Anti-Racist Glossary
“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. You have to be actively anti-racist.” — Angela Davis
Afro-Gàidheil: A person with African and Gaelic heritage.
Allyship: An ally is someone who is in solidarity with people who are experiencing oppression and injustice. Being an ally involves recognising your own privileges and biases, educating yourself and helping others holding a similar position as you to learn. When you are an ally you are mindful of your positioning within group dynamics and use what power you have to uplift others with less power, rather than talking over them and taking up undue space.
Anti-Blackness: The systematic denial of Black people’s humanity and dignity.
Anti-Racism: Actively challenging racism within yourself, in your community and in wider society. Approaching the world in an anti-racist way requires a lot of unlearning. Your anti-racist education can never be complete until the world around you is fully anti-racist.
BME/BAME: BME stands for Black and Minority Ethnic. BAME stands for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic. These terms are still commonly used but are increasingly problematised and avoided.
Calling in: ‘Calling in’ is a term coined by Black activist and scholar, Loretta J Ross and is a way of drawing attention to harm within a group or community to support continued growth and learning.
Calling out: It is important to interrupt oppression and injustice when you hear or witness it. The ‘calling out’ method involves a very clear shutting down of harmful words or actions. It can be uncomfortable to hear but is necessary in some situations.
Coloniality: The living legacy of colonialism. Enduring power imbalances and discrimination that continue as a result of, or in the pattern of, colonialism.
Colour blindness: The refusal to acknowledge race, allowing people to ignore manifestations of racist oppression and invisibilising racialised people’s experiences and identities.
Colourism also known as shadeism or anti-darkness: Discrimination based on skin tone, privileging light skin over dark skin. It is rooted in and preserves white supremacy, rewards proximity to whiteness and upholds Eurocentric beauty standards.
Cultural racism: Using cultural differences to justify the unequal distribution of power, for example, white Western cultures being deemed more sophisticated and advanced while other cultures are deemed to be primitive, backward and uncivilised.
Decolonisation: The process of liberating a country, institution or sphere of activity from the social, economic and cultural effects of colonisation.
Emotional labour: The mental effort required to manage normal tasks and interactions in order to maintain relationships and ensure the smooth running of a process. It is typically regarded as an unappreciated or unacknowledged burden that can lead to exhaustion. People of colour often have to perform a disproportionate amount of emotional labour across all aspects of life, including within anti-racist organising.
Environmental racism: Environmental injustice that disproportionately impacts Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour.
Hostile environment: Draconian Home Office policies intended to severely limit or remove access to public services for anyone without leave to remain, undermining the human rights of those seeking asylum.
Internalised racism: When racialised people absorb negative messages about their abilities and intrinsic worth. This can have a pervasive and detrimental impact on people’s lives.
Interpersonal racism: Prejudices and discriminatory behaviours that are based on assumptions about the abilities, motives, and intents of racialised groups based on their race.
Intersectionality: A term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how multiple forms of oppression interconnect to create overlapping or interdependent systems of discrimination and disadvantage.
Institutional racism: When organisations, businesses and institutions like schools, the police and the Home Office, discriminate, deliberately or otherwise, against racialised people to limit their rights.
Islamophobia: Bigotry and racism directed towards Islam, Muslims and people perceived as Muslim.
Non-white: A problematic term that centres whiteness when describing racialised people.
People/Person of Colour (POC): A commonly used term to refer collectively to racialised people. It assumes that people who are not white share similar experiences in a predominantly white society. Originating in the US it is increasingly used in the UK, often in place of BAME, which is now somewhat outmoded. While it is still considered an insufficient umbrella term that does not reflect diverse and unique ethnic and cultural identities, it is generally a preferred term as it is a self-determined designation. Sometimes this is extended to BPOC or BIPOC, ‘B’ standing for Black and ‘I’ standing for Indigenous. This acknowledges the systemic racism that deeply affects Black and Indigenous people that other people of colour may not experience. It is important to remember that all racialised people have the right to choose which terms they use to describe themselves. It is never acceptable to use an alternative term, even if this term is widely used and accepted elsewhere.
Racial antisemitism: Prejudice against Jews based on the belief that Jews are a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are inferior or abhorrent.
Racial capitalism: The manner in which capitalism relies on the exploitation of notions of racial difference to perpetuate and justify the unequal division of wealth and labour.
Racism: Racism was an idea created during the European colonisation of much of the Global South to justify the theft and abuse of natural resources and people, the destruction of cultures, as well as the enslavement of Black Africans and the indentured servitude of other colonised groups. This legacy is alive today and we live in a racist society.
Scientific racism also known as biological racism or race science: Using pseudoscience (eugenics) to justify a hierarchy of racial superiority and inferiority to reinforce the supremacy of the dominant group.
Systemic racism: A complex interaction of economic, political, social, and cultural structures, actions, beliefs that work together to perpetuate an unequal distribution of privilege, resources, safety and power in favour of dominant groups, disadvantaging all other racial groups.
Theological racism: Using religion to justify colonisation and the unequal distribution of power.
Tokenism: Making a symbolic or perfunctory gesture to give the appearance of addressing inequality without any real commitment to change. In this context, marginalised people are ‘tokenised’.
Whiteness: A system of thought that asserts white superiority and privilege and assumes white people are the norm.
White fragility: When white people perform defensive behaviours, feelings and actions such as anger, fear, crying and silence in reaction to conversations about racism.
White saviourism: The belief that white people are here to teach, save and protect People of Colour. It relies on a feeling of superiority and shows up when the feelings, thoughts and opinions of white people are given higher value than those of people of colour. An ally does not engage in white saviourism.