of corporate or government control. The international peasant movement La Via Campesina introduced the term in 1996.
Forced sterilization is the permanent removal of a person's ability to have children without their full, informed consent. US states and federal programs sterilized tens of thousands of people in the 20th century. Disabled people, poor women and Black, Latina and Native women were most often targeted.
Forty acres and a mule refers to a broken promise to give land to formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. In January 1865, Union general William T. Sherman set aside coastal land for freed families in 40-acre plots. President Andrew Johnson reversed the order later that year.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees citizenship to everyone born or naturalized in the United States and promises all people due process and equal protection of the laws. It was ratified on July 9, 1868. It is the basis of most modern civil rights cases.
The Freedom Riders were Black and white civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated South in 1961 to test court rulings banning segregation in interstate travel. They were beaten and arrested. Their campaign pushed the federal government to enforce desegregation of bus terminals that fall.
Gender identity is a person's internal sense of being a man, a woman, both, neither or another gender. It may or may not match the sex assigned at birth. Gender identity is different from sexual orientation, which is about who a person is attracted to.
Gender-affirming care is medical and mental health care that supports a person's gender identity. It ranges from counseling and social support to puberty blockers, hormones and, for some adults, surgery. Major US medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, support access to it.
Gender-based violence is harm directed at people because of their gender or gender identity, including domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, harassment and trafficking. Women, girls and transgender people face most of it, and racism and poverty raise the risk for women of color.
Generational wealth is money and property passed from one generation to the next, through inheritances, gifts, homes and businesses. It gives families a head start on education, homeownership and emergencies. Because laws long blocked Black Americans from building and keeping assets, generational wealth is a major driver of the racial wealth gap.
Gentrification is the arrival of higher-income residents and investment in a lower-income neighborhood, which often raises rents and property values and can push longtime residents out.
Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating the boundaries of electoral districts to create an unfair advantage for a certain political party or group.
A grandfather clause was a rule that exempted men from voting barriers like literacy tests if they, or their fathers or grandfathers, could vote before 1867. Because Black men could not vote then, the rule protected white voters while Black voters still faced the tests. The Supreme Court struck it down in 1915.
What was the grandfather clause? →
The Great Migration was the movement of about 6 million Black Americans from the rural South to cities in the North, Midwest and West between roughly 1910 and 1970. People left to escape Jim Crow, lynching and sharecropping debt, and to find industrial jobs. It reshaped American cities and culture.
Guaranteed income is a regular cash payment, with no strings attached, given to people to ensure a basic level of financial security. Unlike universal basic income, it usually goes to people with low incomes. Dozens of US cities have tested it through pilot programs since 2019.
Hair discrimination is unfair treatment of people because of hair texture or protective styles associated with their race, such as Afros, braids, locs and twists. It most often affects Black people at school and work. It is now illegal in many states under laws known as the CROWN Act.
What is hair discrimination? →
Harm reduction is a public health approach that meets people who use drugs where they are, aiming to reduce death and disease rather than demanding abstinence. Examples include syringe services, naloxone and fentanyl test strips.
A hate crime is a crime, such as assault, vandalism or murder, motivated in whole or in part by bias against the victim's race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or other identity. Federal and most state laws add penalties for them. Bias alone, without a crime, is not a hate crime.
HBCU stands for historically Black college or university. Under federal law, an HBCU is an accredited school founded before 1964 whose main mission was, and is, educating Black Americans. There are about 100 HBCUs, created when segregation kept most colleges closed to Black students.
Healing justice is a framework that treats healing from trauma and oppression as part of social justice work. It holds that racism, violence and poverty harm bodies and minds, and that movements must build collective ways to heal and stay well while they fight for change.
Health disparities are preventable differences in disease, injury, disability and death between groups of people. In the US, they track closely with race, income and geography, and they are driven by unequal access to care, resources and safe living conditions rather than by biology.
Health equity is the goal that every person has a fair and just chance to be as healthy as possible. Reaching it means removing the obstacles that racism, poverty and discrimination put between people and good health, such as unsafe housing, low wages and unequal medical care.
Heirs' property is land passed down without a clear will or title, so it is owned jointly by all of a person's heirs. Any one heir can force a sale, and owners often cannot get loans or disaster aid. It is a leading cause of Black land loss, especially in the rural South.
Heteronormativity is the assumption that heterosexuality is the normal or default way to be, and that gender comes in two fixed categories that match sex assigned at birth. It shapes laws, institutions and everyday expectations in ways that make LGBTQ people seem abnormal.
Hispanic is a term for people with roots in Spain or Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. The US government treats it as an ethnicity, not a race, so Hispanic people can be of any race. It is often used alongside or interchangeably with Latino.
Homophobia is fear, hatred or discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer people. It appears in individual prejudice and violence, and in laws and institutions that treat same-sex relationships as lesser or criminal. It is often used broadly to cover bias against all LGBTQ people.
Housing Choice Vouchers are federal rental subsidies that help low-income households pay rent for homes in the private market. Often called Section 8, the program usually caps a tenant's share near 30 percent of income. It is not an entitlement, so only about 1 in 4 eligible households gets federal rental help.
Housing discrimination is unequal treatment in renting, buying, financing or insuring a home based on race, disability, family status or another protected trait. It is illegal under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, but testing studies show it persists, often in subtle forms like being shown fewer homes.
Housing First is an approach to homelessness that gives people permanent housing quickly, without first requiring sobriety, treatment or a job. Support services are offered but voluntary. Research shows it keeps most participants housed, and it was federal policy for two decades until a 2025 executive order moved away from it.
Immigration detention is the jailing of noncitizens by the federal government while their immigration cases are decided or until they are deported. It is civil, not criminal, but people are held in prisons, jails and for-profit centers.
Implicit biases are attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These biases are not necessarily based on personal prejudices or beliefs, but rather on societal and cultural conditioning.
Income inequality is the uneven distribution of income across a population. In the US, it has grown sharply since the 1970s, and it follows racial lines: in 2023, the median Black household earned $56,490, compared with $89,050 for non-Hispanic white households, according to the Census Bureau.
The Indian Removal Act was an 1830 federal law that authorized the president to trade land west of the Mississippi River for Native nations' lands in the East. President Andrew Jackson signed it on May 28, 1830. In practice, it led to the forced removal of tens of thousands of Native people. Removal opened the land to white settlers.
Indigenous describes the original peoples of a land and their descendants, who have distinct cultures, governments and relationships to that land. In the US, it includes American Indian and Alaska Native nations and Native Hawaiians. Indigenous nations hold a political status, not only a racial or ethnic identity.
Institutional racism is racism carried out through the policies and practices of organizations like schools, banks, courts, police departments and hospitals. It produces unequal results by race even when individual employees hold no conscious bias. The term was coined in 1967.
Intergenerational trauma is the passing of the effects of trauma from one generation to the next. When a group survives slavery, genocide, forced removal or other violence, the harm can carry forward through family patterns, health, poverty and community conditions long after the original events.
Internalized oppression is the internalization of negative messages and beliefs about oneself and one’s group that are perpetuated by a society or system that oppresses them. It can manifest as self-hatred, low self-esteem, self-doubt, and a lack of self-worth.
Internalized racism is when people of color come to accept, often without realizing it, the negative messages a racist society sends about their own group. It can shape self-image, beauty standards and expectations. It is a result of racism, not a personal failing.
What is internalized racism? →
Intersectionality describes how aspects of a person’s identity, such as their race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and ability, intersect and can create unique experiences of discrimination or privilege.
Islamophobia is fear, hostility and discrimination directed at Muslims or people perceived to be Muslim. It includes hate crimes, workplace bias, surveillance and policies that treat Muslims as security threats. In the US, it often overlaps with racism against Arab, South Asian, Middle Eastern and Black people.
Japanese American incarceration was the forced removal and imprisonment of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. About two-thirds were US citizens. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized it with Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942.
Jim Crow was the system of laws and customs that enforced racial segregation and denied Black Americans equal rights, mainly in the South, from the late 1800s to the 1960s. It separated schools, transit, housing and public places. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 dismantled its legal core.
Juneteenth is the holiday on June 19 that marks the end of slavery in the United States. It commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union troops announced in Galveston, Texas, that enslaved people in the state were free. It became a federal holiday in 2021.
A just transition is a plan for moving away from fossil fuels and polluting industries that protects the workers and communities who depend on them or live beside them. It holds that the shift to clean energy should not leave the same people behind who have carried the costs of pollution.
A land acknowledgment is a statement recognizing the Indigenous people who are the original stewards of the land where an event, school or organization is located. It is often read at the start of gatherings. Many Native leaders say it is meaningful only when tied to action.
What is land acknowledgment? →
Land Back is an Indigenous-led movement to return land, and decision-making power over land, to Indigenous nations. It ranges from returning specific parcels to restoring tribal management of public lands and honoring treaty rights. It frames justice for Native people as a matter of land and sovereignty.
Latine is a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American origin or descent. It uses the letter e, which fits Spanish grammar and pronunciation more easily than the x in Latinx. It is gaining use among Spanish speakers who want an inclusive alternative to Latino and Latina.
