Race and Ethnicity

The concept that racial categories are not rooted in biological reality but are created, maintained, and transformed through social, political, and historical processes. Different societies define and categorize race in different ways.

The ways in which racial inequality is embedded in the policies, practices, and norms of social institutions such as the legal system, housing markets, education, and healthcare, even without individual prejudice being the direct cause.

A theoretical framework, coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, that examines how overlapping social identities such as race, gender, class, and sexuality interact to create unique experiences of privilege or disadvantage that cannot be understood by examining any single category alone.

A theory developed by Michael Omi and Howard Winant describing how racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed through sociohistorical processes involving both social structure and cultural representation.

A social identity based on shared cultural characteristics such as language, religion, customs, ancestry, and historical memory. Unlike race, which emphasizes perceived physical differences, ethnicity centers on cultural affiliation and group belonging.

Prejudice refers to preconceived attitudes or beliefs about a group, often based on stereotypes, while discrimination refers to actions or behaviors that treat people unequally based on their group membership. Prejudice is attitudinal; discrimination is behavioral.

The unearned advantages and immunities that white people benefit from in societies structured by racial hierarchy, often invisible to those who possess them. The concept was popularized by Peggy McIntosh's 1988 essay.

A form of discrimination in which individuals with lighter skin tones are treated more favorably than those with darker skin tones, both within and across racial and ethnic groups. Colorism operates as a distinct but related phenomenon to racism.

An intellectual framework originating in legal scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s that examines how laws, policies, and institutions can perpetuate racial inequality. Key tenets include the ordinariness of racism, interest convergence, and the social construction of race.

Assimilation is the process by which members of a minority group adopt the cultural practices of the dominant group, often at the expense of their own heritage. Multiculturalism is an alternative framework that promotes the coexistence and equal recognition of multiple cultural traditions within a society.