DISCRIMINATION
The nine protected characteristics under The Equality Act (2010) are as follows:
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Age
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Disability
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Gender reassignment
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Marriage and civil partnership
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Pregnancy and maternity
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Race
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Religion and belief
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Sex
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Sexual orientation
Discrimination occurs when someone is treated less favourably because they possess at least one of these characteristics.
A general definition of discrimination refers to be as being unfair or unjust treatment of people because they possess certain characteristics.
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Direct Discrimination
Treating someone with a protected characteristic less favourably than others
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Discrimination by perception -
When an individual is treated unfairly because it is believed that they have a certain protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, whether it is true or not, the protected characteristics of pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnerships are excluded from this.
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Discrimination by association
Occurs when a person is treated less favourably because they are linked or associated with a protected characteristic.
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Indirect Discrimination -
Putting rules or arrangements in place that apply to everyone, but that put someone with a protected characteristic at an unfair disadvantage
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Harassment
Unwanted behaviour linked to a protected characteristic that violates someone’s dignity or creates an offensive environment for them
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Victimisation
Treating someone unfairly because they’ve complained about discrimination or harassment
RACISM
racial discrimination · racialism · racial prejudice/bigotry · xenophobia · chauvinism · bigotry · bias · intolerance · anti-Semitism · apartheid
A broad term describing the combination of race-based prejudice and power.
Without the power differential (one person/group/institution has more power than another), “racism” is just prejudice and carries less weight and fewer consequences.
The belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.
Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
Systemic/Structural Racism
Systemic/Structural racism has three components: history, culture, and institutions/policy.
Historical racism provides the framework for current racism.
Any structure built on a foundation (history) of racism will be a racist structure.
Culture, which is ever-present in our day to day lives is what allows racism to be accepted, normalized, and perpetuated.
Institutions and policies make up the fundamental relationships and rules across society, which reinforces racism and give it societal legitimacy which makes it so hard to dismantle.
Interpersonal Racism
Racism that happens between individual people.
When individual beliefs or prejudices become actions toward others.
Institutional Racism
Institutional racism occurs within and between institutions. Institutional racism is discriminatory treatment, unfair policies, and inequitable opportunities and impacts, based on race, produced and perpetuated by institutions (schools, mass media, etc.).
Individuals within institutions take on the power of the institution when they act in ways that advantage and disadvantage people, based on race.
Internalized Racism
When racism and white supremacy affect the minds of Black people to the point where they begin to believe that they are inferior because of their own race.
This can sometimes lead to “inter-racial hostility” in which Black people treat other Black people in a way that mirrors how white racists might treat them.
Another way internalized racism can manifest is by Black people accepting and internalizing Eurocentric ideals and values.
"Reverse Racism"
This term is in quotes to emphasize that it’s a made-up term that shouldn’t carry any actual value.
It was a term created by and for white people who want to perpetuate racism by denying their privilege in all its forms and by claiming that fighting to improve the lives of Black people is somehow “racist” against white people.
This term is invalid because racism in any form depends on the presence of a power differential.
White people have historically always fallen on the powerful side rather than the powerless side.
Reverse racism is therefore impossible, as long as we live in a society that perpetuates white supremacy.
Oppression
The use of power (by a system/institution/group/individual) to dominate over another OR the refusal of a system/institution/group/individual who possesses this power to challenge that domination.
Racial Trauma
Simply, traumatization that results from experiencing racism in any of its many forms.
Importantly, this doesn’t have to be one major isolated event, but rather it can result from an accumulation of experiences like daily subtle acts of discrimination or microaggressions.
White Privilege
Inherent advantages possessed by a white person based on their race in a society characterized by racial inequality and injustice.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.