Latinx is a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American origin or descent. It replaces the gendered endings of Latino and Latina with an x. It is used by some activists, academics and organizations, but few Latino adults in the US use it themselves.
Legacy admissions is the practice of giving an advantage in college admissions to applicants whose relatives, usually parents, attended the school. Because past graduates of elite colleges were overwhelmingly white and wealthy, legacy preferences pass that privilege to their children. Several states have banned them.
LGBTQIA+ is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual and other sexual orientations and gender identities. The plus sign signals that the list is not complete. It is used to describe a broad community and movement.
Literacy tests were exams that officials required people to pass before they could register to vote. Southern states used them after Reconstruction to block Black citizens, since white registrars chose who was tested and judged the answers. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended them, and Congress banned them nationwide in 1975.
A living wage is the hourly pay a worker needs to cover basic costs like housing, food, childcare, health care and transportation where they live. It is usually far higher than the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since 2009, well below a living wage in every state.
The Lost Cause is a false version of Civil War history that claims the Confederacy fought for states' rights and honor rather than slavery. It portrays slavery as benign and Reconstruction as a disaster. It spread through monuments, textbooks and films after the war.
Loving v. Virginia was a 1967 US Supreme Court decision that struck down state bans on interracial marriage. The unanimous court ruled on June 12, 1967, that such bans violate the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of equal protection and due process. June 12 is now celebrated as Loving Day.
Lynching is the public killing of a person by a mob without any legal process, usually by hanging, shooting or burning. In the US, white mobs used lynching to terrorize Black communities and enforce white supremacy. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950.
A majority-minority district is an electoral district where people of color make up most of the voters. Courts and legislatures have drawn them under the Voting Rights Act so that voters of color, who were often outvoted by white bloc voting, could elect candidates of their choice. The term also describes places where white people are not the majority.
What is majority-minority district? →
Mandatory minimums are laws that require a judge to impose at least a set prison term for certain crimes, regardless of the circumstances. They shift sentencing power to prosecutors and have driven long sentences, especially for drug offenses that fall heavily on Black people.
Marginalization is the process of pushing a group to the edges of society, limiting its access to power, resources, services and decision-making. Marginalized groups are often left out of data, policy and public conversation. It is caused by systems and practices, not by the people marginalized.
Mass incarceration describes the United States’ practice of imprisoning people on a scale far beyond other countries. Harsh sentencing laws, the war on drugs and cash bail drove its growth, and Black and Latino people are imprisoned at much higher rates than white people.
Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media, from news articles to social posts and videos. It includes asking who made a message, why, what it leaves out and whose perspective it reflects. It is a key defense against misinformation and biased coverage.
Medical racism is racial bias and discrimination built into health care, medical research and medical education. It shows up in who gets believed, diagnosed and treated, and in tools and practices that treat race as biology. It has a long US history and still shapes patient outcomes.
Microaggressions are conscious or unconscious actions or behaviors based on one’s marginalized identities.
The Middle Passage was the sea voyage that carried captive Africans across the Atlantic to be enslaved in the Americas. It was the middle leg of the triangular trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas. More than 1.8 million people died during the crossing.
Misgendering is referring to someone with words that do not match their gender identity, such as the wrong pronouns or terms like "sir" or "ma'am." It can be accidental, but repeated or deliberate misgendering is a form of disrespect and harassment toward transgender and nonbinary people.
Misinformation is false or misleading information shared without the intent to deceive. People spread it because they believe it, often through social media, group chats or word of mouth. It differs from disinformation, which is false information spread on purpose.
Misogynoir describes the specific forms of misogyny and sexism that Black women experience. It is a combination of the words misogyny, which refers to the hatred or dislike of women, and noir, which means black in French.
Misogyny is hostility toward, contempt for or control of women and girls. Philosopher Kate Manne describes it as the enforcement arm of patriarchy: the threats, punishment and social pressure used against women who step outside expected roles.
Missing white woman syndrome is a term for the media's tendency to give far more coverage to missing white women and girls than to missing people of color. Journalist Gwen Ifill coined it in 2004. The gap affects how much public attention and police effort a case receives.
MMIW stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. It names the crisis of Native women and girls who go missing or are killed at high rates in the US and Canada, and the movement demanding justice. Variations include MMIWG (girls) and MMIP (people).
The model minority myth is a stereotype that suggests certain minority groups, especially Asian Americans, are naturally more successful and hardworking than others due to their culture, not systemic barriers and discrimination.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a 381-day protest in which Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, refused to ride city buses to end segregated seating. It began on December 5, 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. It ended in December 1956 after the Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional.
Mutual aid is when community members share resources and support directly with one another, such as food, money, rides or childcare. It is built on solidarity rather than charity: people help each other instead of waiting on institutions.
