A CHANGING DYNAMIC: DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN 2017 TERMINOLOGY ALLY Someone who advocates for underrepresented group members but does not share their social identity. Offers that counters micro-aggressions by: Providing others with full attention Acknowledging others’ contributions Recognizing strengths Respectfully asking questions for clarification Holding others accountable when seeing taking place Breaking the silence around these micro-inequities and developing personal and group strategies to deal with them when they arise. BIAS A predisposition toward or against someone that promotes (and justifies) unfair attitudes and treatment. CULTURE The collective and shared behavior patterns, including attitudes, values, institutions, standards, roles, rules and norms that are unique to a group of people, are socially transmitted, and serve as a model of expected behavior within the group. A “roadmap” for navigating the human experience, shared by a group of people. CULTURAL COMPETENCE An ability to successfully negotiate cross-cultural differences in order to accomplish practical goals. Cultural competence has four components: Awareness, attitude, knowledge and skills. The outcomes of cultural competence are observable and measurable practices that support and promote inclusion. CULTURAL CONSCIOUSNESS Begins with cultural competence, and rather than being an end-point, it is a skill set that includes the fostering of a critical awareness and inclusion—of the self, others, and the world.
disadvantages felt by) persons of color. Privilege is a function of systems (social, economic, institutional) and confers power to persons on the basis of an identity characteristic. RACE Historically thought to be a scientific concept of sub-grouping humans into categories, the Human Genome Project revealed that 99.9% of variance among human beings is shared and that previous groupings (often based on skin color, eye shape, hair texture, facial and other physical features) describe more about geographic dispersion and genealogical lineage than actual meaningful predictions of ability, behavior, or potential. Race, therefore, is a “social construct” whose meaning is best understood by exploring the legal, social, and political impact of the “race” label ascribed. RACISM Practices and policies based on the superiority of one “race”. The ability to impact others’ lives (social power) + prejudices and outdated views of “racial” differences = racism. This often results in depriving persons and groups of their civil liberties, rights, resources, and opportunities for social, educational and political advancement, simply on the basis of their perceived “race”. Racism can be individual (in the case of a single person’s beliefs and actions), group (in the case of shared meanings about another “race”), and/or institutional (laws and/or policies that restrict access and success). STEREOTYPE “A standardized mental picture held in common by members of a group and representing an oversimplified opinion, affective attitude, or uncritical judgment (as of a person, a race, an issue, or an event).” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (2002) STEREOTYPE THREAT The inhibition of actual ability that occurs when a negative stereotype is activated, and a member of the target group performs less well than their capabilities. See Steele& Aronson (1995) and Steele (2011). VALUES A culture’s or group’s shared standards of what is good and bad, acceptable or unacceptable, desirable or undesirable. Values may be transmitted directly or indirectly, formally or subtly, written, voiced or simply enacted. Some values remain “invisible” when widely shared, and can be thought to be simply “human”.