Glossary

Acceptance: a person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition (often a negative or uncomfortable situation) without attempting to change it, resist it, or protest it
Affirmative action: action that affirms the struggles of certain segments of a population and works to cultivate equity (Tricia Rose)
Anti-racism: acting intentionally to uproot and rid ourselves and our society of racism and oppression
Awareness: the ability to directly know and to perceive, sense, feel, or be cognizant of experience
Attention: the act or the power of fixing the mind onto an object
Attentional stability: being able to place your focused awareness on one object of awareness
BIPOC/POC: Black, Indigenous, Person/People of Color
Color blindness: to reject all racial categorizations and make no distinctions based on race. People who subscribe to this ideology believe that only once we see past race can we have an equitable world and/or that we are in a society that already does not take race into account. The exact opposite/contradictory idea to structural racism (Tricia Rose)
Compassion: 4 Parts - 1) Empathy/warmheartedness 2) the desire to relieve their suffering 3) acting to relieve their suffering 4) having the wisdom to relieve them of their suffering in the most skillful means possible
Diversity: the range of human differences, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, religious or ethical values system, national origin, and political beliefs
Empathy: the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. (Greater Good Berkeley)
Equanimity a non-judgemental evenness to view that which arises. An open, neutral, peaceful awareness
Equity: each of us getting what we need to survive or succeed—access to opportunity, networks, resources, and support—based on where we are and where we want to go. (Stanford Social Innovation Review)
Inclusion: involvement and empowerment, where the inherent worth and dignity of all people are recognized
Meditation: from the Pali word, ekaggata, which translates to one-pointedness, it means focusing our mind on a single point. The Tibetan word for meditation, gom, which translates to familiarization, means to familiarize ourselves with the mind and with positive mental states. Note: not all meditation must be done sitting, but we’re referring to the sitting practice when discussing meditation
Microaggressions: a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority
Mindfulness: the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally (Jon Kabat-Zinn)
Non-racist: not acting in racist ways but being complicit in a racist system
Prejudice to prejudge a person of any other race based on negative racial stereotypes and other factors (Layla F. Saad)
Racism: the coupling of prejudice with power, where the dominant racial group is able to dominate over all other racial groups and negatively affect those racial groups at all levels - personally, systemically, and institutionally (Layla F. Saad)
Structural racism: the normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics– historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal– that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color (Tricia Rose)
Unconscious bias: social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form and harbor outside their own conscious awareness
White supremacy: the belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups