Ethnic Studies

A theoretical framework originating in legal scholarship that examines how laws, institutions, and social structures perpetuate racial inequality. It holds that racism is not merely individual prejudice but is embedded in systemic policies and practices.

A concept developed by legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw describing how overlapping social identities such as race, gender, class, and sexuality interact to create unique experiences of discrimination and privilege that cannot be understood by examining any single category alone.

A form of colonialism in which outsiders come to a land inhabited by Indigenous peoples and establish permanent settlements, claiming territorial sovereignty and displacing or eliminating the original population. Unlike extractive colonialism, the colonizers intend to stay permanently.

A theoretical model arguing that racial and ethnic minorities within a nation-state can be subjected to colonial-like exploitation and political domination, including economic extraction, cultural suppression, and restricted self-governance.

The dispersion of a people from their original homeland to multiple regions, and the cultural, political, and social connections that persist across these scattered communities. Diaspora studies examines how displaced communities maintain collective identity while adapting to new environments.

A concept developed by Michael Omi and Howard Winant describing the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed. Race is understood not as a fixed biological fact but as an unstable social construction shaped by political struggle.

The development of solidarity and collective identity among distinct ethnic groups that share broad racial or cultural categorization. Pan-ethnic identities emerge through shared political interests and experiences of racialization.

The disproportionate siting of environmentally hazardous facilities and exposure to pollution in communities of color, along with the systematic exclusion of these communities from environmental policy decision-making.

A concept from Edward Said describing how Western societies have historically constructed the East as an exotic, inferior, and fundamentally different Other. This framework of representation has served to justify colonial domination and continues to shape perceptions of Asian and Middle Eastern peoples.

The right and capacity of a people to govern themselves and decide their own political, economic, and cultural futures. In ethnic studies, self-determination is a central demand of both domestic racial justice movements and global decolonization struggles.