Native American boarding schools were institutions, many run or funded by the federal government, that removed Native children from their families to strip them of their languages and cultures. They operated from the early 1800s into the late 1900s. A 2024 federal report found at least 973 children died while attending them.
Native mascots are sports team names, logos and characters based on Native American people or stereotypes, such as headdresses, war chants and slurs. Native organizations and psychologists have long called for their retirement because they harm Native youth and reinforce stereotypes.
Neurodiversity is the idea that differences in how brains work, such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia, are natural variations in human beings rather than defects to be fixed. The neurodiversity movement seeks acceptance, accommodation and rights for neurodivergent people.
A no-knock warrant is a court order that lets police enter a home without first knocking and announcing themselves. These raids, often used in drug cases and frequently at night, have killed residents and officers, and they fall heavily on Black households.
Nonbinary describes a person whose gender identity is not exclusively man or woman. Nonbinary people may feel they are both, neither, or somewhere in between, and many use pronouns such as they/them. It is often included under the transgender umbrella, though not every nonbinary person uses that label.
Occupational segregation is the uneven sorting of workers into different jobs and industries by race, gender or other identity. In the US, Black, Latino and women workers are concentrated in lower-paid fields and underrepresented in higher-paid ones. It is one of the main drivers of racial and gender pay gaps.
The one-drop rule is the principle that a person with any known Black ancestry is classified as Black. It was written into some US state laws and census practices in the early 1900s. It was designed to keep racial lines rigid and protect white status and property.
The opportunity gap is the unequal access to resources and conditions that help students succeed, such as experienced teachers, advanced courses, school funding and stable housing. The term shifts focus from test-score differences between students to the unequal chances that produce them.
Oppression is the systemic use of power and authority to discriminate against and marginalize a particular group of people, often on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other characteristics.
Othering is the process of treating a group of people as fundamentally different, lesser or outside the community. It turns differences such as race, religion or national origin into a line between "us" and "them." Othering often comes before discrimination, exclusion and violence.
Passing is when a person of one racial group is accepted as a member of another, most often when a light-skinned Black person lives as white. In the US, people passed to escape slavery, segregation and discrimination. Passing usually required cutting ties with family and community.
Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold most power in families, government, the economy and culture, and in which traits linked with masculinity are valued over those linked with femininity. It is built into laws and institutions, not only individual attitudes.
People of color is a collective term for people who are not white. In the US, it usually includes Black, Latino, Asian American, Native American, Pacific Islander and Middle Eastern people. It is used to describe shared experiences of racism across groups while leaving room for differences.
Performative allyship is support for a marginalized group that is mainly done to be seen, such as a social media post, without the ongoing action that allyship requires.
The perpetual foreigner stereotype is the assumption that certain Americans, especially Asian and Latino Americans, are foreign no matter how long their families have lived in the US. It shows up in questions like "Where are you really from?" It has been used to justify exclusion and suspicion.
A plea bargain is a deal in which a defendant pleads guilty, usually to a lesser charge or for a lighter sentence, instead of going to trial. Most US criminal cases end this way, which gives prosecutors great power over outcomes.
Plessy v. Ferguson was an 1896 US Supreme Court decision that upheld state laws requiring racial segregation, as long as the separate facilities were equal. It created the "separate but equal" doctrine that legalized Jim Crow. Brown v. Board of Education rejected it for public schools in 1954.
Police abolition is the goal of replacing policing with systems that keep people safe without armed officers. Abolitionists aim to shrink police power step by step while building housing, health care, mental health response and community safety programs.
Police brutality is the use of excessive or unjustified force by police, from beatings and chokeholds to shootings. In the US it falls hardest on Black, Indigenous and other people of color, and laws like qualified immunity make officers hard to hold accountable.
A poll tax is a fixed fee a person must pay before being allowed to vote. After Reconstruction, Southern states used poll taxes to keep Black citizens and poor white citizens from the ballot. The 24th Amendment and the Supreme Court ended poll taxes in all elections by 1966.
Polling place closures are decisions by election officials to shut or consolidate voting locations. Fewer sites can mean longer travel, longer lines and more confusion. Closures have been concentrated in communities of color, and many followed the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which ended federal review of such changes in many Southern jurisdictions.
Preclearance is the rule in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that required places with histories of voting discrimination to get federal approval before changing any voting rule. It shifted the burden onto those governments to prove a change would not harm voters of color. It has been inactive since 2013.
Predatory lending is the use of unfair, deceptive or abusive loan terms that benefit the lender at the borrower's expense. It includes hidden fees, inflated interest rates and loans a borrower cannot repay. Lenders have often targeted Black and Latino communities, including borrowers who qualified for better loans.
