For Staff: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) in Libraries

• Ableism: This can refer to either individual or institutional actions and language that disadvantage or disempower people with disabilities,people experiencing disabilities, or disabled people. Ableism includes mental, physical, and emotional disabilities.
• Ageism: The normalization and privilege of people within the preferred age range in a society. This age range defines who is taken seriously, catered to by most goods and services, allowed to have an impact on decisions in the society, and valued as a human being. Results in invisibility of, and discrimination and inaccessibility faced by, people outside that age range.
• Allyship - Allyship is a philosophy rooted in action; it demands doing what is necessary to recognize and subvert systems of oppression. Allyship is a process, is based on trust and accountability, looks different for everyone based on you identities, experiences, and spheres of influence, and is not self-defined (i.e., you don’t to label yourself as an “ally”).
• Averse Racism -- is characterized by a conflict between the denial of personal prejudice and unconscious negative feelings and beliefs, which may be rooted in normal psychological processes (such as social categorization) (https://authenticate.library.duq.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edssjb&AN=edssjb.1.4020.3455.5.19&site=eds-live&scope=site)

• Code-switching -  The practice of altering behavior, appearance, and language to fit in. Code-switching happens for many reasons, but in the DEI context, code-switching typically refers to the practice by people with marginalized identities of changing their behavior, appearance, and language to assimilate to the dominant culture and gain access to advantages experienced by people with dominant identities

• Color Blind: The belief that everyone should be treated “equally” without respect to societal, economic, historical, racial or other difference. No differences are seen or acknowledged; everyone is the same.

• Confirmation Bias - Our tendency to interpret information based on a way that confirms our own previous beliefs and experiences.

• Cultural competence(y) - The ability to interact effectively across various facets of diversity, to flex with differences. Cultural competence is what we need to be inclusive. It requires (1) being self-aware of your own culture, assumptions, values, styles, biases, attitudes, privilege, etc.; (2) understanding others’ cultures, assumptions, values, styles, biases, attitudes, privilege, etc.; and (3) based on this knowledge, understanding your potential impact on others and interacting with them in a situationally appropriate way.

• Diversity - The differences among us based on which we experience systemic advantages or encounter systemic barriers in access to opportunities and resources. Race and ethnicity is not the only way in which we are diverse as a group. There are countless visible and invisible facets of diversity. Furthermore, a person cannot be “diverse” (as in “diverse candidate”). Diversity is the outcome of inclusion and equity efforts.

• Equity -  An approach based in fairness to ensuring everyone has access to the same opportunities and resources. In practice, it ensures everyone is given equal opportunity to thrive; this means that resources may be divided and shared unequally to make sure that each person can access an opportunity. Equity is therefore not the same thing as equality. Equity takes into account that people have different access to resources because of system of oppression and privilege. Equity seeks to balance that disparity.

• Implicit Bias: Negative associations expressed automatically that people unknowingly hold and that hat affect our understanding, actions, and decisions; also known as unconscious or hidden bias.

• Imposter Syndrome: a pervasive feeling of self-doubt, insecurity and incompetence, despite evidence that you are skilled and successful.

• Inclusion -Celebrating, centering, and amplifying the perspectives, voices, values, and needs of people who experience systemic barriers, mistreatment, or disadvantages based on their identities in order to ensure they feel a sense of belonging. Inclusion is not merely tolerating or accommodating differences; it’s about actively valuing and honoring it. Inclusion is also not about surmounting, overcoming, or transcending differences to focus on “our common humanity.” Diversity is what we are, and inclusion is what we do.

• 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.
• Intersectionality: A social construct that recognized the fluid diversity of identities that a person can hold such as gender, race, class, religion, professional status, marital status, socioeconomic status, etc.

• Marginalized Communities - Groups of people who face systemic disadvantages, exclusion, and barriers to opportunities, resources and power based on their identities, including but not limited to black, indigenous, and people of color, immigrants, refugees, undocumented Americans, people with disabilities, women, anybody who identifies outside or beyond the gender binary or not as cisgender, anybody who is not heterosexual, poor and/or low income communities.

• Microaggressions - Unconscious everyday behaviors that often unintentionally disempower someone based on a marginalized identity (real or perceived). They can feel small or subtle to the person engaging in the microaggression, but the impact can be large for the recipient. If experienced chronically, a person can feel, “death by a thousand tiny cuts.”

• Norms - Refer to observable experiences within a community thar are not necessarily negative, are helpful and intended to guide people in their actions, are complex, and are often qualified by words such as “often,” “sometimes,” and “may.”

• Oppression - The flip side of privilege, oppression constitutes mistreatment we experience or barriers and disadvantages we encounter by virtue of one or more of our identities, called “marginalized” or “disadvantaged” identities. Systems of oppression refer to systems of power in society that advantage certain groups over others, and include ideologies such as racism, sexism, cissexism, heterosexism, elitism, classism, ableism, nativism, colonialism, ageism, and sizeism (collectively “the isms”).

• Prejudice is an individual bias toward a certain group of people. Anyone can be prejudiced toward pretty much anyone else, but the impact of that prejudice varies.

• Privilege - The flip side of oppression, privilege constitutes advantages we receive, consciously or not consciously, by virtue of one or more of our identities, called these “dominant identities”. These advantages are upheld by systems of power that advantage certain groups over others, and include ideologies such as racism, sexism, cissexism, heterosexism, elitism, classism, ableism, nativism, colonialism, ageism, and sizeism (collectively “the isms”). Privilege is the freedom from stress, anxiety, fear of harm related to your identity.

• Race A social construct that artificially divides people into distinct groups based on characteristics such as physical appearance (particularly color), ancestral heritage, cultural affiliation, cultural history, ethnic classification, and the social, economic and political needs of a society at a given period of time. Biologically, there is only one race of humans - we are too genetically similar for scientists to consider race a meaningful way of categorizing humans.
• Reverse racism: A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies which allegedly give ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color over whites. In the U.S., there is no such thing as “reverse racism.”
• Intersectionality -The concept that people can be subject to multiple systems of oppression that intersect and interact with each other, coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.
• Marginalized person -​  a member of a group that is the primary target of a system of oppression.
• Oppression - systemic, pervasive inequality present throughout society that benefits people with more privilege and harms those with fewer privileges.
• Positionality - The influence of your social position with respect to age, gender, race (as a social construct), sexual orientation, gender identity, social class, health status, etc. that situate an individual in the broader social context. 
• Power - The ability to control circumstances or access to resources and/or privileges.
• Privilege -​ Exclusive access or availability to material and immaterial resources based on the membership to a dominant social group.
• 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.
• 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 her/himself.
• 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.

Terms have been reproduced from the following resources:

1. "Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Vocabulary," The Avarna Group. https://theavarnagroup.com/resources/equity-inclusion-diversity-vocabulary/.

2. Center for Diversity & Inclusion. Glossary of Bias Terms. Washington University in St. Louis

3. Colors of Resistance. Definitions for the Revolution