fuckyeahethnicwomen:

racismfreeontario:

from racismfreeontario.com (deena hai) and http://fuckyeahethnicwomen.tumblr.com/definitions

SET 1 (will organize all together later)

Assimilation: means being absorbed into the cultural tradition of the dominant society and consequently losing one’s historical identity. This is in contrast to acculturation in which there is an adaptation to a different culture but retention of original identity (Garcia & Van Soest, 2006; Pinderhughes, 1989; Potapchuk et al., 2005; Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 1998; Soto, 2004; Thompson & Neville, 1999).

Cultural Appropriation: Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or behavior. These elements are typically imported into the existing culture, and may have wildly different meanings or lack the subtleties of their original cultural context. Because of this, cultural appropriation is sometimes viewed negatively, and has been called “cultural theft. ( Haig‐Brown, 2010)

Discrimination: is often codified by laws, regulations, and rules. People experience oppression when they are deprived of human rights or dignity and are (or feel) powerless to do anything about it. Sometimes the negative act is in the form of exclusion, in which people are denied the opportunity to participate in a certain right, benefit, or privilege. Sometimes the negative act is in the form of marginalization, in which people find that they are on the fringe of political, social, or economic consciousness. That sense of invisibility results in decisions being made by those in power that may be harmful simply because the needs were not considered.

Ethnocentrism: is the tendency to automatically interpret reality from one’s own perspective as normative and or superior. Other groups are judged in relative to one’s own cultural beliefs (without cultural relativism), thus dismissing other perspectives as inferior or insignificant.

Eurocentrism: is a belief or position that asserts the moral or evolutionary superiority of Anglo-European culture as the standard by which others are measured and evaluated and found to be deficient (Fleras and Kunz).

Internalized racism: In contrast to white privilege, internalized racism is the development of ideas, beliefs, actions, and behaviors that support or collude with racism against oneself. It is the support of the supremacy and dominance of the dominant group through participation in the set of attitudes, behaviors, social structures, and ideologies that undergirds the dominating group’s power and privilege and limits the oppressed group’s own advantages (Potapchuk et al, 2005; Tatum, 1997).

Orientalism:

“For there is no doubt that imaginative geography and history help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close to it and what is far away.”

– Edward Said

The idea behind Orientalism, according to Edward Said, is that the West has created a dichotomy between the romantic, exoticized notion of “the Orient,” and the reality of “the East.” Asia and the Middle East are viewed through a prism of racism and prejudice; they are constructed as a singular, monolithic race that is backwards, and without culture and history. In order to enlighten the primitive societies, (“modernize”) the West has created culture, history and a future for them. The vantage point from here is from “the West,” versus “the Other.”

Through Orientalism, women are objectified, their nationalities reduced to the “uncivilized,” and their identities to static, gender tropes. Asian women, for example- meaning women from anywhere within the continent of Asia- are products of this mysterious “Orient.” Western culture, as noted, depicts the “Orient,” as a savage, patriarchal land of harems, samurai and geishas. Elements from differing cultures around Asia are obscured and exoticized.

Otherizing: The process by which minority women and men are portrayed as people who are removed in time, remote in space and marginal to society. They are considered unbefitting of equal treatment because of their inferiority or irrelevance. Also “othered” or “othering.”

Prejudice: is the negative (or positive/idealized) attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs about an entire category of people formed without full knowledge or examination of the facts. And discrimination is acting on the basis of prejudice.

Racism is the practice of discrimination and prejudice based on racial classification supported by the power to enforce that prejudice.

Three subtle types of racism are captured in the concepts of symbolic racism, aversive racism, and micro-inequities.

a) Aversive racism: is another subtle form of prejudice. People who engage in the practice see themselves as non-racists, but they will do racist things, sometimes unintentionally, or they will avoid people without overt racist intent. What they believe about themselves and will attest to is the importance of fairness, equality, and justice, but because they have been exposed to the ever-present societal racism just by living in the United States, they will reflect it in their conduct (Durrheim & Dixon, 2004; Tatum, 1997).

b) Symbolic racism: is expressed by those who may or may not perceive themselves as racist, but justify their negative judgment of others by asserting that the others do not abide by traditional values of the dominant group. People can perceive themselves as being fair and practicing equality by holding forth certain values, such as “individualism” or “work ethic” or “self-reliance,” and take negative action because the focal group does not share those values. So they perceive themselves as operating based on certain “objective” standards or “universal truths” rather than in opposition to the group based on their race (Durrheim & Dixon, 2004).

c) Micro-inequities: Finally, good people can do bad things to others in ways for which there is no formal grievance, but still have negative (sometimes unintentionally) effect. This refers to micro- aggressions or micro-inequities. Micro-inequities are “those tiny, damaging characteristics of an environment, as these characteristics affect a person not of that environment. They are the comments, the work assignments, the tone of voice, the failure of acknowledgement in meetings or social gatherings. These are not actionable violations of law or policies, but they are clear, subtle indicators of lack of respect by virtue of membership in a group” (Rowe, 1990). These are forms of racism that as members of this society we all commit. People of color may commit these acts or maintain these attitudes against other people of color. The charge is to become able to recognize them and move ourselves and others beyond them to facilitate systemic change.