Predictive policing uses data and algorithms to forecast where crime will happen or who might commit it, then sends police accordingly. Because it relies on biased past arrest data, it tends to send more officers back into already over-policed Black and Latino neighborhoods.
Prejudice is a judgment or feeling about a person based on the group they belong to, formed without real knowledge of them. It can be positive or negative, conscious or unconscious. Prejudice is an attitude; discrimination is what happens when that attitude shapes action.
Pretrial detention is holding a person in jail before trial, while that person is still legally presumed innocent. Most people in US jails have not been convicted, and many are held only because they cannot afford bail.
Prison gerrymandering is the practice of counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison's location, rather than their home communities, when drawing election districts. It inflates the political power of mostly rural, white areas with prisons and weakens the urban communities of color that incarcerated people come from.
Prison labor is work done by incarcerated people, often for pennies an hour or nothing at all. The Thirteenth Amendment allows forced labor as punishment for a crime, a loophole that has shaped US prisons since the end of slavery.
The prison-industrial complex is the web of government agencies and private businesses that profit from and depend on policing, surveillance and incarceration. The term describes how these interests push to keep prisons full, regardless of whether prisons make communities safer.
Private prisons are jails, prisons and detention centers run by for-profit companies under government contracts. Because these companies are usually paid for each person they hold, critics argue they give corporations a financial stake in keeping incarceration high.
Privilege is an unearned advantage that a person receives because of a social identity, such as being white, male, wealthy, straight or nondisabled. It does not mean a person's life is easy. It means certain obstacles are absent because of who they are.
A public defender is a lawyer paid by the government to represent people charged with crimes who cannot afford their own attorney. The Supreme Court guaranteed this right in Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963, but many public defense systems remain badly underfunded.
Public housing is rental housing owned and run by government agencies and offered to low-income households at reduced rents. The federal program began with the Housing Act of 1937. Government choices about where to build it and whom to admit often deepened racial segregation, and decades of underfunding have shrunk it.
Qualified immunity is a rule that protects police and other government officials from being sued for damages if they are accused of breaking someone’s constitutional rights.
Queer is an umbrella term for people whose sexual orientation or gender identity falls outside heterosexual or cisgender norms. Once used as a slur, it was reclaimed by activists in the late 1980s and 1990s and is now used by many as an identity and a political stance.
Race is a system of sorting people into groups based on physical traits like skin color and hair texture. It is a social and political invention, not a biological fact. In the US, race has been used to decide who could own property, vote, marry and become a citizen.
Racial capitalism is the idea that capitalism has always depended on racial hierarchy to create and justify unequal value, labor and wealth. The term was developed by political theorist Cedric Robinson. It holds that racism and the economy cannot be understood separately.
Racial equity is the condition in which race no longer predicts a person's life outcomes, such as health, wealth or school success. It also describes the work of changing policies and practices so that they stop producing racial gaps. It goes beyond treating everyone the same.
The racial pay gap is the difference in earnings between workers of different races. In the US, Black and Latino workers are paid less on average than white workers. In 2023, Black women working full time, year-round were paid 66 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, according to the National Women's Law Center.
Racial profiling is when police or security officials target people for suspicion, stops, searches or questioning based on race, ethnicity or religion rather than evidence. It is a practice, not just individual bias. Studies of traffic stops and pedestrian stops consistently find that Black and Latino people are stopped and searched more often.
Racial trauma is the mental and emotional injury caused by experiences of racism, including discrimination, threats, violence and repeated exposure to racist events. It can come from direct experiences or from witnessing harm to others in one's community. It is also called race-based traumatic stress.
The racial wealth gap is the difference in household wealth between white and Black families. Many reparations plans measure harm and set payment goals using this gap.
Racism is a system of advantage and disadvantage based on race, built into laws, institutions and everyday practices. It includes individual prejudice, but it is mostly about power: who sets the rules and who benefits. Racism can operate without anyone intending harm.
Rape culture is a social environment in which sexual violence is common and treated as normal, excused or blamed on victims. It shows up in jokes, media, policing and courts, and in the doubt directed at survivors. Feminists introduced the term in the 1970s.
Recidivism is when a person who has been convicted of a crime is arrested, convicted or returned to prison again. It is often used to judge whether prisons "work," but rates reflect policing patterns, parole rules and barriers to reentry as much as individual behavior.
Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War, from 1865 to 1877, when the federal government worked to rebuild the South and bring formerly enslaved people into citizenship. It produced the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. It ended when federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877.
Redlining is a practice of discrimination in which businesses deny or limit services, like mortgages or insurance, based on the racial makeup of neighborhoods. It often targets minority neighborhoods and limits access to credit and wealth. It’s illegal under federal fair housing laws.
Reentry is the process of returning to the community after prison or jail. People coming home face legal barriers to jobs, housing, voting and public benefits, which make it harder to rebuild a stable life.
A refugee is a person forced to flee their country because of persecution, war or violence, who cannot safely return. In US law, refugees are approved for protection while still abroad and then resettled in the country, unlike asylum seekers, who apply after arriving.
Reparations are actions taken to compensate for harm or injury, particularly in the context of racial justice. This may include financial compensation for the descendants of enslaved people and marginalized communities in the US.
Representation is the presence and portrayal of different groups in places of power and visibility, such as government, media, business, courts and classrooms. It covers both how many people from a group are present and how accurately they are shown. Representation shapes whose needs get attention and how groups are seen.
Reproductive justice is a framework created by Black women in 1994 that covers the right to have children, the right to not have children and the right to raise children in safe communities.
Respectability politics is the belief that marginalized people can earn fair treatment by following the dress, speech and behavior norms of the dominant group. It places the burden of ending discrimination on the people facing it. Historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham coined the term in 1993.
Restorative justice is an approach to harm that focuses on repairing it rather than punishing it. The person who caused harm, the person harmed and their community work together on what happened and what it will take to make things right.
Restrictive covenants are clauses in property deeds that limit how a home can be used or who can live there. Racially restrictive covenants barred Black, Asian, Jewish and other buyers from owning or renting homes. The Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that courts could not enforce them.
Reverse racism is a term for the claim that white people face racism, usually from policies meant to address discrimination against people of color. Anti-racist scholars reject the term because racism is a system of power that has not been reversed. Individual white people can still face prejudice or illegal discrimination.
A sanctuary city is a city, county or state that limits how much its police and jails help federal immigration enforcement. The term has no single legal definition, but such policies often bar local officers from holding people for ICE without a judicial warrant.
Say Her Name is a campaign that draws attention to Black women and girls killed or harmed by police, whose stories are often left out of coverage of police violence. The African American Policy Forum and Kimberlé Crenshaw launched it in 2014 and 2015. It names victims such as Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland.
School funding inequity is the unequal distribution of money across schools and districts, which often leaves students in low-income communities and communities of color with fewer resources. Because many districts rely on local property taxes, wealthier and whiter areas can raise more per student.
School resource officers are sworn police officers assigned to work in schools. Supporters say they improve safety, but their presence increases student arrests and police referrals, which fall hardest on Black students and students with disabilities.
School segregation is the separation of students by race or class into different schools. Brown v. Board of Education outlawed legally required segregation in 1954, but schools have stayed divided through housing patterns, district lines and court rulings. In 2020-21, more than a third of US students attended schools where 75 percent or more of students were one race.
The school-to-prison pipeline describes policies, such as zero-tolerance discipline and police in schools, that push students out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal legal systems. Black students and students with disabilities are disciplined at disproportionately high rates.
Scientific racism is the use of false or distorted science to claim that racial groups are biologically different in intelligence, ability or worth. It was used to justify slavery, colonialism, segregation and eugenics. Modern genetics shows that race is a social category, not a biological one.
Segregation is the separation of people by race in housing, schools, jobs, transportation and public spaces. In the US, it was enforced by law under Jim Crow and by policy and practice nationwide. Legal segregation was banned in the 1960s, but many neighborhoods and schools remain divided by race.
Sentencing disparity is the gap in punishment between groups convicted of similar crimes. In the US, Black and Latino people often receive longer sentences than white people with similar charges and records, a pattern found in federal and state courts.
Separate but equal was the legal doctrine that racial segregation was constitutional as long as the facilities for each race were equal. The Supreme Court adopted it in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. In practice, facilities for Black Americans were consistently underfunded and inferior.
Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism in which settlers come to stay, take the land and work to replace the Indigenous people who live there. Its goal is the land itself, not only labor or resources. The US, Canada and Australia are examples.
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on sex or gender, especially against women and girls. Like racism, it works at the personal level and through laws, workplaces and institutions that give men more power and resources. It intersects with racism in the lives of women of color.
Shelby County v. Holder is a 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down the formula used to decide which places needed federal approval before changing voting rules. Without the formula, the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement stopped working, and many states quickly passed new voting restrictions.
The social model of disability is the idea that people are disabled mainly by barriers in society, such as inaccessible buildings, rules and attitudes, rather than by their bodies or minds. It contrasts with the medical model, which treats disability as an individual problem to cure or fix.