Shadism: is a form of internalized, racial “self-hatred.” It is a legacy of cultural imperialism, and  is a form of skin tone bias that identifies groups and individuals on the basis of their degree of pigmentation. It is an evaluation of people that registers traits such as skin color, hair, and facial features in order to construct racially charged social hierarchies.

Whiteness: a form of hegemony that allows one group to use its power to dominate a group in a position of less power” (Yee & Dumbrill, 2003, p. 102).

White privilege: is one issue that must be confronted as a precondition to releasing the energy required to successfully challenge institutional racism.  It is the collection of benefits based on belonging to a group perceived to be white, when the same or similar benefits are denied to members of other groups. It is the benefit of access to resources and social rewards and the power to shape the norms and values of society that white people receive, unconsciously or consciously, by virtue of their skin color (Kivel, 2002; McIntosh,1988; Potapchuk et al., 2005;)

Yellowface: at its core, is not only the practice of applying prostheses or paint to simulate a crude idea of what “Asians” look like; it is non-Asian bodies (usually white) controlling what it means to be Asian on screen and stage, particularly in lead/major roles. Tied to blackface and the portrayal of African Americans on the stage by whites in the nineteenth century, the term yellowface appears as early as the 1950s to describe the continuation in film of having white actors playing major Asian and Asian American roles and the grouping together of all makeup technologies used to make one look “Asian.”

SET 2 for racismfreeontario.com by Sean Gee

Critical Race Theory is an academic discipline focused upon the intersection of race, law and power (Critical Race Collective). 

Default Subcategory Erasure is the phenomenon in which the dominant group is considered the standard by which other groups are defined. In race discourse this is seen in stereotypes, but is not limited to stereotypes. An example of such is the stereotype that “Asians are smart.” Clearly here, people of Asian descent are not the standard (which is not overtly stated; it is erased), their status is measured in relativity to the dominant group. It is not the case that “White people are lacking in intelligence,” as white people are the standard by which other groups are defined (Critical Race Collective). See: Whitenormativity and Linguistic Markedness.  (links below)

Whitenormativity is the underlying assumption at an individual or structural level that white is normal or prototypical of unmarked categories. Simply put, the assumption that, unless overtly stated, white is the norm of any given particular thing. Whitenormativity is the phenomenon ofDefault Subcategory Erasure as it applies to the white dominant group (Critical Race Collective). 

Eurocentrism is the holding of European values as a standard in which all other values are compared and contrasted to (Critical Race Collective).

Holism is the view that one must study all aspects of a culture in order to understand the whole culture (Miller and Esterik, 2010). 

Gender performativity is the tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions – and the punishments (see: the Heterosexual Market) that attend not agreeing to believe in them (Butler 1999, p 179).

The Heterosexual Market is the metaphor which describes the peer social order that develops in adolescent years which considers masculinity and femininity as complementing functions (Eckert 1996).  The Heterosexual Market acts as a control of behaviour through social evaluation of peers.

Gender is not something one is born with; it is not something one has; it is something that one does (West and Zimmerman 1987). Gender is something we perform (Butler 1990).  Gender is the performance of learned behaviours associated with social constructs of masculinity and femininity (Cahill 1986). 

 [Butler’s definition, there are other ideas about gender. Butler is questionable at times, but I would still read up on her]

Cultural Relativism is the view that each culture must be understood in terms of the values and ideas of that culture and must not be judged by the standards of another culture (see: Ethnocentrism) (Miller and Esterik, 2010).

Absolute Cultural Relativism is the ideology in which whatever practices occur within a culture must not be questioned or changed because doing so would be ethnocentric (Miller and Esterik, 2010).

Critical Cultural Relativism offers an alternative view that poses questions about cultural practices and ideas in terms of who accepts them and why, and who they might be harming or helping (Miller and Esterik, 2010).

Ethnocentrism is the judging of other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture (or the dominant culture) rather than by the standards of that particular culture (Miller and Esterik, 2010).

provided by Sean Gee

updated

NOTE if you choose to cite some of these definitions, please contact the writers first. While some the defs are taken from articles, some of them are written by “Deena Hai” and “Sean Gee”  respectively, of Racism Free Ontario- they should be contacted first. 

(via fuckyeahethnicwomen)