Solidarity is unity and mutual support among people or groups working toward a shared goal, especially across lines of difference. It goes beyond sympathy: it means sharing risk and acting together. In anti-racist organizing, solidarity links communities facing related forms of oppression.
Solitary confinement is holding a person alone in a small cell for 22 hours or more a day, with little human contact. It is widely used in US prisons, jails and detention centers, and the UN considers stays beyond 15 days a form of torture.
Stand your ground laws let people use deadly force in self-defense outside the home without first trying to retreat, if they believe they face serious harm. Research shows these laws are linked to more homicides and to racially unequal outcomes.
A stereotype is an oversimplified belief that all members of a group share certain traits. Stereotypes can sound negative or positive, but both flatten real people into a category. They shape how people are judged, hired, policed and portrayed in media.
Stereotype threat is the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group, and the stress that risk creates. That stress can lower performance on tests and tasks. Psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson described it in a 1995 study of Black college students.
Stop and frisk is a police practice of stopping, questioning and patting down people on the street based on reasonable suspicion. New York City's version stopped hundreds of thousands of mostly Black and Latino people a year until a federal court found it unconstitutional in 2013.
Structural racism is the way many systems, such as housing, schools, policing, health care and the economy, work together to produce racial inequality. No single institution or person has to act with racist intent. The disadvantage comes from how the systems connect and reinforce each other.
Subprime lending is lending to borrowers seen as higher risk, at higher interest rates and fees. Before the 2008 financial crisis, lenders pushed subprime mortgages into Black and Latino neighborhoods, often to borrowers who qualified for better loans. The resulting foreclosures wiped out a large share of Black household wealth.
Sundown towns are all-white communities that kept Black people and other people of color out, often by warning them to leave before dark. They used violence, threats, signs and local ordinances. Thousands existed across the US, especially in the North and Midwest, through at least the 1960s.
Systemic racism is racial inequality built into laws, institutions and practices, separate from any one person’s attitudes. The 1968 Kerner report described it when it said white institutions created and maintained the ghetto.
Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, is a federal program that lets people from certain countries in crisis live and work in the US temporarily, because returning home would be unsafe. It does not lead to a green card or citizenship.
What is Temporary Protected Status? →
The Green Book was an annual travel guide that listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations and other businesses that would serve Black travelers during segregation. Its full title was The Negro Motorist Green Book. Victor Hugo Green, a Harlem postal worker, published it from 1936 to 1967.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was ratified on December 6, 1865. Its punishment exception allowed forced labor to continue through convict leasing and still permits unpaid or low-paid prison labor today.
Three strikes laws require much longer sentences, often 25 years to life, for people convicted of a third serious crime. Passed widely in the 1990s, they filled prisons with older people serving decades for offenses that were sometimes minor.
The tipped minimum wage is a lower base pay that employers may give workers who earn tips, such as restaurant servers. Under federal law it is $2.13 an hour, a figure unchanged since 1991, with tips expected to make up the rest. Critics trace the system to the years after slavery ended.
What is tipped minimum wage? →
Tokenism is including a small number of marginalized people to appear diverse without addressing discrimination. It often involves giving token roles or responsibilities without equal opportunities or support.
Tone policing is dismissing what someone says about injustice because of how they said it, such as calling them too angry or too emotional. It shifts attention from the harm to the delivery.
The Trail of Tears was the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its homelands in the Southeast to Indian Territory, in present-day Oklahoma, in 1838 and 1839. About 16,000 Cherokee were marched west, and an estimated 4,000 died. The name is also used for the removals of other Southeastern nations.
The transatlantic slave trade was the forced transport of African people across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved in the Americas, from the 1500s to the 1860s. About 12.5 million Africans were put on slave ships. It was the largest forced migration in recorded history.
Transformative justice is an approach to harm that works outside police and prisons. It responds to violence by supporting survivors, holding people accountable within their communities and changing the conditions that made the harm possible.
Transgender describes a person whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. It is an umbrella term that can include trans women, trans men and nonbinary people. Being transgender is about who a person is, not about medical treatment or appearance.
Transphobia is fear, hostility or discrimination aimed at transgender and gender-nonconforming people. It operates through individual harassment and violence, and through laws and policies that deny trans people health care, accurate identity documents, safety and full participation in public life.
Trust-based philanthropy is an approach to giving in which funders share power with the nonprofits they support. Core practices include multiyear, unrestricted grants, simpler applications and reports, and listening to grantees. It responds to a system in which foundations, mostly led by wealthy white donors, hold control over community groups.
The Tulsa Race Massacre was a two-day attack on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which a white mob destroyed the Black Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. A state commission estimated that up to 300 people were killed. More than 35 blocks of homes, churches and businesses were burned.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a US Public Health Service study that observed untreated syphilis in about 600 Black men in Macon County, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972. Researchers withheld treatment even after penicillin became the standard cure in the 1940s. The men were never told they had syphilis.
Undocumented describes immigrants who live in the US without legal immigration status, either because they entered without authorization or stayed after a visa expired. Advocates prefer it to "illegal," because being in the country without status is a civil violation, not a crime.
Urban renewal was a federal program, launched by the Housing Act of 1949, that paid cities to clear neighborhoods officials labeled blighted and redevelop them. It demolished many Black and immigrant communities and displaced hundreds of thousands of families, who often received little help or compensation.
Voter ID laws are state rules that require voters to show identification before casting a ballot. Supporters say they prevent fraud, but in-person voter impersonation is extremely rare. Strict photo ID laws fall hardest on Black, Latino, elderly, disabled and low-income voters, who are less likely to hold the required ID.
Voter purges are the removal of names from voter registration rolls. States must keep rolls accurate, but aggressive or error-prone purges can cancel the registrations of eligible voters, who often learn about it only at the polls. Purges have fallen hardest on Black voters and in places with histories of voting discrimination.
Voter suppression is the practice of intentionally making it harder for certain groups of people to vote.
The Voting Rights Act is a 1965 federal law that bans racial discrimination in voting. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it on August 6, 1965. It outlawed literacy tests and required places with histories of discrimination to get federal approval before changing voting rules, a process called preclearance.
The War on Drugs is the US government's decades-long campaign to fight drug use through policing, arrests and long prison sentences. Though Black and white Americans use drugs at similar rates, the drug war has targeted Black and Latino communities most.
Weathering is the physical wear and tear caused by long-term exposure to racism, poverty and other stress, which leads to earlier onset of illness and death. Public health researcher Arline Geronimus developed the concept in 1992. It helps explain why Black Americans face worse health at younger ages.
White feminism is a form of feminism that focuses exclusively on the experiences and needs of white women, often without acknowledging or addressing the intersections of race, class, and other forms of oppression that shape the experiences of women of color and other marginalized groups.
White flight is the large-scale movement of white residents out of neighborhoods or school districts as people of color move in. It peaked in US cities after World War II. Federal housing policy and highway building helped make it possible while largely excluding Black families from the suburbs.
White fragility is a term for the defensive reactions some white people have when their ideas about race are challenged, such as anger, denial, guilt or withdrawal. Educator Robin DiAngelo coined it in 2011. The concept holds that these reactions shut down conversations about racism.
White privilege is the set of unearned advantages that white people receive in society because of their race. Peggy McIntosh’s 1989 essay listed dozens of everyday examples.
White rage is a term for the pattern of white political and legal backlash that follows Black progress in the US. Historian Carol Anderson popularized it in a 2016 book. It refers less to street violence than to laws, courts and policies used to reverse gains.
White savior complex refers to the belief that white people have a responsibility or a right to save or rescue people of color from their problems or circumstances. The white savior complex often involves a sense of superiority and a lack of awareness of one’s own privilege.
White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to people of other races, and the systems built on that belief that give white people more power and advantages. It includes extremist groups, but it also describes everyday laws, institutions and norms that keep a racial hierarchy in place.
Whiteness is the social and legal category of being white, and the set of advantages and norms attached to it. Scholars study it as a constructed identity whose boundaries have shifted over time. In the US, whiteness has often been treated as the default against which other groups are measured.
Whitewashing is the practice of erasing or minimizing people of color and racism, either by casting white actors in roles of color or by retelling history in ways that leave out racial injustice. It makes whiteness the default and hides how racism shaped events.
Woke is a term from African American Vernacular English meaning alert to racial injustice. Black Americans used "stay woke" for decades as a warning to stay aware. Since about 2020, opponents of racial justice policies have used it as an insult for progressive ideas they reject.
A wrongful conviction is when a person is convicted of a crime they did not commit. In the US, Black people are far more likely to be wrongfully convicted, and common causes include mistaken eyewitnesses, false confessions and official misconduct.
What is wrongful conviction? →
Xenophobia is a fear or hatred of people from other countries or cultures. It is often manifested as discrimination or prejudice against people who are perceived as being different or foreign.
Zero tolerance policies are school or government rules that impose fixed, harsh punishments for certain behaviors, regardless of context. In schools, they lead to suspensions, expulsions and police referrals that fall hardest on Black students and students with disabilities.
Social Determinants of Health
Social determinants of health are the conditions where people are born, live, learn, work and age that shape their health. They include income, housing, education, neighborhood safety, food access and discrimination. Because these conditions are unequal by design, they drive many racial health gaps.
What are social determinants of health? →